The cherokee diaspora, p.14
The Cherokee Diaspora, page 14
The Cherokee peoples in the trans-Mississippi West therefore worked hard to overcome the trauma of being separated from what they saw as their ancient homeland in the Southeast of the American republic by forging a political homeland in Indian Territory. While the creation of this political homeland did not mitigate the trauma associated with the “great emigration,” it did provide an increasingly diasporic people with a political focal point on which to fix their allegiance. This new political homeland played a major role in structuring Cherokee movement and keeping kinship ties alive, while also becoming an important symbol, reminding Cherokees living throughout North America and the Pacific that there was a geographical refuge from the settler colonial world, occupied and governed by fellow Cherokees. The North Carolina Cherokees, following the forced emigration of 1838–1839 and a subsequent failed attempt by the federal government to force the remainder of the North Carolina Cherokees into Indian Territory between 1841 and 1844, looked with pride to the political homeland that their kin were helping to forge in Indian Territory, while at the same time being mindful of the important spiritual connection they were charged with keeping alive in the ancient homeland.7
Forging a New “Homeland”
As the 1830s gave way to the 1840s, the future of the Cherokee people remained uncertain. A number of interrelated factors fueled this uncertainty. Most significant were the trauma associated with forced emigration; the resentment felt by the Old Settlers, or Western Cherokees, toward the “multitudes” of new Cherokee emigrants; and deep-seated factionalism that threatened to explode into a Cherokee civil war.8 As one delegation of Cherokee chiefs observed, “On the arrival of the Eastern Cherokees at their newly assigned settlements various difficulties presented themselves to a complete and cordial amalgamation of the different portions of the Nation.”9
Much has been written about these tensions, but rarely have scholars tried to understand them from the perspective of the intersecting settler colonial, migratory, and diasporic contexts in which they occurred.10 Indeed, the seething tension between the Treaty Party and Ross Party that began in the Southeast during the internal debate over removal manifested itself in violence and tense political maneuverings in the late 1830s and early 1840s. In June 1839, for example, John Ridge and Stand Watie, leading Treaty Party members, joined the Old Settlers in opposition to John Ross and his supporters. Amid a cacophony of calls for peace and harmony, unity, and good order, the Old Settlers expressed bemusement, believing that union already existed among Cherokees in the West. The chiefs among the Old Settlers insisted that Cherokee communities on the western frontier of diaspora had for decades cultivated a sense of political connection through allusions to “brotherhood,” “union,” and the articulation of laws. If discord existed among the Cherokees, it was because of the disorder and violence that the new emigrants had introduced to Indian Territory and the political agitation of Eastern Cherokees under John Ross’s leadership.11
Political disagreements among Cherokees were not the only causes of social disorder and bloodshed in the trans-Mississippi West. The forced migration of a number of non-Cherokee tribal nations and confederacies from East to West tested the limits of traditional adoption practices. For instance, several bands of Seminoles squatted on land in the Cherokee Nation in the early 1840s.12 Additionally, reports that Choctaw men looked to Cherokee women as potential marriage partners quickly circulated among Cherokee communities. According to the British social activist and Quaker William Tallack, Choctaw men reportedly saw Cherokee women as ideal mates. Tallack alleged that the “young Choctaws eagerly seek matrimonial alliances with the Cherokee ladies, many of whom are well dowered both with wealth and education, and have adopted crinolines and pianos.”13
Ross and his allies were determined to assert political control and restore peace to Cherokee society in Indian Territory. While Ross shared the general conviction that political union among Cherokees was necessary to securing the future welfare of the Cherokee people, he emphasized that the Old Settlers had no formal written constitution, and he dismissed the idea that unity already existed among Old Settlers and those recently arrived from the cis-Mississippi.14 Ross, who increasingly blamed the Treaty Party and the Old Settlers for political discord, insisted that the Cherokees were a “house divided,” and a house divided “cannot stand.”15
The year 1839 proved to be particularly eventful for the Cherokee people. In that year, Treaty Party leaders met the fate many had foreseen for themselves when they signed the Treaty of New Echota in 1835. Most famously, Major Ridge, his son John Ridge, and Elias Boudinot all lost their lives in a bloody spree of violence that some contemporaries insisted was Cherokee “blood law” in action.16 Blood law was traditionally practiced in Cherokee society to ensure balance and harmony, and typically involved the clan members of a homicide victim exacting vengeance (usually death) on the murderer, or on a member of the murderer’s clan. This system of justice, which Cherokees believed to be sacred, restored balance to the world and prevented large-scale feuds.17
Contrary to the ancient traditions of clan justice, the blood law deaths of prominent Treaty Party members in 1839 did not bring about balance and harmony among the Cherokee factions. Instead, the violent manner in which these prominent Cherokee leaders met their deaths cast a cloud of suspicion and mistrust over that summer’s council meetings. Boudinot’s brother, Stand Watie, a prominent Treaty Party figure who managed to evade would-be assassins, was convinced that the assassins were Ross Party men. Watie therefore vowed not to rest until he had extracted his revenge. John Rollin Ridge, John Ridge’s son, harbored similar feelings. Ridge dreamed of the day when he could avenge his father’s murder by stabbing John Ross to death.18
