1
“We must plant corn and raise cattle, and we desire you to assist us…in former times we bought
of the traders goods cheap; we could clothe our women and children, but now game is scarce and
goods dear, we cannot live comfortably. We desire the United States to regulate this matter…”
--Little Turkey, 1791-1792
“The Indians say they don’t understand their Father, the President. A few years ago he sent them
a plough and a hoe—said it was not good for his red children to hunt—they must cultivate the
earth. Now he tells them there is good hunting at the Arkansas: if they go there he will give them
rifles.”
--Anonymous Cherokee, 1816
“Men must have corrupted nature a little, because they weren’t born wolves, yet they’ve become
wolves.”
--Voltaire
At the dawn of the 19th century, as they settled down onto lands accorded them by treaty
with the United States, the Cherokee peoples of Georgia and the Carolinas began a massive
program of cultural assimilation. They formed a legislative assembly, wrote a Constitution,
formed a court system, created a police force, adopted Southern slaveholding agricultural
practices and both allowed and encouraged missionary educational facilities. Thirty years later,
after an unprecedented cultural transformation praised throughout the western world, the
Cherokee were forced off their lands to property west of the Mississippi. This paradox presents a
number of interesting historical puzzles. First, why did the Cherokee acculturate Western ways?
How, exactly, did the Cherokee manage to acculturate Western ways so quickly, and were these
complete assimilations or modified ones? Secondly, after being so praised for their acculturation,
why were they expelled from their native lands? How and why did the Trail of Tears happen?
The answers to these questions provide some startling insights into both the Cherokee Nation and
the United States in both the early 19th century and the present.
Before I begin I should make clear my own bias in this report. I find the removal of the
Cherokee an atrocious and morally inexcusable act on the part of my own government. I do not
believe that modern attitudes toward Native Americans in either the government or the populace
have improved greatly. However, the purpose of this report is not to write a condemnation of US
2
policy toward Native Americans, nor to paint the Cherokee in an overly sentimental or idealized
light in order to use them as a foil against Western civilization. Rather, I will attempt to bring
together a number of divergent studies of different aspects of this paradoxical period into a
straightforward and readable context. In doing so the overall picture of the hows and whys of this
unprecedented acculturation become clearer, and the answers to the questions I’ve proposed
above become more comprehensible.
Roots
After years of sporadic warfare with the United States, the Cherokee settled down to
peace with the Treaty of Holston in 1791. Warfare with rebel groups of the Cherokee, such as the
Chickamaugans, would continue for another ten years before being finally suppressed by the US
Army. At the turn of the century full peace was obtained, and the Cherokee had legal title to their
lands. This tranquility would not last long.
In 1802 the Jefferson Administration made a pact with the Georgia state government.
This became known as the Georgia Compact. It entailed the sale of Georgia’s western lands to
the United States for $1,250,000. More importantly, it stated that the US would forfeit her treaty
rights with Native American tribes in Georgia. Georgia would gain legal title to Cherokee lands
as soon as they could buy them from the Cherokee Nation through peaceful treaty terms.
It has been generally ascertained among historians that the Cherokee assimilated Western
Culture as a defense against western encroachment. In the words of one scholar of Cherokee
historian
“in a supreme effort to forestall the removal of their people from ancestral homelands to the state
of Georgia by the Compact of 1802, progressive Cherokee leaders, many of whom were mixed
bloods, undertook an ambitious and aggressive program that would further Cherokee education
and religion: replace Cherokee culture with that of the educated and Christianized white man;
and—of utmost importance—convert the Cherokee’s tribal government…into a republic
substantially patterned after that of the United States.”1
Many of the Cherokee proponents of assimilation were mixed bloods who had received
1
Woodward, Grace Stele. The Cherokees. Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1969. 139.
3
education in missionary schools. These included statesmen such as John ridge, Major Ridge, the
Ridge (no relation), and writer, editor and deputy Elias Boudinot. These men, early benefactors
of acculturation, turned their attention to the interest of the nation at large and served as leaders in
the Cherokee program of strategic acculturation. They were motivated by a desire to save their
people, their land, and their nation.
Not all motivation for assimilation was quite so high minded. Game in and around the
Cherokee lands had been decimated over the last century due to the burgeoning trade with whites
that was the nexus of the Cherokee economy. Without game and trade, it was clear that the
Cherokee economy would have to diversify. As Elias Boudinot stated in 1825,
“the rise of [my] people in their movement towards civilization, may be traced back as far as the
relinquishment of their towns; when game became incompetent to their support, by reason of the
surrounding white population. They then betook themselves to the woods, commenced the
opening of small clearings, and the raising of stock…the nation is highly improving, rapidly
improving in all those particulars which must finally constitute the inhabitants an industrious and
intelligent people.”2
The Cherokee at the turn of the century were not an ignorant, unintelligent, or culturally
static people. In light of the changes that Elias Boudinot described, however, the Cherokee were
a people steeped in traditional cultural practice. They were a Seven Clan matrilineal society.
They had a gender division of labor; the women farmed; the men hunted and made warfare.
Women ran the family. There was no formal centralized political system, and no major “chief.”
Most political issues were solved by council meetings with close surrounding villages. An
informal national tribal council was employed at certain times of year and in times of current or
looming warfare. The Seven Clans went out of their way to be internally peaceful. With other
tribes they practiced Mourning Wars and blood revenge. They practiced kinship/adoption
practices. They lived primarily in houses in small villages built alongside rivers. They were
highly decorative; the women wore skirts and the men wore breeches, piercings, and tattoos. The
Cherokee language was linguistically similar to the language of the Iroquois and the Tuscarora.
Boudinot, Elias. “An Address to the Whites, 1825.” Cherokee Editor. Edited by Theda Perdue.
Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1983. 71.
2
4
When adopting white ways, the Cherokee often did so on terms that amalgamated
Western ways with the Cherokee ones detailed briefly above. These assimilations were not
always the dramatic reforms that they initially appeared to whites, but rather dynamic
modifications of previous indigenous institutions.
I.
A Solitary Tree. Assimilation.
The program of strategic assimilation adopted by the Cherokee can be separated into four
domains: missionary education, government, agriculture/slaveholding, and language. These
domains were not formal and frequently overlap, as the discussion below illustrates, but for the
sake of simplicity I’ve condensed them into these arenas.
