Overview by Dr. Meyer (from learnnc.org; georgiatribeofeasterncherokee.com; wsharing.com; wikimapia.org; wikipedia.org; Forrest McDonald, States Rights and the Union: Imperium in Imperia, (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2000), pp. 97-103; and other sources) 1. Cherokee culture derives from the Mississippian (Moundbuilders) and the Pisgah cultures that settled in what is now the southeastern United States in the first half of the second millennium A.D. (c. 1000-1500). The first town known to be Cherokee, Dugilyui (or Tugaloo, by the English), dates from about 1450. Mounds still exist at the site in Tugaloo State Park in Georgia. The first European contact with the Cherokee dates from the Spaniard De Soto s mission (1540) that resulted in the discovery of the Mississippi River. A hundred years later, the English settlers of North America regularly traded with the Cherokee. This contact eventually brought small pox to the tribe (as it did other Amerindians), devastating the Cherokee an epidemic in the 1730s killed as many as 50% of the population. By 1805, the Cherokee numbered only about 12,000. 2. Relations between the Cherokee and the Americans varied over the next century as suited the tribe. During the Yamasee War (1730s SC and NC) the Cherokee stayed neutral; when Creek emissaries came to negotiate an alliance against the Carolinians the Cherokee listened patiently and then killed the Creek envoys. During the French and Indian War, the Cherokee initially helped the British against the Shawnee, but later turned against them, raiding along the Appalachian backcountry including an attack on Fort Dobbs. The tribe sided with the British during the War of Independence, but during the Creek War (1813-1814) formed a strong alliance with the Americans. With Cherokee help, the Americans, led by Andrew Jackson defeated the Creeks in Alabama at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. After the battle, Jackson promised Chief Junaluska (who literally saved Jackson s life in an attack by a Creek prisoner) that the Cherokee would live forever on their traditional land. As long as the sun shines and the grass grows, Jackson exclaimed, there shall be friendship between us, and the feet of the Cherokee shall be toward the east. 3. Whether Jackson meant it or not, it was unlikely the promise would be fulfilled; for the U.S. had already begun planning the eventual takeover of Indian lands. Treaties signed in the 1780s and 1790s punished the Cherokee for siding with Britain and forced them to cede land. The U.S. wanted them either to assimilate or leave. Whites openly violated the Treaty of Hopewell (1785), requiring a new treaty to be made. The Treaty of Holston (1795) tried to facilitate assimilation by giving the Indians farm implements and building a road through the territory. The treaty read: That the Cherokee nation may be led to a greater degree of civilization, and to become herdsmen and cultivators, instead of remaining in a state of hunters, the United States will from time to time furnish gratuitously the said nation with useful implements of husbandry, and further to assist the said nation in so desirable a pursuit. George Washington played a significant role in advancing the goals of the treaty, advising the Cherokee to assimilate for their protection and prosperity. Andrew Jackson himself negotiated a similar treaty in 1817. Given the choice of adopting European ways or moving beyond the limits of the U.S., many Cherokee chose the latter. 4. By the 1820s, many Cherokee who had stayed in the East adopted cultural and economic patterns of whites. In return for ceding [cede] land, the U.S. paid the Cherokee in farm implements. The U.S. government had begun paying for the education of the Cherokee in schools run by New England missionaries, leading to the creation of a syllabary developed by Sequoyah to translate English to Cherokee to encourage literacy. Some Cherokee farms grew into small plantations, worked by black slaves a 1809 census counted 583 Negro slaves living in the Cherokee Nation. The Cherokee built gristmills, sawmills, and blacksmith shops. Under the leadership of Major Ridge and John Ross, they built a new capitol for the Cherokee Nation, at New Echota in Georgia, and in 1827 the Cherokee Nation adopted a written constitution, modeled after the U.S. Constitution. 5. The Cherokee might have held off white settlement, but two things happened in 1829 to work against them. First, Andrew Jackson became President and a year later called for Indian removal. The Indian Removal Act passed Congress in May 1830. The law ordered the removal of all Indian nations in the southeastern U.S. to land in the Great American Desert beyond the Arkansas River. Although it was a betrayal of Jackson s promise to Chief Junaluska, some historians insist Jackson acted to save the Indians from annihilation. They argue that the states and settlers would have taken the lands regardless and so Jackson s actions made sure the Indians would get something for their land and would be safely removed. The law was very popular among whites living in the region because it opened up new land for their development. But it was not without its critics, including from the likes of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, and vociferously by New Jersey Senator Theodore Frelinghuysen (1844 Whig candidate for Vice President), as well as from religious groups, notably the Quakers and Moravians. 6. Secondly, gold was discovered on Cherokee lands. It was only a matter of time before prospectors would be swarming in. Desirous of controlling the gold mining, the State of Georgia enacted a series of laws (December 1830) imposing its will on the Cherokee. Asserting its sovereignty over the lands within its borders, Georgia barred the
