Brainerd Mission

Brainerd Mission was a Cherokee school established in eighteen seventeen by American Board missionaries near present-day Chattanooga. For over two decades it educated hundreds of Cherokee children in English literacy, farming, and Christian practice. The mission was named for David Brainerd, an eighteenth-century missionary to northeastern tribes.

It became a significant institution within the Cherokee Nation during the period when Cherokees were actively building a written language, a newspaper, and a constitutional government. When the forced removal known as the Trail of Tears began in eighteen thirty-eight, the mission closed and the community it had built was torn apart. A small cemetery on the original grounds still exists, marking the site where students and teachers were buried before the world they knew was destroyed.