It should be noted that these reforms were by not universally accepted. Dissent, although
sometimes widespread, was commonly centered among the more removed factions of the Nation
in the Georgian Mountains. In 1808, after the passage of the first Cherokee Constitution, some
disenchanted Cherokee headed west under the headmen Bold Hunter and Fox. They called
themselves the “Old Settlers,” or the “Cherokees West,” and they settled in Arkansas, west of the
Mississippi, where they continued to live in a traditionalist fashion as a kind of foil to the Eastern
Cherokee.
Intertwining Branches. Agriculture and Slaveholding
In 1796 President Washington appointed Benjamin Hawkins the Principal Temporary
Agent for the Southern Indians. The same year Hawkins wrote Washington that the Cherokee
“said they would follow the advice of their great father George Washington, they would plant
cotton and be prepared for spinning as soon as they could make it, and they hoped they might get
some wheels and carts as soon as they should be ready for them, they promised also to take care of
their pigs and cattle…That they were willing to labour if they could be directed how to profit by
it.”3
One of the duties of Hawkins’ job was the construction of model plantation farms on
Native American lands. The model farm on the Cherokee reservation employed slave labor.
3
Hawkins, Benjamin. “Letter of Benjamin Hawkins, 1796-1806.” In Woodward.
5
Washington had long been advising the Cherokee to follow white ways, keep livestock, grow
corn, cotton and flax. Hawkins introduced Western methods of cotton agriculture and cloth
production. By the first years of the 19th century, western agriculture and slaveholding had been
introduced in earnest on Cherokee lands.
Slaveholding as practiced by the Cherokee had deep historical roots. Traditional
indigenous forms of bondage involved captive/adoption practices that had been in place for
centuries. Early interaction with traders in the 18th century saw a “rapid development of foreign
manufactured goods,” which in turn made “slaves very desirable possessions.”4 Consequently,
intertribal warfare escalated, and the capture and sale of potential slaves came to be viewed as a
highly profitable industry. In this way traders had a massive influence upon changing Cherokee
views toward bondage practices. “As a southern Indian tribe, the Cherokees had extensive
contact with a white slaveholding society which set the standard by which the Cherokee measured
their progress toward ‘civilization.’ Consequently, the Cherokees in their flight from ‘savagery’
established a system of plantation slavery.”5 With the dawn of the 19th century and the American
“policy of pacification and civilization, the slave’s role changed from product to producer.”6
Slaveholding as we know it was implemented at the same time that Western agriculture
was initiated. A concurrent development to these implementations was the creation of a wealthy
mixed-blood slaveholding elite. These men typically had some childhood education at the
missionary schools and had some white ancestry. “Only 17 percent of the people living in the
Cherokee Nation in 1835 had any white ancestors, but 78 percent of the members of the families
owning slaves claimed some proportion of white blood.”7 Slaveholders comprised 8 percent of
the Cherokee Nation. Of this 8 percent, “39 percent could read English while only 13 percent
Perdue, Theda. “Cherokee Planters: The Development of Plantation Society Before Removal.” In The
Cherokee Indian Nation: A Troubled History, edited by Duane H. King. Knoxville: The University of
Tennessee Press, 1979. 111.
5
Ibid, 110. Perdue is the leading authority on Cherokee slaveholding.
6
Ibid, 112.
7
Ibid, 117.
4
6
were proficient at reading Cherokee.”8 Literacy, wealth and mixed blood lines gave these
slaveholders the economic upper hand. They owned most of the slaves. “Slaves owned by
fullbloods numbered only 4 percent of the total slave population.”9 Slaveholding plantations
were small by the standards of the day—only several ever exceeded 50 slaves.
The Cherokees followed whites in creating legislation that prohibited slaves from owning
property, forbid inter-racial marriages between blacks and Indians or whites, denied slaves the
right of ownership, and forbid the practice of freeing slaves for the purpose of marriage. The
1828 Constitution formally excluded blacks from participating in government. “No person who
is of negro or mulatto parentage…shall be eligible to hold any office or trust under this
government.”10
There were, however, significant differences between white slaveholding and Cherokee
slaveholding. The Cherokee did not create laws that punished slaves for rebellion or
insubordination. Punishments for slave insubordination or insurrection were reserved for
masters. Disciplinary matters were left in the hands of individuals, in accordance with previous
attitudes toward one’s captives. Although the Cherokee frowned on marriage with blacks, census
records from the 1830s show that a small percentage of the Cherokee Nation was of mixed Indian
and African ancestry. Cherokees and slaves went to social events, such as dances and church,
together. Slaves were allowed to attend the missionary schools. “Not only did Cherokee masters
grant their slaves considerable freedom to participate in social, religious, and educational
activities, but they probably treated their slaves much better, on the average, than did their white
counterparts.”11 One former slave, Henry Bibb, went so far as to once state, “If I must be a slave,
I had by far, rather be a slave to an Indian, than to a white man.”12 The Cherokee adopted
8
Ibid, 117.
Neely, Sharlotte. Snowbird Cherokees. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1991. Citing the
studies of Geographer Douglas C. Wilms. 18.
10
Cherokee Nation. Cherokee Legislative Council. The Constitution and Laws of the Cherokee Nation.
1839. In Perdue.
11
Perdue, 123.
12
Bibb, Henry. “Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave.” Puttin’ On
Ole Massa, edited by Gilbert Osofsky. New York: Harper, 1969.
9
7
slaveholding practices within their own parameters. They allowed their slaves many of the same
rights and privileges accorded to adopted captives during the pre-assimilation era.
It would not be fair, however, to paint Cherokee slaveholding as a kinder and benevolent
alternative to white slaveholding. It is, after all, still slavery. Assumptions of racial superiority
were adopted from whites. Punishments for slave insubordination, while generally mild, could be
severe. One slaveholder, James Varn, after being attacked and robbed by his slaves, responded
with particular fervor. He burned one of his attacked alive and shot another.
Young Branches. Missionary Education
In 1799 Cherokee leaders, such as Little Turkey, began to praise the benefits of white
education. In 1801 a school was established by a Moravian missionary to educate Cherokee
children in reading, writing, and arithmetic. This school was the first to teach Western education
in the Cherokee Nation. The founder of the school was the ideologically driven Reverend
Blackburn, the leading proponent of the movement to educate the Cherokee on the American side
of the question. In 1803 Blackburn presented a wide-reaching education program to the October
Council of the Cherokee. He was granted permission to undergo its implementation. He believed
that Cherokee children were “the key to the problem of civilizing the tribe.”13 President Jefferson
allotted funds for this purpose. The motivations of the Moravians had subversive elements. “One
of the primary concerns of the Moravians was instilling a work ethic into what they considered to
be a lazy culture.”14 Missionaries were intent on making Indian men farmers and Indian women
submissive housewives.