Cherokee from holding tribal council or in any other way attempting to govern themselves. They were banned from selling or renting their land, except to the State, as well as from mining for gold. Georgia also ordered a general survey of Cherokee land (and Creek land in southern Georgia) for the purpose of preparing for an eventual lottery, giving away vacated Indian land. 7. Cherokee leaders successfully challenged Georgia in the U.S. Supreme Court. On advice from Frelinghuysen, the Cherokee hired former U.S. Attorney General William Wirt (unfortunately for the Cherokee, a personal enemy of Jackson) to lead their case. In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the case for lack of standing, but the Cherokee won in the case of Worcester v. Georgia, involving two missionaries imprisoned for ignoring Georgia s order that residents of the Cherokee Nation swear allegiance to the State. The opinion, written by Chief Justice John Marshall, declared the Georgia laws unconstitutional. Georgia did not have the authority to bring the Cherokee Nation under its control because while it resided within the boundaries of the state, the Cherokee nation [was] a distinct community occupying its own territory [and all interaction] between the United States and this nation, [was], by our constitution and laws, vested in the government of the United States. Despite the Court s decision, President Jackson sided with Georgia. He famously replied to the ruling, Mr. Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it. 8. Most Cherokee wanted to stay on their land, but some saw this as the final straw. Led by Major Ridge, they called for the tribe to negotiate a new treaty wherein they would accept removal and receive proper payment. They formed a Treaty Party and presented a resolution to discuss the plan to the Cherokee National Council in October 1832. It was defeated. Principal Chief John Ross led the majority opposing any further cessions of land. The U.S. government submitted a new treaty to the Cherokee National Council in 1835. John Ross convinced the council to reject it, and continued to negotiate, trying to get a better deal. Deep divisions remained within the tribe. In December 1835, the U.S. resubmitted the treaty to a rump meeting of Cherokee at New Echota. Twenty men, none of them elected officials of the tribe, signed the treaty, ceding all Cherokee territory east of the Mississippi for $5 million and new homelands in Indian Territory. Despite protests by Cherokee and whites, alike, the Senate ratified the treaty in May 1836. 9. In December 1837, the U.S. government informed the Cherokee that the clause in the Treaty requiring them to remove to their new homes within two years from the ratification of the treaty would be enforced. The following May, President Van Buren sent General Winfield Scott to lead the expulsion. Federal troops and state militia began to move the Cherokee into stockades. Three groups left in the summer, traveling from present-day Chattanooga by rail, boat, and wagon, primarily on the water route, but many still awaited removal. Conditions in the stockades deteriorated. Food, water, medicine, and clothing were in short supply. Diseases raged through the camps. Many died. Those travelling over land were delayed by a summer drought and did not begin their trek until the fall. In October and November, 12 groups, each led by a respected Cherokee leader and accompanied by a doctor, and sometimes a missionary, set off on an 800 mile-journey overland to the west. Most were on foot; those riding in the wagons were usually only the sick, the aged, children, and nursing mothers with infants. They were heading north in winter. The route was chosen because of dependable ferries over the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and a well-travelled road between the rivers, but it turned out to be the more difficult. Heavy autumn rains washed away roads; scarcity of game made hunting futile. The last detachments did not arrive in the west until March. No one knows exactly how many Cherokee on the Trail of Tears estimates suggest that between a fifth and as many as a quarter of their population (perhaps 3,000). The U.S. never paid the $5 million it promised. ASSIGNMENT: In your group, complete the vocabulary (underlined words/phrases) and then divide up the readings and answer the questions. Discuss your answers with each other and submit one copy of your answers. Reading #1. George Washington, Message to the Senate: On the Cherokee. 1. What has happened to cause Washington to write this message to the Senate? Why the Senate? 2. Infer Washington s attitude toward the situation. Give evidence to support your inference. Reading #1. George Washington, Message to the Senate: On the Cherokee. United States, August 11, 1790. Gentlemen of the Senate: Although the treaty with the Creeks may be regarded as the main foundation of the southwestern frontier of the United States, yet in order fully to effect so desirable an object the treaties which have been entered into with the other tribes in that quarter must be faithfully performed on our parts.