Feelings of distrust, suspicion, and a desire for vengeance thus pervaded Cherokee public life in Indian Territory. That summer, council meetings proved contentious affairs as the chiefs of the Old Settlers and their Treaty Party allies questioned the authority of the newly arrived Eastern chiefs to legitimately represent the Cherokee people. Ross and his supporters refused to shrink from these challenges, accusing the Western chiefs of being obtuse and stubborn on key questions. In particular, Ross Party representatives accused their political opponents of deliberately working against the formation of a Cherokee political union. While Western Cherokees such as Sequoyah shared with the chiefs of the new emigrants a desire for “peace and brotherhood,” the Old Settlers and their Treaty Party allies were generally unwilling to take a back seat in defining the future of “the great Cherokee family.”19
Questions about how, where, and by whom the Cherokee people should be governed were critical to the reformation of Cherokee nationalism, and thus critical to the creation of a political focal point for the loyalty of Cherokees living in diaspora.20 Ross’s political skills, his eloquence, and the force of his personality increasingly dominated and shaped this debate. He “invited” the chiefs of the Old Settlers—John Looney, Sequoyah, Tobacco Will, John Drew, and William S. Coodey—to participate in reunification talks.21 In private, Ross believed that the demands being made by the Old Settlers for a prominent place in a new Cherokee government were outrageous; in public, he promised all factions that they stood on “equal ground” in all negotiations.22 Amid the violence and tense political standoffs that characterized the summer of 1839, Ross and chiefs from both the Eastern and Western Cherokees eventually signed their names (or placed their mark) on a document that vested political power in “the Cherokee people” and declared: “The interests of the red men are the same. Let us always be friends and for ever hold each other firmly by the hand.”23 In an act of political theater, John Ross joined Sequoyah and George Lowrey to confirm their shared desire for “good order” by signing their names to a document promising to end frontier violence.24
Ross continued to court support for his version of unity during 1839 and 1840. In convention on July 23, 1839, he instructed Sequoyah, Richard Taylor, John Martin, Jesse Bushyhead, John Drew, Charles Coodey, and other delegates, that “We are one people. Our interests, our hopes, our dangers are the same.”25 Ross’s message of unity for the “whole Cherokee family” was accompanied by assurances to Old Settlers that the recently arrived Cherokee emigrants had “no desire or intention to trespass upon the rights of others.”26 Moreover, Ross maintained that the Old Settlers should not look upon the new emigrants as “strangers or intruders in this country,” but as “brothers.” All Cherokees, Ross concluded, possessed the “agency” needed to brighten the light of the council fire, reconstitute kinship ties severed by the tyranny of distance, and forge a unified Cherokee Nation that would become a beacon of peace and prosperity for all members of the “Cherokee family.”27
However, the issues dividing the “Cherokee family” exiled to Indian Territory were not inconsequential. Even after the Cherokees adopted a new constitution in September 1839 and designated Tahlequah as the capital of the Cherokee Nation, many sources of tension remained.28 While political elites squabbled over leadership roles, the bulk of the Cherokee people lived with daily reminders of the uncertainty that life in diaspora so often imposed upon them. The Cherokee tradition of adapting, innovating, and getting on with being Cherokee was being severely tested in Indian Territory.29
The Cherokee people were exiled to a parcel of land in Indian Territory that Congress had set aside for them in 1834. When the vast majority of Cherokees began arriving in Indian Territory during 1838 and 1839, large sections of the country they encountered there were like nothing they had seen before. In other places, however, the landscapes were strikingly similar to those they remembered in the cis-Mississippi. The land allocated to the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory included prairies, dry and arid landscapes, well-timbered bottomlands, and mountains that reminded some of the Great Smoky Mountains.30 Would Cherokees nurture this diverse territory according to traditional ideals of balance and harmony? Would the land be owned communally, or purchased by individuals in fee-simple? And how would these and other questions be determined if Cherokee factionalism continued unabated?31
Ross wanted answers to these questions. He more than most recognized that it was not just Cherokee factionalism impeding a satisfactory resolution of such questions, but also the perceived hostility of the federal government toward the Cherokees in exile. “How long the Cherokees will still have to combat with the unrelenting party in power,” Ross wrote of Martin Van Buren’s Democratic administration in December 1840. Just as he had in the Southeast before the forced emigrations, Ross now spoke of unifying Cherokee people so that pressure could be placed on the federal government to negotiate with the National Council and clarify for the Cherokee people “their rights.”32
Ross genuinely felt that he was duty-bound to unite Cherokee people throughout the diaspora, including those still living in homelands in the cis-Mississippi. He displayed this commitment when he attempted to acquire information on the number and condition of the Cherokee population remaining in the pre-removal homeland of the Southeast. On the eastern side of the Mississippi, Cherokees still remained in Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and North Carolina. Ross also welcomed information on the condition of Cherokees living in diaspora. Shortly after arriving in Indian Territory, Ross received information that remnants of the Texas Cherokees were still living near the town of Rusk, Texas. These Cherokees had somehow evaded the forced emigration order imposed on them by the Republic of Texas, but they now expressed a desire to come “home.” The “home” they envisioned returning to was a product of removal and a political creation of the Cherokee government led by Ross in the Cherokee Nation West. The Texas Cherokees, long separated from kin in North America’s Southeast and from those recently forced to relocate to the trans-Mississippi West, could never have imagined when they began their journey westward that they would someday call a previously unknown pocket of land in Indian Territory “home.”