Cherokee children acquired western education with a remarkable ease and rapidity. In a
letter to a fellow Reverend, Blackburn stated “in the course of the first week we had twenty-one
children, who all gave flattering evidence of promising geniuses.”15 By 1805 Reverend
13
Woodward, 123.
Spring, Joel. Cultural Transformation of a Native American Family and Its Tribe. Mahwah: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, 1996. 66.
14
8
Blackburn was already showing off the reading abilities of his students to both white and
Cherokee dignitaries at national gatherings. A number of future Cherokee statesmen and leaders
were among these early classes, including John Ross, Major Ridge, John Ridge, and Elias
Boudinot.
Educational facilities soon multiplied on Cherokee lands. By 1826 there were 18
schools. Education, while having religious connotations and taught by missionaries, was nondenominational. Government funding was allotted to Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, and
Moravian denominations. Boys were instructed in the three R’s and the rudiments of agriculture,
carpentry, and the keeping of livestock. Girls were taught “how to cook, spin, weave, sew, mold
candles, and sip tea sedately in the mission parlor.”16
The education of both boys and girls had an ideological bent. Boys, as caretakers and
future leaders of the community, were taught skills in accordance with these future roles. Men, of
course, were already caretakers and leaders of the community. Missionary educators, however,
felt that the Cherokee’s traditional gender roles must be partially reversed in order for the tribe to
shrug off its “lazy culture.” Men were to learn women’s work in the fields; they were to retain
their role in political leadership. Men were to assume familial leadership from women. Women
were to lose this and most other rights entirely. They were viewed as the mothers of future
Cherokee statesmen. They were to be instructed in the fine points of the Bible. Through this
education it was felt that Cherokee women would become housewives and instruct their children
in Christianity. The program was not without success. One graduate of the missionary school
system, Catherine Brown, later established a mission school of her own, after removal.
Missionaries often relied on converted Cherokee to assist them in their teachings, and in
short time converted Cherokees became teachers and translators in the schools. “These
Blackburn, Rev. Gideon. “An Account of the Origin and Progress of the Mission to the Cherokee
Indians; in a Series of Letters from the Rev. Gideon Blackburn, to the Rev. Dr. Morse.” In Woodward.
124.
16
Woodward, 141.
15
9
Cherokees manifested their zeal for Christianity and “civilization” not only through their support
of mission schools and churches but also by the organization of Bible study groups, prayer
meetings, and self-help societies.”17
Education was not universally praised or accepted among the Cherokee. The
missionaries taught concepts of work that conflicted with traditionalist gender roles. There was
considerable conflict between teachers and parents. One factor both groups agreed upon was the
instruction of children in the English language. “Bilingualism was important in commercial
transactions and in dealing with the US government.”18 Bilingualism also had negative
drawbacks. It contributed to social stratification and growing class divisions. “Given the
opportunity to act as mediators in economic and political affairs between the tribes and the
English-speaking White World, those who were bilingual could assure their own economic and
political advantges.”19 Protestantism conversions were high among the literate, educated mixedblood elite. It is doubtful that Protestantism had as much success among the full blood
traditionalist proletariat.
Perhaps the least culturally modified of the assimilated domains was that of education.
This, of course, was nearly impossible, in that both educators and curriculum were originally
white. Rather, the true modification came with what the Cherokee did with this acquired
knowledge, both in their government and newspaper.
Trunk. Government
In 1806, President Thomas Jefferson, writing to the Cherokee Nation, in what must be
one of the most ironic statements ever made to Native Americans, treaties notwithstanding,
“when a man has property, earned by his own labor, he will not like to see another one come and
take it from him because he happens to be stronger, or else to defend it by spilling blood. You
17
Perdue, Theda. Introduction to Cherokee Editor, by Elias Boudinot. Edited by Theda Perdue.
Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. 12.
18
Spring, 72.
19
Ibid, 73.
10
will find it necessary to appoint good men, as judges, to decide rules you shall establish.”20
Jefferson, as well as Indian agents like Benjamin Hawkins, believed that the creation of property
rights among Native Americans would help promote the creation of governments to protect those
rights. In the case of the Cherokee, they were right.
In the fall of 1808 a meeting of the Cherokee Council adopted a constitution that formed
legislative and judicial branches of a general council. This was a formalization of the powers of
the traditionalist national council, a group formed of tribal elders, wisemen, headsmen, and
respected male members of the community. These councils met informally to make decisions on
matters of national importance, primarily dealing with issues of national crisis, such as warfare.
With the threat of Western encroachment on the horizon, the meeting of this National Council
was no exception. The formalization of the powers of this institution was an amalgamation of
Western practices within Cherokee parameters. The adoption of democratic majority rule was
not. These national councils had previously decided matters by a democratic consensus.
Other Western practices were adopted. Laws were created that removed the punishment
of crimes from the hands of the individual to the hands of the state. Traditionalist blood revenge
justice was abolished.
Not all adoptions were so drastic or far-reaching. The Cherokee had quite a sense of
humor in their adoption of Western practices. Whites living with the borders of the Cherokee
Nation were to pay taxes.
In 1808 the Cherokee Light Guards were formed. They were a police force militia with
the stated purpose of protecting the Nation against bandits. They are significant as a creation of a
formalized Cherokee military, and, more sinisterly, because they sought to emulate the slave
patrols of the Southern Confederate cavalry.
Jefferson, Thomas. “To the Chiefs of the Cherokee Nation. Washington, Jan. 10, 1806.” The Life and
Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson. Edited by Adrienee Koch and William Peden. New York: The
Modern Library, 1944. 578.
20
11
In 1819, the informal general council government began to reorganize itself to mirror the
Government of the United States. An elected headsman was to be the executive head of
government. Two legislative bodies were created. They were patterned after the US Congress,
the National Committee mirroring the Senate and the National Council mirroring the House of
Representatives. The Cherokees were taking their traditionalist institutions and grafting US
governmental institutions over them. The former National Council became the Legislative
Council, or Congress. The position of the traditionalist speaker at these meetings was formalized.
“When the Cherokees…began to structure their government upon the American pattern, the
speaker emerged as the head of the legislature, certifying laws for the approval of the principal
chief, who was the head of the executive branch.”21 The Speaker of the House. The Nation was
divided into eight districts. Every two districts were to have a circuit judge and a marshal. One
of the marshal’s central jobs was the collection of taxes.