During the last year I laid before the Senate a particular statement of the case of the Cherokees. By a reference to that paper it will appear that the United States formed a treaty with the Cherokees thereby placed themselves under the protection of the United States, and had a boundary assigned them. That the White people settled on the frontiers had openly violated the said boundary by intruding on the Indian lands. That the United States in Congress assembled did on the first day of September 1788 issue their proclamation forbidding such unwarrantable intrusions and injoining [sic] all those who had settled upon the hunting grounds of the Cherokees to depart with their families and effects without the loss of time, as they would answer their disobedience to the injunctions and prohibitions expressed, at their peril. But information has been received that notwithstanding the said treaty and proclamation upwards of five hundred families have settled on the Cherokee Lands exclusively of those settled between the fork of French Broad and Holstein Rivers mentioned in the said treaty. As the obstructions to a proper conduct on this matter have been removed since it was mentioned to the Senate on the 22d of August 1789, by the accession of North Carolina to the present Union, and the cessions of the Land in question, I shall conceive myself bound to exert the powers entrusted to me by the Constitution in order to carry into faithful execution the treaty of Hopewell, unless it shall be thought proper to attempt to arrange a new boundary with the Cherokees embracing the settlements, and compensating the Cherokees for the cessions they shall make on the occasion. On this point therefore I state the following questions and request the advice of the Senate thereon. 1st. Is it the judgment of the Senate that overtures shall be made to the Cherokees to arrange a new boundary so as to embrace the settlement made by the white people since the treaty of Hopewell in November 1785? 2. If so, shall compensation to the amount of... dollars annually of... dollars in gross be made to the Cherokees for the land they shall relinquish, holding the occupiers of the land accountable to the United States for its value? 3dly. Shall the United States stipulate solemnly to guarantee the new boundary which may be arranged? 61 [Note 61: From the "Letter Book" copy in the Washington Papers.] Reading #2. George Washington, Talk to the Cherokee Nation (August 29, 1796) (Spelling is in the original) 3. Giving examples of tone and word choice, what is Washington s general attitude toward Indians? 4. What problem is the Cherokee Nation facing, according to Washington? 5. How will adopting white American ways solve the problem, according to Washington? 6. Why does Washington include the references to his retirement and his returning to his farm? 7. What is Washington talking about in the section of the meeting of the wise men of the United States? What is his advice to the Cherokee in that section? 8. Is Washington s advice good advice? Why and/or why not? Discuss. Reading #2. George Washington, Talk to the Cherokee Nation (August 29, 1796) (Spelling is in the original) Many years have passed since the White people first came to America. In that long space of time many good men have considered how the condition of the Indian natives of the country might be improved; and many attempts have been made to effect it. But, as we see at this day, all these attempts have been nearly fruitless. I also have thought much on this subject, and anxiously wished that the various Indian tribes, as well as their neighbours, the White people, might enjoy in abundance all the good things which make life comfortable and happy. I have considered how this could be done; and have discovered but one path that could lead them to that desirable situation. In this path I wish all the Indian nations to walk. From the information received concerning you, my beloved Cherokees, I am inclined to hope that you are prepared to take this path and disposed to pursue it. It may seem a little difficult to enter; but if you make the attempt, you will find every obstacle easy to be removed. Mr. Dinsmoor, my beloved agent to your nation, being here, I send you this talk by him. He will have it interpreted to you, and particularly explain my meaning. You now find that the game with which your woods once abounded, are growing scarce; and you know when you
cannot meet a deer or other game to kill, that you must remain hungry; you know also when you can get no skins by hunting, that the traders will give you neither powder nor cloathing; and you know that without other implements for tilling the ground than the hoe, you will continue to raise only scanty crops of corn. Hence you are sometimes exposed to suffer much from hunger and cold; and as the game are lessening in numbers more and more, these sufferings will increase. And how are you to provide against them? Listen to my words and you will know. My beloved Cherokees, Some among you already experience the advantage of keeping cattle and hogs: let all keep them and increase their numbers, and you will ever have a plenty of meet. To these add sheep, and they will give you cloathing as well as food. Your lands are good and of great extent. By proper management you can raise live stock not only for your own wants, but to sell to the White people. By using the plow you can vastly increase your crops of corn. You can also grow wheat, (which makes the best bread) as well as other useful grain. To these you will easily add flax and cotton, which you may dispose of to the White people, or have it made up by your own women into cloathing for yourselves. Your wives and daughters can soon learn to spin and weave; and to make this certain, I have directed Mr. Dinsmoor, to procure all the necessary apparatus for spinning and weaving, and to hire a woman to teach the use of them. He