A novel by Stephen E. Dinehart IV · Published April 3, 2026
A Cherokee descendant's epic novel about the emperor his ancestor was, published the same spring a sacred mound is returned to his people after 200 years.
An epic in four voices spanning 1687 to 1979, from Moytoy II's crowning as Emperor of the Cherokee to the TVA flood that buried his grave under sixty feet of water.
On February 26, 2026, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians signed the deed returning Noquisiyi Mound (the sacred site where Moytoy of Tellico was crowned Emperor of the Cherokee nearly three centuries ago) back to the Cherokee people after more than 200 years. Weeks later, a novel arrived that begins at that exact moment, traces the empire forward through the TVA's Tellico Dam flood that submerged Moytoy's grave under sixty feet of water, and ends with a government file marked CLOSED. That file just reopened.
Emperor of the Cherokee is an epic historical novel spanning 1687 to 1979: from the childhood of Amatoya Moytoy of Tellico through his crowning as the first Emperor of the Cherokee at Niquassee in 1730, across the wars and diplomacy that defined the Cherokee Overhill towns, and forward to the moment the TVA's Tellico Dam floods those same towns, submerging Moytoy's grave under sixty feet of reservoir water. The last chapter is a government file marked CLOSED.
The novel is constructed in four narrative voices: Testimony (first-person witness accounts), Witness (close third-person present tense), Record (official colonial and federal documents rendered as fiction), and Reflection (lyrical interludes that speak across centuries). Together they recreate a world that has been systematically erased from the American historical record.
"I didn't choose to be Red. It is who I am."
– Stephen E. Dinehart IVEmperor of the Cherokee moves between four modes of attention simultaneously:
These registers are not labeled. They alternate. The reader learns to move between them the way the novel’s characters moved between worlds.
The Cherokee Overhill towns (Chota, Tellico, Tomotley, Mialoquo, and others along the Little Tennessee River in present-day eastern Tennessee) were the political and ceremonial heart of the Cherokee nation in the eighteenth century. Moytoy of Tellico, known also as Amatoya Moytoy, was not a figurehead. He was a war chief and diplomat who understood the stakes of British alliance and the danger of British encroachment simultaneously.
The 1730 ceremony at Niquassee (present-day Franklin, NC), where Sir Alexander Cuming, an eccentric Scottish baronet operating largely without Crown authorization, presided over what he called a coronation, was understood by the Cherokee as a ceremony of alliance, not submission. The distinction would cost generations.
For two and a half centuries, the Overhill towns survived wars, forced treaties, and the Trail of Tears before being extinguished not by army or legislation but by water. In 1979, the Tennessee Valley Authority completed Tellico Dam over the sustained objection of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, archaeologists, and the Endangered Species Act. The Little Tennessee flooded. Everything went under. A federal file was marked closed.
Noquisiyi Mound, the site of the 1730 ceremony in Franklin, NC, was not submerged. It has been held in private hands for over two centuries. On February 26, 2026, that changed.
Stephen E. Dinehart IV is a Cherokee descendant with documented lineage to Amatoya Moytoy of Tellico. He grew up hearing his mother's stories of their heritage in art, language, food, and dance, while being told in school that his indigenous ancestors were "woodland savages" incapable of mathematics, science, or architecture. He was born not far from Aztalan, one of the largest pre-Columbian ceremonial mound complexes in North America, and didn't learn this until he was 35.
Following that thread from Aztalan to the historical record to Moytoy, Dinehart spent years in the archives and in ceremony, learning what had been hidden. He wept at Noquisiyi Mound when he finally understood his connection to the place. That research became this novel. It is also how he passes what was nearly lost to his children.
Dinehart is an Assistant Professor of Film, Animation & New Media at the University of Tampa. He coined the professional term "Narrative Designer" in 2006, a designation now standard across major game studios globally. He holds an MFA from USC, is a David Lynch Foundation Scholar, and is the founder of Wonderfilled Inc. and Alien Ranch Pictures. He is a single parent and a lifelong student of Tsalagi, taught to him in his youth and still being recovered.
A sacred Cherokee mound was returned to the Eastern Band in February 2026. A novel about the ceremony that happened there 296 years ago arrives weeks later, written by a descendant of the man who was crowned there. The timing is not coincidence; it is the shape of history reasserting itself.
The Tellico Dam didn't just flood land. It flooded graves, towns, and a history the federal government had already spent two centuries trying to close out. The novel ends with that file. It opens again on April 3.
A man who was told his ancestors were savages, born near one of the largest pyramids in the Western Hemisphere, who followed a thread from a grade school lie to the historical record to a weeping at a mound in Franklin, NC, and wrote it all down.
Dinehart was taught Tsalagi as a child, largely lost it, and is still recovering it. The novel is part of that recovery, a way of passing what was nearly lost to his children before it is gone.
The novel's Record voice (colonial letters, TVA filings, acts of Congress) shows how erasure is not a single event but a sustained bureaucratic project, carried out in ordinary language, filed and marked closed. The novel asks: what does it mean to reopen that file?
The past decade has seen a significant renaissance in Indigenous-authored literature and in mainstream attention to Indigenous history, from Killers of the Flower Moon's Osage focus to the surge in Native-authored fiction following Tommy Orange's There There. Emperor of the Cherokee enters this conversation with something specific: a first-person ancestral claim, a historical record extensive enough to bear a novel's weight, and a narrative architecture designed to hold colonial documents and oral witness simultaneously without collapsing one into the other.
The Tellico Dam controversy, in which the TVA flooded 38 miles of the Little Tennessee River over the documented objection of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and despite a Supreme Court case (TVA v. Hill, 1978) that briefly halted construction under the Endangered Species Act, remains one of the most contested federal infrastructure decisions of the twentieth century. It has received little sustained literary attention. This novel provides it.
The return of Noquisiyi Mound in February 2026 marks a significant moment in Eastern Band land sovereignty and in the longer arc of federal land repatriation. Emperor of the Cherokee is the first major work of fiction to engage directly with that site and its history.