“In the national councils of 1819 and 1820, the Cherokee discussed the question of
whether to adopt American economic and political institutions or instead continue in the ways of
their forebears. The planters and other influential men argued that the nation could be preserved
only by further agricultural and political improvements.”22 The question was hotly debated
before a decision in favor of continued assimilationist policies. “The Cherokee no longer were
motivated by the desire to preserve hunting grounds; rather they adopted a patriotic commitment
to national and territorial preservation.”23 The question was, hence, not one of whether or not to
mirror the US government, but whether or not this would prove to be the most effective defense
against Western encroachment.
In 1822 a National Superior court was created that mirrored the United States Supreme
Court. This court preceded the Supreme Court of the state of Georgia by twenty years. It was to
21
Reid, John Phillip. A Law of Blood: The Primitive Law of the Cherokee Nation. New York: New York
University Press, 1970. 61.
22
Champagne, Duane. Social Order and Political Change. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.
134.
23
Ibid, 135.
12
review cases appealed from the districts. By 1823 the court had reviewed 21 cases. It dealt with
both civil and criminal cases. While this was an adopted legal institution, the Cherokee were not
without previous judicial practices. Formerly headsmen and individuals settled matters of justice,
with the general intention of preserving the stability of the cohesive tribal unit. “The key to the
Cherokee legal mind was the Cherokees’ desire for social harmony and their resentment toward
acts of hostility.”24
By 1822 the Cherokee had begun to demand citizenship from the United States.25 The
goal of citizenship was recognition. Once recognized, the Cherokee would be better able to
defend their treaty rights. Georgia delegations to the US Congress, fearful of the implications of
this, began to lobby more tenaciously to get the President to close the debate over the Compact of
1802 and seize Cherokee lands.
In response, the Cherokee Legislative Council passed legislation which stated that the
Cherokee intended to cede no more lands to the United States. Cherokee acculturation had begun
to bite back. They had good reason. Between 1794 and 1819, the Cherokee negotiated 24
treaties with the United States that involved land cessions. The reasoning behind land cessions
was manipulative and seedy. The US received land through treaties in compensation for
emigrations, unpaid debts, goods, and most of all, the bribery of Cherokee chiefs. Through these
treaties with England and the US some 4,000 square miles of Cherokee land were lost, nearly half
the traditional lands. They were understandbly distrustful and ready to acculturate in order to
fight.
In July of 1827 the Cherokees created their most far-reaching Constitution. Of the 12
signers, 11 were slaverholders of mixed descent. It was modeled after the United States
Constitution. Cherokee government, evolving along Western lines for the previous thirty years,
24
Woodward, 145.
Native Americans would not be granted American citizenship until 1923, due mainly to their service in
World War I.
25
13
was formally encoded into law. Article Two of the Constitution guaranteed that “the power of
this Cherokee Government shall be divided into three distinct departments; the Legislative, the
Executive, and the Judicial.” The preamble to the Constitution stated that:
“We, the Representatives of the people of the Cherokee Nation, in Convention
assembled, in order to establish justice, ensure tranquility, promote our common welfare, and
secure to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of liberty acknowledging with humility and
gratitude the goodness of the sovereign Ruler of the Universe, in offering us an opportunity so
favorable to the design, and imploring His aid and direction in its accomplishment, do ordain and
establish this Constitution for the Government of the Cherokee Nation.” 26
The Cherokees had come or gone a long way in the past thirty years. “Since both
Georgia and Tennessee claimed that the Cherokee were a barbarous nation without rules of laws,
the Cherokee decided to adopt a constitutional government modeled after the American
Constitution, and to proceed with agricultural development and education in order to prove that
the Cherokee were capable of living under the rule of law.”27 The assumption of the Western
definition of gender roles and slavery was also apparent in the Constitution; neither blacks nor
women were allowed to vote or hold office.
It should be noted that assimilation was not complete. Divisions among the Seven Clans
were still apparent. However, this division “did not present institutional obstacles for change,
because of the separation of kinship and religion from national political relations.”28 The
accomplishment stands; the Cherokee had grafted the American system of government on top of
their own system of national councils within thirty years, while still preserving the traditionalist
goals of social harmony, peace, community and national preservation.
Leaves. Language
There are two divergent theories concerning the creation and dissemination of the
Cherokee alphabet. I’ll detail them briefly. The first holds that Sequoyah, or George Guess,
returned to the Cherokee Nation in 1821 from Arkansas with an alphabet of 86 characters of his
26
Cherokee Nation. Cherokee Legislative Council. The Constitution and Laws of the Cherokee Nation.
1839. In Woodward. 153.
27
Champagne, 137-38.
28
Ibid, 107.
14
own creation.29 Each of the 86 characters corresponded to a sound in the Cherokee language.
The language was easily learned. A year later a Moravian missionary would write that “the
alphabet was soon recognized as an invaluable invention…in little over a year, thousands of
hitherto illiterate Cherokees were able to read and write their own language, teaching each other
in cabins or by the roadside. The whole nation became an academy for the study of the system.
Letters were written back and forth between the Cherokees in the east and those who had
emigrated to the lands of Arkansas.”30
The second theory holds that Sequoyah was “one of the chosen scribes of the Anisahoni
Clan, and a member of the Seven Clan Scribe Society.”31 Traditionally, only members of the
Anisahoni were educated in reading and writing the Cherokee language. At the turn of the
century, after consecutive wars with the United States, the Creeks and other tribes, Sequoyah was
the only scribe left who completely understood the Cherokee written language. Sequoyah,
fearing the death of the language, and understanding the benefits it could have, began to teach it
to those outside the Anisahoni Clan. Many of the mixed-blood elite were as ignorant of the
existence of a written Cherokee language as whites.
Regardless of origin, the presence of a written language was shortly revealed to
missionaries, as evidenced by a letter from a white teacher named Charles Pellham: “George
Guess is his name. He caused it. This Cherokee Indian commenced writing letters to his
countrymen, which they could read. It was soon discovered that Indians could talk on paper to
their friends here in the nation…there is no part of the Nation where it is not understood. There is
no doubt that it will prevail over every other method of writing.” Pellham goes on to state that “if
books were printed in the Cherokee Characters found upon the person of Guess’s aide, there are
those in every part of the Nation who could read them. Probably fifty times as many would read
one printed in Guess’s Characters as would read one printed in English.”32
29
Or George Guest, or Gist, depending on the document.
n.p., n.d. In Grant Foreman. Sequoyah. Norman: Univeristy of Oklahoma Press, 1938. 11.