will also procure some plows and other implements of husbandry, with which to begin the improved cultivation of the ground which I recommend, and employ a fit person to shew you how they are to be used. I have further directed him to procure some cattle and sheep for the most prudent and industrious men, who shall be willing to exert themselves in tilling the ground and raising those useful animals. He is often to talk with you on these subjects, and give you all necessary information to promote your success. I must therefore desire you to listen to him; and to follow his advice. I appointed him to dwell among you as the Agent of the United States, because I judged him to be a faithful man, ready to obey my instructions and to do you good. But the cares of the United States are not confined to your single nation. They extend to all the Indians dwelling on their borders. For which reason other agents are appointed; and for the four southern nations there will be a general or principal agent who will visit all of them, for the purpose of maintaining peace and friendship among them and with the United States; to superintend all their affairs; and to assist the particular agents with each nation in doing the business assigned them. To such general or principal agent I must desire your careful attention. He will be one of our greatly beloved men. His whole time will be employed in contriving how to do you good, and you will therefore act wisely to follow his advice. The first general or principal agent will be Colonel Benjamin Hawkins, a man already known and respected by you. I have chosen him for this office because he is esteemed for a good man; has a knowledge of Indian customs, and a particular love and friendship for all the Southern tribes. What I have recommended to you I am myself going to do. After a few moons are passed I shall leave the great town and retire to my farm. There I shall attend to the means of increasing my cattle, sheep and other useful animals; to the growing of corn, wheat, and other grain, and to the employing of women in spinning and weaving; all which I have recommended to you, that you may be as comfortable and happy as plenty of food, clothing and other good things can make you. When I have retired to my farm I shall hear of you; and it will give me great pleasure to know that you have taken my advice, and are walking in the path which I have described. But before I retire, I shall speak to my beloved man, the Secretary of War, to get prepared some medals, to be given to such Cherokees as by following my advice shall best deserve them. For this purpose Mr. Dinsmoor is from time to time to visit every town in your nation. He will give instructions to those who desire to learn what I have recommended. He will see what improvements are made; who are most industrious in raising cattle; in growing corn, wheat, cotton and flax; and in spinning and weaving; and on those who excel these rewards are to be bestowed. The advice I here give you is important as it regards your nation; but still more important as the event of the experiment made with you may determine the lot of many nations. If it succeeds, the beloved men of the United States will be encouraged to give the same assistance to all the Indian tribes within their boundaries. But if it should fail, they may think it vain to make any further attempts to better the condition of any Indian tribe; for the richness of the soil and mildness of the air render your country highly favorable for the practice of what I have recommended.
The wise men of the United States meet together once a year, to consider what will be for the good of all their people. The wise men of each separate state also meet together once or twice every year, to consult and do what is good for the people of their respective states. I have thought that a meeting of your wise men once or twice a year would be alike useful to you. Every town might send one or two of its wisest counsellors to talk together on the affairs of your nation, and to recommend to your people whatever they should think would be serviceable. The beloved agent of the United States would meet with them. He would give them information of those things which are found good by the white people, and which your situation will enable you to adopt. He would explain to them the laws made by the great council of the United States, for the preservation of peace; for the protection of your lands; for the security of your persons; for your improvement in the arts of living, and for promoting your general welfare. If it should be agreeable to you that your wise men should hold such meetings, you will speak your mind to my beloved man, Mr. Dinsmoor, to be communicated to the President of the United States, who will give such directions as shall be proper. That this talk may be known to all your nation, and not forgotten, I have caused it to be printed, and directed one, signed by my own hand, to be lodged in each of your towns. The Interpreters will, on proper occasions, read and interpret the same to all your people. Having been informed that some of your chiefs wished to see me in Philadelphia, I have sent them word that I would receive a few of the most esteemed. I now repeat that I shall be glad to see a small number of your wisest chiefs; but I shall not expect them 'till November. I shall take occasion to agree with them on the running of the boundary line between your lands and ours, agreeably to the treaty of Holston. I shall expect them to inform me what chiefs are to attend the running of this line, and I shall tell them whom I appoint to run it; and the time and place of beginning may then be fixed. I now send my best wishes to the Cherokees, and pray the Great spirit to preserve them. Reading #3: Jackson Message to Congress On Indian Removal 9. Giving examples of tone and word choice, what is Jackson s general attitude toward Indians? 