Nonetheless, according to reports received by Ross, these Texas Cherokees longed to be reunited with fellow Cherokees. One report stated that the “remnant” Texas Cherokees “were comfortably situated,” but had assumed that fellow Cherokees had forgotten about them. The Texas Cherokees were understandably astounded, therefore, when they encountered people who spoke their language. In correspondence with Ross, James M. Payne wrote that the Texas Cherokees “rejoiced . . . that we had come, to take them to their own country that they once more should see their relatives, which they had despaired of enjoying the social and kindred ties, of their all, peace, & happiness.” The small party of Texas Cherokees who eventually migrated north to Indian Territory consisted of four women and eight children—all of whom were likely born in Texas—and had all reportedly expressed an eagerness to make the journey along the Red River and into the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory. On arrival in the Cherokee Nation, this small party of Texas Cherokees looked forward to restoring the kinship ties that had long been broken by migration and isolation. They would have to do so amid political factionalism and the ever-present threat of frontier violence.33
The boldest political attempt to end Cherokee factionalism, establish some form of law enforcement in frontier communities, and nurture “tranquility,” occurred at Tahlequah in early June 1843.34 That June, the International Indian Council convened in the Cherokee Nation. The International Council was a massive political and cultural event. Invitations—which included wampum—were sent to leaders from thirty-six tribes, of which seventeen ultimately accepted.35 At Tahlequah, an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 Native American people, eight interpreters, an unknown number of missionaries, and scores of curious white onlookers joined the invited chiefs. For four weeks, Council delegates made speeches, socialized, danced, and engaged in “ball-play.”36
Despite the emphasis that the delegates at the International Council placed on the importance of peace and “tranquility,” factionalism among the Cherokees continued to threaten the fragile new communities taking root in Indian Territory. While the Cherokee Nation adopted a new constitution in 1839, the rumblings of factional discontent had not subsided by the mid 1840s. In 1845, some forty-five Old Settlers and Treaty Party members left the new political homeland of the Cherokee people. Thoroughly disenchanted with the state of Cherokee politics, and harboring deep feelings of antipathy toward John Ross, this small party of Cherokees migrated south, eventually settling and building new homes in Texas.37
What most rankled Old Settlers and Treaty Party supporters was the manner in which John Ross aired Cherokee political disputes on a national and international stage. In the spring of 1846, for instance, Ross presented a “Memorial” to the United States Congress in which he reaffirmed his conviction that he was the rightful leader of the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory. According to Ross, the Cherokees were a “once powerful, but now feeble, and already much injured people.” Only he and his supporters were capable of preserving the “very existence of their country and people.”38 Contrary to the views of his political foes, Ross contended that if dissent existed among the exiled Cherokees in Indian Territory, it was the product of the Western Cherokees and the Treaty Party, whom Ross labeled “a desperate gang of banditti, [and] half breeds, notorious in the nation as wanton murderers, house-burners, and horse-stealers.”39
The factionalism within Cherokee politics was shaped by the colonial context in which those divisions were formed. Similarly, the American colonial context gave rise to the “banditti,” “half breeds,” and murderers whom Ross referred to. One issue, however, had especially profound effects on the political landscape of the nascent Cherokee homeland: racial slavery. When the Cherokee incorporated white America’s version of racial slavery in the Southeast during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it altered traditional systems of captivity, adoption, and kinship. During this period, racial slavery gave rise to a small but powerful slave-holding faction in Cherokee society. Along with a wealthy merchant class, early nineteenth-century Cherokee slaveholders were determined to protect their economic interests and preserve their social status. It was such anxieties that prompted a number of Treaty Party members to sign the Treaty of New Echota in the hope that they might preserve their socioeconomic status in diaspora.40
The significance of racial slavery in the Cherokee diaspora needs to be understood in its early nineteenth-century context. By the mid-point of the 1830s, fewer than 3 percent of the Cherokee population owned slaves. According to the federal government, the Cherokee slave population increased from 583 in 1809 to 1,592 by 1835, constituting 10 to 15 percent of the Cherokee population.41 While slave owners represented a small portion of the total Cherokee population, their political influence was significant, with names such as Vann, Ridge, and Ross dominating Cherokee politics. When these slave owners were forced to migrate west, they took their slaves, and their political anxieties, with them.