31
Traveller Bird. Tell Them They Lie. Los Angeles: Westernlore Publishers, 1971. 24.
30
15
What we have here is reverse acculturation in pursuit of acculturation. The missionaries
began to learn and use the Cherokee language in an effort to educate the Cherokee in Western
work ethics, religion, and modes of life. The New Testament was shortly thereafter translated.
Elias Boudinot would later state that “there are three things of later occurance, which must
certainly place the Cherokee Nation in a fair light, and act as a powerful argument in favor of
Indian improvement.
First. The invention of letters.
Second. The translation of the New Testament into Cherokee.
And third. The organization of a Government.”33
The United States Government quickly praised Sequoyah as genius and his “invention”
was hailed as evidence of the progress of Cherokee “civilization.” By the 1820s a great number
of Cherokees could both read and write the language. They would soon implement it in ways that
the United States government did and did not improve of. The question of the invention of a
Cherokee alphabet being internal or not is, for our purposes, immaterial. The two main initial
accomplishments of the language emerged in an acculturated form: the creation of a newspaper,
and the printing of the New Testament.
In 1825, the Legislative Council passed legislation that intended “to receive donations
from individuals or societies throughout the United States for the object of establishing and
supporting a national academy and for procuring two sets of types to fit one press, to establish a
printing office…one set to be composed of English letters, the other of Cherokee characters, the
invention of George Guest, a Cherokee.”34 In October the Legislative Council appointed the
missionary educated Elias Boudinot as their representative. His duties entailed traveling
throughout the US on lecture tours in order to collect monies for a proposed national academy
and newspaper. Throughout the year of 1826 Boudinot toured, lecturing white audiences about
32
Pellham, Charles. n.p., n.d. In Traveller Bird. 113.
Boudinot, 74.
34
Cherokee Nation. Cherokee Legislative Council. The Constitution and Laws of the Cherokee Nation.
1839. In Woodward, 144.
33
16
the rapidity and achievements of Cherokee “advancement.”
In 1828 Boudinot founded the Cherokee Phoenix, so named because Boudinot envisioned
Cherokee assimilation as an attempt “to rise from the ashes, like the fabled PHOENIX.”35 A
printing press, with type in both Cherokee and English, was established for the newspaper in
Boston. The foundation of the Phoenix had less than subtle motives. The first issue stated
explicitly that “we will invariably state the will of the majority of our people on the subject of the
present controversy with Georgia, and the present removal policy of the United States
Government.” The Phoenix would serve as a forum for the voice of the Cherokee defense for the
duration of the removal battle. The newspaper was invaluable for those who could not read
English. The first copy explicitly stated the goals of the paper: “As the great object of the
Phoenix will be the benefit of the Cherokees, the following subjects will occupy its columns.
1. The laws and public documents of the Nation.
2. Account of the manners and customs of the Cherokees, and their progress in
Education, Religion and the arts of civilized life; with such notices of other Indian
tribes as our limited means of information will allow.
3. The principal interesting news of the day.
4. Miscellaneous articles, calculated to promote Literature, Civilization, and Religion
among the Cherokee.”36
The newspaper served not only as a forum for which Cherokees could protest removal,
but also as an agent for the promotion of assimilation.
Summary
The Cherokee had, in only thirty years, undergone a program of acculturation that was
historically unprecedented. They were preeminent among the Five Civilized Tribes.
This acculturation amounted to nothing less than an internal revolutionary restructuring of
Cherokee society. Gender roles, education, language, government, religion, agriculture, and daily
lifestyles were all radically transformed. While much of this reform was amalgamated with
previous traditionalist institutions, it is impossible to downplay the revolutionary significance of
35
36
Boudinot, 90. The Cherokee Phoenix still exists today.
Boudinot, 90.
17
these changes in everyday Cherokee life.
Acculturation, however, was not absolute. “Most full-bloods were illiterate, did not
speak English, and did not live according to the values of the Protestant ethic.”37 The Cherokee
census of 1835 “indicates that almost 40 percent of households in the Nation contained no literate
members,” in English, and “less than 10 percent of the Cherokees were even nominal
Christians.”38 The wealthy mixed-blood slaveholders who held political office, however, were
overwhelmingly Christian, literate, and owned property. While not absolute, assimilation still
occurred on an unprecedented scale, and changed the face of Cherokee society immeasurably.
Western institutions were often amalgamated with Cherokee ones. Southern
slaveholding practices were hybridized with captive/adoption practices, and were, generally, less
repressive. Western democratic institutions were grafted onto informal tribal democratic
practices. Missionary education was used by the mixed-blood upper class both to further their
own economic goals and to further civic-minded protectionist policies compatible with
traditionalist concepts of tribal unity and social harmony. The Cherokee used their language to
prove to the white world they were on equal terms.
The question that stands before us, then, remains: if the Cherokee had, by all
appearances, adopted Western civilization to such a degree that their society resembled the
United States more than any other indigenous society in the world at this time, why were they
removed from their lands in 1838? The answer is a frighteningly simple one.
Gold, Land, and Fear.
II.
A Tornado. The Battle of Removal
In 1815, a Cherokee boy “playing along Chestatee river, in upper Georgia…brought in to
his mother a shiny yellow pebble hardly larger than the end of his thumb. On being washed it
proved to be a nugget of gold, and on her next trip to the settlements the woman carried it with
37
38
Spring, 101.
Perdue, Theda. Introduction to Cherokee Editor, by Elias Boudinot. 28.
18
her and sold it to a white man.”39 The storm was condensing. Although no one yet knew it, the
Cherokee’s hopes of living in their ancestral homelands had just been destroyed.
The battle over the removal of the Cherokee from Georgia stretches over earlier battles,
treaties, wars, and cessions to both Britain and the United States. I do not intend to examine the
entire process, which is a repetitive one of mostly diplomatic rhetoric, involving much verbal and
written debate on both sides. I seek here only to examine the crucial turning points in this battle,
as well as how the assimilation of the Cherokee both helped, and hindered, this process.