10. Giving evidence from the document, what were the advantages of Indian removal to the U. S.? 11. Giving evidence from the document, what were the advantages of Indian removal to the Indians? 12. The core of Jackson s argument justifying removal occurs in the paragraph beginning Humanity has often wept What is Jackson s argument? Do you buy it? Why or why not? 13. What example does Jackson give to try to convince the Indian nations to give up their lands? Could Jackson be wrong about the importance of ancestral land to the Indians, as opposed to Americans? Discuss. Reading #3: Excerpt of Transcript of President Andrew Jackson's Message to Congress 'On Indian Removal' (1830) http://millercenter.org/president/jackson/speeches/speech-3634 or https://memory.loc.gov/cgibin/ampage?collid=llrd&filename=010/llrd010.db&recnum=439 It gives me pleasure to announce to Congress that the benevolent policy of the Government, steadily pursued for nearly thirty years, in relation to the removal of the Indians beyond the white settlements is approaching to a happy consummation. Two important tribes have accepted the provision made for their removal at the last session of Congress, and it is believed that their example will induce the remaining tribes also to seek the same obvious advantages. The consequences of a speedy removal will be important to the United States, to individual States, and to the Indians themselves. The pecuniary advantages which it promises to the Government are the least of its recommendations. It puts an end to all possible danger of collision between the authorities of the General and State Governments on account of the Indians. It will place a dense and civilized population in large tracts of country now occupied by a few savage hunters. By opening the whole territory between Tennessee on the north and Louisiana on the south to the settlement of the whites it will incalculably strengthen the southwestern frontier and render the adjacent States strong enough to repel future invasions without remote aid. It will relieve the whole State of Mississippi and the western part of Alabama of Indian occupancy, and enable those States to advance rapidly in population, wealth, and power. It will separate the Indians from immediate contact with settlements of
whites; free them from the power of the States; enable them to pursue happiness in their own way and under their own rude institutions; will retard the progress of decay, which is lessening their numbers, and perhaps cause them gradually, under the protection of the Government and through the influence of good counsels, to cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community. These consequences, some of them so certain and the rest so probable, make the complete execution of the plan sanctioned by Congress at their last session an object of much solicitude. Toward the aborigines of the country no one can indulge a more friendly feeling than myself, or would go further in attempting to reclaim them from their wandering habits and make them a happy, prosperous people. With a full understanding of the subject, the Choctaw and the Chickasaw tribes have, with great unanimity, determined to avail themselves of the liberal offers presented by the act of Congress, and have agreed to remove beyond the Mississippi River. Treaties have been made with them. They give the Indians a liberal sum in consideration of their removal, and comfortable subsistence on their arrival at their new homes. If it be their real interest to maintain a separate existence, they will there be at liberty to do so without the inconveniences and vexations to which they would unavoidably have been subject in Alabama and Mississippi. Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this country, and philanthropy has been long busily employed in devising means to avert it, but its progress has never for a moment been arrested, and one by one have many powerful tribes disappeared from the earth. To follow to the tomb the last of his race and to tread on the graves of extinct nations excite melancholy reflections. But true philanthropy reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes, as it does to the extinction of one generation to make room for another. In the monuments and fortifications of an unknown people, spread over the extensive regions of the West, we behold the memorials of a once powerful race, which was exterminated or has disappeared to make room for the existing savage tribes. Nor is there any thing in this, which, upon a comprehensive view of the general interests of the human race, is to be regretted. Philanthropy could not wish to see this continent restored to the condition in which it was found by our forefathers. What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than twelve millions of happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization and religion! The present policy of the Government is but a continuation of the same progressive change by a milder process. The tribes which occupied the countries now constituting the Eastern States were annihilated or have melted away to make room for the whites. The waves of population and civilization are rolling to the westward, and we now propose to acquire the countries occupied by the red men of the South and West by a fair exchange, and, at the expense of the U. States, to send them to land where their existence may be prolonged and perhaps made perpetual. Doubtless it will be painful to leave the graves of their fathers; but what do they more than our ancestors did or than our children are now doing? To better their condition in an unknown land our forefathers left all that was dear in earthly objects. Our children by thousands yearly leave the land of their birth to seek new homes in distant regions. Does humanity weep at these painful separations from everything, animate and inanimate, with which the young heart has become entwined? Far from it. It is rather a source of joy that our country affords scope where our young population may range unconstrained in body or in mind, developing the power and facilities of man in their highest perfection. These remove hundreds and almost thousands of miles at their own expense, purchase the lands they occupy, and support themselves at their new homes from the moment of their arrival. Can it be cruel in this Government when, by events which it can not control, the Indian is made discontented in his ancient home to purchase his lands, to give him a new and extensive territory, to pay the expense of his removal, and support him a year in his new abode? How many thousands of our own people would gladly embrace the opportunity of removing to the West on such conditions! If the offers made to the Indians were extended to them, they would be hailed with gratitude and joy. And is it supposed that the wandering savage has a stronger attachment to his home than the settled, civilized Christian? Is it more afflicting to him to leave the graves of his fathers than it is to our brothers and children? Rightly considered, the policy of the General Government toward the red man is not only liberal, but generous. He is unwilling to submit to the laws of the States and mingle with their population. To save him from this alternative, or perhaps utter annihilation, the General Government kindly offers him a new home, and proposes to pay the whole expense of his removal and settlement. May we not hope, therefore, that all good citizens, and none more zealously than those who think the Indians oppressed by subjection to the laws of the states, will unite in attempting to open the eyes of those
children of the forest to their true condition, and by a speedy removal to relieve them from all the evils, real or imaginary, present or prospective, with which they may be supposed to be threatened. Reading #4: A Soldier recalls the Trail of Tears This letter tells the story of the Trail of Tears, as recalled by John G. Burnett, a soldier in the U.S. Army. The letter is written to his children on his eightieth birthday. 12. How did this man feel about the Cherokee people? What particular passages relay these emotions? 13. What was his opinion about the actions taken by the United States government? Use evidence from the text to support your answer 14. Give two different examples of what Burnett did to try to ease the suffering of the Cherokee. 15. How did Burnett represent Andrew Jackson? Did he think Jackson behave honorably? Why or why not? 16. How does Burnett talk about his own role in Cherokee removal? Did he think of himself as guilty? as a victim? both? What do you think? 17. As a white person who had developed a friendship with Cherokee people, do you think the soldier s account was reliable? Why or why not? A soldier recalls the Trail of Tears Birthday Story of Private John G. Burnett, Captain Abraham McClellan s Company, 2nd Regiment, 2nd Brigade, Mounted Infantry, Cherokee Indian Removal, 1838 39. Children: This is my birthday, December 11, 1890, I am eighty years old today. I was born at Kings Iron Works in Sulllivan County, Tennessee, December the 11th, 1810. I grew into manhood fishing in Beaver Creek and roaming through the forest hunting the deer and the wild boar and the timber wolf. Often spending weeks at a time in the solitary wilderness with no companions but my rifle, hunting knife, and a small hatchet that I carried in my belt in all of my wilderness wanderings. On these long hunting trips I met and became acquainted with many of the Cherokee Indians, hunting with them by day and sleeping around their camp fires by night. I learned to speak their language, and they taught me the arts of trailing and building traps and snares. On one of my long hunts in the fall of 1829, I found a young Cherokee who had been shot by a roving band of hunters and who had eluded his pursuers and concealed himself under a shelving rock. Weak from loss of blood, the poor creature was unable to walk and almost famished for water. I carried him to a spring, bathed and bandaged the bullet wound, and built a shelter out of bark peeled from a dead chestnut tree. I nursed and protected him feeding him on chestnuts and toasted deer meat. When he was able to travel I accompanied him to the home of his people and remained so long that I was given up for lost. By this time I had become an expert rifleman and fairly good archer and a good trapper and spent most of my time in the forest in quest of game. The removal of Cherokee Indians from their life long homes in the year of 1838 found me a young man in the prime of life and a Private soldier in the American Army. Being acquainted with many of the Indians and able to fluently speak their language, I was sent as interpreter into the Smoky Mountain Country in May, 1838, and witnessed the execution of the most brutal order in the History of American Warfare. I saw the helpless Cherokee arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven at the bayonet point into the stockades. And in the chill of a drizzling rain on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle or sheep into six hundred and forty-five wagons and started toward the west. One can never forget the sadness and solemnity of that morning. Chief John Ross led in prayer and when the bugle sounded and the wagons started rolling many of the children rose to their feet and waved their little hands goodby to their mountain homes, knowing they were leaving them forever. Many of these helpless people did not have blankets and many of them had been driven from home barefooted. On the morning of November the 17th we encountered a terrific sleet and snow storm with freezing temperatures and from that day until we reached the end of the fateful journey on March the 26th, 1839, the sufferings of the Cherokee were awful. The trail of the exiles was a trail of death. They had to sleep in the wagons and on the ground without fire. And I have known as many as twenty-two of them to die in one night of pneumonia due to ill treatment, cold, and exposure.... I made the long journey to the west with the Cherokee and did all that a Private soldier could do to alleviate their sufferings. When on guard duty at night I have many times walked my beat in my blouse in order that some sick child might have the warmth of my overcoat. I was on guard duty the night Mrs. Ross died. When relieved at midnight I did not retire, but remained around the wagon out of sympathy for Chief Ross, and at daylight was detailed by Captain