For, “ironically, the Cherokees’…advancement…hastened, instead of deterred,
enforcement of the (Georgia) Compact…Georgia abandoned both dignity and ethics and through
her government and courts began, in 1820, a vicious attack upon the Cherokees that was to
continue for 18 years…”40 The assimilation of the Cherokee had become so complete that it was
feared the Nation would be able to defend herself against encroachment. The Cherokee
government was “a direct counterthreat to the southern states…it raised the possibility of
permanent and quasi-independent Indian nations within the chartered limits of the states…”41
There were more material motivations sparking the Georgian fervor to remove the
Cherokee. Cherokee land was extremely fertile. This is evidenced by the survival of Cherokee
peoples in the more mountainous regions of their territory down to the present day. “Brewton
Barry, William H. Gilbert, Edward T. Price, and others have shown there is a direct correlation
between the survival of Indians in the southeast and the poor quality of the land on which they
have been allowed to remain…today those southeastern Indians groups with the largest amount of
land are those who possess the poorest quality of land.”41
It is possible to conclude, then, that Georgia wanted Cherokee lands not only because of
the threat of an independent Native American state, but also because of the land’s agricultural
39
Mooney, James. Historical Sketch of the Cherokee. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1975. 110.
Woodward, 139-40.
41
Champagne, 126.
41
Neely, 20.
40
19
value and possible possession of gold.
The Funnel
In 1823, Creek chief William McIntosh, as an agent of the United States, attempted to
bribe prominent Cherokee leaders to make major land cessions to the US. The $12,000 offer was
rejected. In 1824, the Legislative Council sent John Ross, Major Ridge and other Cherokee
leaders to Washington in an attempt to persuade President James Monroe to negate the Georgia
Compact of 1802. The meeting ended in a stalemate, with the Cherokee refusing to cede their
lands and Monroe refusing to negate the Georgia Compact.
In 1828, Andrew Jackson was elected President. “He was a frontiersman and Indian
hater, and the change boded no good for the Cherokee. His position was well-understood…”42
Jackson would state, in his First Annual Message to Congress in 1829, that “a portion of the
Southern tribes, having mingled much with the whites and made some progress in the arts of
civilized life, have lately attempted to erect an independent government within the limits of
Georgia and Alabama.”43 It was clear which side Jackson was on.
Cherokee leaders noted the irony. The Ridge, an early antagonist of the removal policy,
later to become a proponent, stated in 1829 that
“The case is reversed and we are now assaulted with menaces of expulsion, because we have
unexpectantly become civilized, and because we have formed and organized a constituted
government. It is too much for us now to be honest, virtuous, and industrious, because then we
are capable of aspiring to the rank of Christians and Politicians, which renders our attachment to
the soil more strong, and therefore more difficult to defraud us of the possession.” 44
In 1829 Georgia passed legislation that demanded the confiscation of vast regions of
Cherokee land, using the Compact of 1802 for justification. Cherokee laws were nullified in
these regions, and Cherokee leaders who protested were arrested and imprisoned. The Georgia
Guard moved in and forced the Cherokee from their own gold fields. Many Cherokee reacted
42
Ibid, 111.
Jackson, President Andrew. “President Jackson on Indian Removal Dec 8 1829.” In Documents of
United States Indian Policy. Edited by Francis Paul Prucha. Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1990.
47.
44
Wilkins, Thurman. Cherokee Tragedy. Norman: University of Okalahoma, 1986. 207.
43
20
furiously, and rioted. Jackson ordered federal troops into the troubled region but, at the insistence
of Georgia’s governor that the Georgia Guard could handle the problem, withdrew them. Georgia
forced other laws on the beleaguered reservation: no Cherokee could testify against a white in
court, and any contract between a white man and an Indian was considered invalid unless
witnessed by two whites.
Georgia created this legislation in order to “render life in their own country intolerable to
the Cherokee by depriving them of all legal protection and friendly counsel, and the effect was
precisely as intended.”45 A disgusted Edward Everett gave an impassioned speech before the
House of Representatives about the locust plague of brigand whites invading Cherokee territory.
“They have but to cross the Cherokee line; they have but to choose the time and place where the
eye of no white man can rest upon them, and they may burn the dwelling, waste the farm, plunder
the property, assault the person, murder the children of the Cherokee subject of Georgia, and
though hundreds of the tribe may be looking on, there is not one of them that can be permitted to
bear witness against the spoiler.”46
In a number of cases, that is exactly what happened.
In 1830, Jackson pushed through, by a slim majority, the Indian Removal Bill. The bill
called for the removal, by negotiated treaty, of all southeastern Indians, including the Creeks,
Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles and Cherokees. By May of 1832 the Creeks, Choctaws,
Chickasaws and Seminoles had all signed removal treaties with the United States Government.
The Cherokees, in meeting with a Seneca delegation in 1834, stated that their Nation was a
“solitary tree in an open space where all the forest trees around have been prostrated by a furious
tornado—save one.”47
Government opinion, evidenced by the split on the Indian Removal Bill, was divided.
Democrats supported it, while Whigs were opposed. States’ rights proponents supported
Jackson’s policies. Federalists in want of a strong central government that respected its own
45
Mooney, 112.
Everett, Edward. United States Senate. “Speech in the Senate Apr 16 1830.” In Mooney. 112.
47
Cherokee Delegation. Seneca Delegation. “Cherokee Delegation to Seneca Delegation, Apr 1834.” In
Woodward. 160.
46
21
treaties were opposed. Concern for Cherokee rights was not paramount.
Which is not to say that humanitarian sentiment was completely nonexistent. Horace
Everett, a dissenting member of the House of Representatives from Vermont, stated before the
House that “this policy cannot come to good. It cannot, as it professes, elevate the Indians. It
must and will depress, dishearten, and crush them…it is all unmingled, unmitigated evil…”48
Like minded editorials from The Phoenix were recopied in newspapers across the country.
In light of the political maelstrom over states versus federal rights, the Cherokee soon
discovered they had friends in high places, including a number of senators, writers, clergymen,
editors, party managers, publishers, Christian rights organizations, and, most importantly of all,
lawyers. One of these, William Wirt, a constitutional lawyer and former Attorney General, would
soon bring two of the most important cases in Native American history to the Supreme Court.
Rainfall—Cherokee Nation v. Georgia
The Cherokee battle over sovereignty was one of the most important and gargantuan
issues in the country. “The Cherokee controversy had now drawn into its vortex every major
manifestation of power in the country: the President, Congress, the Supreme Court, political
parties, the religious community and the press.”49
In March of 1831,William Wirt brought a request to the Supreme Court. It was an
injunction against Georgia for its infringements upon Cherokee sovereignty. Wirt argued that the
Cherokee Nation, as a sovereign nation, was not subject to the laws of Georgia. “Thus, the
Supreme Court of the United States should have original jurisdiction of its case and could award
an injunction to restrain the state of Georgia from carrying her laws into effect against the
Cherokee Nation.”50 This was nothing less than an all-out-bid to overcome the Compact of 1802.