McClellan to assist in the burial like the other unfortunates who died on the way. Her unconfined body was buried in a shallow grave by the roadside far from her native home, and the sorrowing Cavalcade moved on. Being a young man, I mingled freely with the young women and girls. I have spent many pleasant hours with them when I was supposed to be under my blanket, and they have many times sung their mountain songs for me, this being all that they could do to repay my kindness. And with all my association with Indian girls from October 1829 to March 26th 1839, I did not meet one who was a moral prostitute. They are kind and tender hearted and many of them are beautiful.... The long painful journey to the west ended March 26th, 1839, with four-thousand silent graves reaching from the foothills of the Smoky Mountains to what is known as Indian territory in the West. And covetousness on the part of the white race was the cause of all that the Cherokee had to suffer.... In the year 1828, a little Indian boy living on Ward creek had sold a gold nugget to a white trader, and that nugget sealed the doom of the Cherokee. In a short time the country was overrun with armed brigands claiming to be government agents, who paid no attention to the rights of the Indians who were the legal possessors of the country. Crimes were committed that were a disgrace to civilization. Men were shot in cold blood, lands were confiscated. Homes were burned and the inhabitants driven out by the gold-hungry brigands. Chief Junaluska was personally acquainted with President Andrew Jackson. Junaluska had taken 500 of the flower of his Cherokee scouts and helped Jackson to win the battle of the Horse Shoe, leaving 33 of them dead on the field. And in that battle Junaluska had drove his tomahawk through the skull of a Creek warrior, when the Creek had Jackson at his mercy. Chief John Ross sent Junaluska as an envoy to plead with President Jackson for protection for his people, but Jackson s manner was cold and indifferent toward the rugged son of the forest who had saved his life. He met Junaluska, heard his plea but curtly said, Sir, your audience is ended. There is nothing I can do for you. The doom of the Cherokee was sealed. Washington, D.C., had decreed that they must be driven West and their lands given to the white man, and in May 1838, an army of 4000 regulars, and 3000 volunteer soldiers under command of General Winfield Scott, marched into the Indian country and wrote the blackest chapter on the pages of American history. Men working in the fields were arrested and driven to the stockades. Women were dragged from their homes by soldiers whose language they could not understand. Children were often separated from their parents and driven into the stockades with the sky for a blanket and the earth for a pillow. And often the old and infirm were prodded with bayonets to hasten them to the stockades.... Chief Junaluska who had saved President Jackson s life at the battle of Horse Shoe witnessed this scene, the tears gushing down his cheeks and lifting his cap he turned his face toward the heavens and said, Oh my God, if I had known at the battle of the Horse Shoe what I know now, American history would have been differently written. At this time, 1890, we are too near the removal of the Cherokee for our young people to fully understand the enormity of the crime that was committed against a helpless race. Truth is, the facts are being concealed from the young people of today. School children of today do not know that we are living on lands that were taken from a helpless race at the bayonet point to satisfy the white man s greed. Future generations will read and condemn the act and I do hope posterity will remember that private soldiers like myself, and like the four Cherokee who were forced by General Scott to shoot an Indian Chief and his children, had to execute the orders of our superiors. We had no choice in the matter.... I can truthfully say that neither my rifle nor my knife were stained with Cherokee blood. I can truthfully say that I did my best for them when they certainly did need a friend. Twenty-five years after the removal I still lived in their memory as the soldier that was good to us. However, murder is murder whether committed by the villain skulking in the dark or by uniformed men stepping to the strains of martial music. Murder is murder, and somebody must answer. Somebody must explain the streams of blood that flowed in the Indian country in the summer of 1838. Somebody must explain the 4000 silent graves that mark the trail of the Cherokee to their exile. I wish I could forget it all, but the picture of 645 wagons lumbering over the frozen ground with their cargo of suffering humanity still lingers in my memory. Let the historian of a future day tell the sad story with its sighs, its tears and dying groans. Let the great Judge of all the earth weigh our actions and reward us according to our work. Children Thus ends my promised birthday story. This December the 11th 1890 Reading #5: Chief John Ross protests the Treaty of New Echota 18. What words did Ross use to describe the U.S. government? 19. According to Ross, who were the people who signed the treaty? Did they have the authority to sign it?
20. If the majority of Cherokee had not agreed to the removal, and if the proper government procedures, as outlined in the Cherokee constitution had not been followed, why did the U.S. insist the treaty was valid? Chief John Ross protests the Treaty of New Echota Letter from Chief John Ross to the Senate and House of Representatives, from Red Clay Council Ground, Cherokee Nation, September 28, 1836. In Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Papers of Chief John Ross, Volume 1, 1807 1839 (University of Oklahoma Press: Norman, Oklahoma, 1985). It is well known that for a number of years past we have been harassed by a series of vexations, which it is deemed unnecessary to recite in detail, but the evidence of which our delegation will be prepared to furnish. With a view to bringing our troubles to a close, a delegation was appointed on the 23rd of October, 1835, by the General Council of the nation, clothed with full powers to enter into arrangements with the Government of the United States, for the final adjustment of all our existing difficulties. The delegation failing to effect an arrangement with the United States commissioner, then in the nation, proceeded, agreeably to their instructions in that case, to Washington City, for the purpose of negotiating a treaty with the authorities of the United States. After the departure of the Delegation, a contract was made by the Rev. John F. Schermerhorn, and certain individual Cherokee, purporting to be a treaty, concluded at New Echota, in the State of Georgia, on the 29th day of December, 1835, by General William Carroll and John F. Schermerhorn, commissioners on the part of the United States, and the chiefs, headmen, and people of the Cherokee tribes of Indians. A spurious Delegation, in violation of a special injunction of the general council of the nation, proceeded to Washington City with this pretended treaty, and by false and fraudulent representations supplanted in the favor of the Government the legal and accredited Delegation of the Cherokee people, and obtained for this instrument, after making important alterations in its provisions, the recognition of the United States Government. And now it is presented to us as a treaty, ratified by the Senate, and approved by the President [Andrew Jackson], and our acquiescence in its requirements demanded, under the sanction of the displeasure of the United States, and the threat of summary compulsion, in case of refusal. It comes to us, not through our legitimate authorities, the known and usual medium of communication between the Government of the United States and our nation, but through the agency of a complication of powers, civil and military. By the stipulations of this instrument, we are despoiled of our private possessions, the indefeasible property of individuals. We are stripped of every attribute of freedom and eligibility for legal self-defence. Our property may be plundered before our eyes; violence may be committed on our persons; even our lives may be taken away, and there is none to regard our complaints. We are denationalized; we are disfranchised. We are deprived of membership in the human family! We have neither land nor home, nor resting place that can be called our own. And this is effected by the provisions of a compact which assumes the venerated, the sacred appellation of treaty. We are overwhelmed! Our hearts are sickened, our utterance is paralized, when we reflect on the condition in which we are placed, by the audacious practices of unprincipled men, who have managed their stratagems with so much dexterity as to impose on the Government of the United States, in the face of our earnest, solemn, and reiterated protestations. The instrument in question is not the act of our Nation; we are not parties to its covenants; it has not received the sanction of our people. The makers of it sustain no office nor appointment in our Nation, under the designation of Chiefs, Head men, or any other title, by which they hold, or could acquire, authority to assume the reins of Government, and to make bargain and sale of our rights, our possessions, and our common country. And we are constrained solemnly to declare, that we cannot but contemplate the enforcement of the stipulations of this instrument on us, against our consent, as an act of injustice and oppression, which, we are well persuaded, can never knowingly be countenanced by the Government and people of the United States; nor can we believe it to be the design of these honorable and highminded individuals, who stand at the head of the Govt., to bind a whole Nation, by the acts of a few unauthorized individuals. And, therefore, we, the parties to be affected by the result, appeal with confidence to the justice, the magnanimity, the compassion, of your honorable bodies, against the enforcement, on us, of the provisions of a compact, in the formation of which we have had no agency.