Wirt and the Cherokee lost. Chief Justice Marshall, declaring the court’s opinion, stated
Everett, Horace. United States House of Representatives. “Speech of Horace Everett in the House of
Representatives May 19 1830.” In Woodward. 160.
49
Van Every, Dale. Disinherited: The Lost Birthright of the American Indian. New York: William
Morrow and Company, 1966. 141.
50
Woodward, 165.
48
22
that indigenous lands within the United States are not sovereign states, according to the
Constitution, but are instead
“domestic dependent nations. They occupy a territory to which we assert a title independent of
their will, which must take effect in point of possession when their right of possession ceases.
Meanwhile, they are in a state of pupilage. Their relation to the United States resembles that of a
ward to his guardian.”51
It was one of the most insightful remarks ever made regarding the perception of Native
Americans by Americans in their long and tortured history, and it also defined reservation law
vaguely and condescendingly enough that the definition is still employed today. For the
Cherokee, Marshall’s decision meant that, despite that the infallibility of treaty law, the Compact
of 1802 was still enforceable. Marshall backed down from the issue, writing, in an astonishing
negation of the presupposed duties of the Supreme Court, “this is not the tribunal which can
redress the past of reverse the future.”52 Roughly a year later, Marshall would, in effect, reverse
this statement.
A Glimmer of Sunlight—Worcester v. Georgia
In the spring of 1831, Reverend S.A. Worcester, a missionary to the Cherokee, was
arrested under a law that forbade white men from residing within the Cherokee Nation without
taking an oath of allegiance to the State of Georgia. Worcester refused to take the oath and was
sentenced to four years in prison.
In March of 1832, William Wirt and the Cherokee brought the case of Worcester v.
Georgia to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, this time, did not duck the issue. Marshall
would write in the majority opinion of the court that it was clear that
“the legislative power of a state, the controlling power of the Constitution and laws of the United
States, the rights, if they have any, the political existence of a once and numerous people, the
personal liberty of a citizen, are all involved in the subject now to be considered…this duty,
however unpleasant, cannot be avoided.”53
Marshall, John. United States Supreme Court. “Cherokee Nation v. Georgia 1831.” In Documents of
the United States Indian Policy. 60-63.
52
Ibid.
53
Marhsall, John. United States Supreme Court. “Worcester v. Georgia 1832.” In Van Every. 144-145.
51
23
The unprecedented case resulted in an unprecedented decision. Marshall stated, in the
majority opinion, that
“the acts of Georgia are repugnant to the Constitution, laws and treaties of the United States…they
are in direct hostility with treaties, repeated in a succession of years, which mark out the boundary
that separates the Cherokee country from Georgia; guaranty to them all the land within their
boundary; solemnly pledge the faith of the United States to restrain their citizens from trespassing
on it; and recognize the pre-existing power of the nation to govern itself. They are in equal
hostility with the acts of Congress for regulating this intercourse…” 54
The Supreme Court declared that states have no rights that can intrude upon Indian lands.
This decision eviscerated the legal right of Georgia to remove the Cherokee from their lands
under the Compact of 1802. The Cherokee had won.
The decision was discarded by both the Jackson administration and the State of Georgia.
Jackson, upon hearing the verdict, uttered the infamous phrase, “John Marshall has made his
decision, now let him enforce it.”55 Worcester remained in jail for another year, and the Cherokee
remained in Georgia for another six.
The Treaty of New Echota
In the fall of 1835, John Ross left Washington after another unsuccessful attempt to come
to an agreement with the Government over the Georgia Compact. On his return to his Tennessee
home, where he moved to escape arrest in Georgia, he was arrested without charge and
imprisoned. A few days before, the office plant of the Cherokee Phoenix was confiscated by the
Georgia Guard. “Thus in their greatest need the Cherokee were deprived of the help and counsel
of their teachers, their national press, and their chief.”56
Scarcely a month later, at the December conference of the Cherokee in New Echota,
treaty terms were drawn up by John Schermerhorn, US Commissioner, acting on behalf of the
United States Government. There would be no court battle over the jurisdiction of states’ rights
versus the rights of the federal government. Although the Cherokee population had been
54
Ibid.
Van Every, 147. From Van Every’s footnote: “There had long been personal ill feeling between Jackson
and Marshall. In 1828 Marshall had taken the unprecedented step, while continuing to hold his presumably
nonpolitical post on the court, of campaigning against Jackson.” This is another story.
56
Mooney, 117.
55
24
threatened and harassed to attend the meeting throughout the fall, only three to five hundred
people attended, out of a population of 17,000.
The Treaty of New Echota gave the Cherokee Nation five million dollars in return for
their removal west of the Mississippi. They were to remove to the region already occupied by the
Cherokees West, or Arkansas Cherokee. Although provisions were made for some Cherokee to
stay behind in North Carolina, Tennesee, and Alabama, President Jackson shortly negated these
provisions. The Cherokee were made to pay for some of the land they were to occupy in Kansas.
The majority of the Cherokees ratifying the Treaty were not leaders or government officials. The
Treaty was ratified by one vote more than needed.
Although the majority of the Cherokee were opposed to removal, the policy did have
some powerful proponents. The Ridge, before signing, stated
“I am one of the native sons of these wild woods…[but] they are strong and we are weak. We are
few, they are many…I know we love the graves of our fathers…We can never forget our
homes…I would willingly die to preserve them, but any forcible effort to keep them will cost our
lands, our lives and the lives of our children…Make a treaty of cession.”57
Legislation had been passed years before promising death to any Cherokee signing a
treaty not approved by the majority of the Nation. The signers of the treaty were fully aware that
they were sacrificing their lives. Elias Boudinot reportedly said, after signing the treaty, that “I
know that I take my life in my hand, as our fathers have also done…We can die, but the great
Cherokee Nation will be saved. They will not be annihilated; they can live. Oh, what is a man
worth who will not dare to die for his people? Who is there here that will not perish, if this great
Nation may be saved?”58 Many of the treaty’s signers would eventually pay with their lives: John
Ridge, Elias Boudinot and the Ridge would all be brutally murdered, after removal, in a revenge
conspiracy against the removal proponents.
The Cherokee debate over removal was not a simple one. The argument crossed class
57
58
The Ridge. n.p., n.d. In Wilkins. 286-287.
Boudinot, 27.
25
lines. Among the elite there were two sides. On one side were leaders such as John Ross, with
high economic stakes in the Cherokee Nation, who argued, toward the end, in favor of the
Cherokees staying within Georgia even if it meant complete dissolution in American culture, with
or without reservation sovereignty. On the other side were leaders such as John Ridge and Elias
Boudinot, who argued for removal in favor of cultural survival, discussed above. On the bottom
were the majority of the Cherokee, who neither wanted to leave their lands, for traditionalist
reasons, nor be completely acculturated into the Western world. The complexity of the situation
is overwhelming, and locating who the true Cherokee patriots are is a confusing question (I would
venture that all parties involved had what they believed to be the best interests of the Nation at
heart).
John Ross and other national delegates, after passage of the Treaty, conducted protest
petitions with the signatures of close to 16,000 Cherokee (out of a population of approximately
17,000). The protests were to no avail. President Jackson shortly thereafter declared publicly
that the implications of the Treaty would be implemented without delay.
General Wool, assigned to suppressing any opposition to the Treaty, stated, after some
time in Cherokee country, that
“the whole scene since I have been in this country has been nothing but a heartrending one, and
such a one as I would be glad to get rid of as soon as circumstances will permit…If I could, and I
could not do them a greater kindness, I would remove every Indian to-morrow beyond the reach of
the white man, who, like vultures, are watching, ready to pounce upon their prey and strip them of
everything they have or expect from the government of the United States. Yes, sir, nineteen
twentieths, if not ninety-nine out of every hundred, will go penniless to the West.” 59
Not the empathetic, yet paternalistic, stance.
The Georgia citizenry promptly seized Cherokee plantations, farms, mines, and other
properties. Major Ridge, an educated Cherokee leader opposed to the removal, wrote to the
President
“we are not safe in our houses—our people are assailed day and night by the rabble. Even justices
of the peace and constables are concerned in this business. This barbarous treatment is not
confined to men, but the women also are whipped without law or mercy…send regular troops…If
59
“Letter of General Wool Sept 10 1836.” In Mooney, 121.
26
it is not done, we shall carry off nothing but the scars of the lash on our backs, and our oppressors
will get all the money.”60
Ironically, Army officials sent to the reservation to protect whites from a Cherokee
uprising ended up trying to protect the Cherokee from the whites. By the time of removal, only
2,000 Cherokee had prepared for the move. Military force would be needed.
The Trail of Tears
Troops were sent onto the Cherokee’s land. Historian James Mooney described the
operation with a bitter romantic veracity. The soldiers were sent to
“search out with rifle and bayonet every small cabin hidden away in the coves or by the sides of
mountain streams, to seize and bring in as prisoners all the occupants, however or wherever they
might be found. Families at dinner were startled by the sudden gleaming of bayonets in the
doorway and rose up to be driven with blows and oaths along the weary miles of trail that led to
the stockade. Men were seized in their fields or going along the road, women were taken from
their wheels and children from their play. In many cases, on turning for one last look as they
crossed the ridge, they saw their homes in flames, fired by the lawless rabble that followed on the
heels of the soldiers to loot and pillage.”61
This “lawless rabble” hunted through houses for valuables, pillaged graves for expensive
sacraments buried with the dead, burned property, and stole cattle and other livestock. “A
Georgia volunteer, afterward a colonel in the Confederate service, said “I fought through the civil
war and have seen men shot to pieces and slaughtered by thousands, but the Cherokee removal
was the cruelest work I ever knew.”62
Resistance was scattered and infrequent. Where it flared up violence followed. At least
one soldier and a number of Cherokees were killed. Hundreds fled to the mountains. The
Cherokee, as well as their slaves, were rounded up in what can be aptly described as
concentration camp conditions. Late in the fall, after the sickly season, the Trail of Tears began.
Roughly 13,000 Cherokee began the forced march. Some 9,000 made the trip.
Historians agree that 4,000 Cherokee died as a direct result of the Trail of Tears. Food was
scarce, the winter came on, and rations were not nutritional. The march was long and disastrous.
“Letter of Jun 30, 1836 to President Jackson.” In Mooney, 122.
Mooney, 124.
62
Mooney, 127.
60
61
27
Measles, flu, accidents, fighting, malnutrition, and dysentery resulted in a great number of deaths.
Six months later the Cherokee met up with their brethren in the Arkansas territory and attempted
to begin life anew.
This spring the state of Georgia apologized to the Cherokee Nation for the Trail of Tears.
Decomposing Leaves/Fertilizer. Conclusions
The assimilation process of the Cherokee was an unprecedented, widespread,
problematic, enigmatic, and phenomenal undergoing. It was undertaken by the Cherokee with the
purpose of assimilating Western civilization in order to save their own lands and cultural
sovereignty. This presents an interesting enigma: assimilation for the sake of cultural survival.
In light of the situation facing the Cherokee at the turn of the century, with their economy
dissolved and white encroachment becoming a larger and larger threat, this enigma becomes less
foreign and more comprehensible. While the Cherokee did not universally accept the
assimilation process, it was the only widespread Cherokee resistance to the American threat that
emerged in this time period. The assimilation process took many forms, and changed nearly all
aspects of Cherokee life.
The assimilation of the Cherokee both hindered and accelerated the removal process. An
underlying fear is evident in the actions of both the state of Georgia and the Jackson
administration, a fear that an independent sovereign Cherokee Nation would emerge victorious
over the will of the state and federal governments, and would do so legally and constitutionally.
This fear, the fertility of Cherokee lands, and the discovery of gold within their territory were all
motivations behind the eventual removal. When the Cherokee emerged victorious after
Worcester v. Georgia, the Jackson administration pursued subversive means in an all-out bid to
remove the Cherokee, and finally won.
The two halves of this paper are thus linked by the steady current of assimilation, for the
sake of cultural survival, that flowed over the Cherokee Nation between the turn of the century
and removal in 1838. The battle of removal highlights the development of the Cherokee Nation
28
as a sovereign power, and their eloquent arguments are as persuasive today as they were to white
supporters then. While removal is an extremely complex issue, and economic considerations did
have some influence upon statesmen such as John Ridge, all sides (within the Cherokee) appear
to have been motivated by what they thought were the best interests of the Nation.
The statement, then, of the Cherokee delegation to the Senecas in 1834 becomes a more
insightful summation of the entire period, as the Cherokees compared their Nation to a “solitary
tree in an open space where all the forest trees around have been prostrated by a furious
tornado—save one.” This tree itself would eventually be prostrated also, both by assimilation and
removal, resulting in one of the greatest tragedies, and greatest injustices, of American history.
The repercussions of this history continue, and continue to be both perpetrated and fought, today.