The Eastern Band of Cherokees: 1819–1900
Autor John R. Fingeren Limba Engleză Paperback – 30 mar 1984
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780870494109
ISBN-10: 0870494104
Pagini: 270
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 25 mm
Greutate: 0.45 kg
Ediția:1
Editura: University of Tennessee Press
Colecția Univ Tennessee Press
ISBN-10: 0870494104
Pagini: 270
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 25 mm
Greutate: 0.45 kg
Ediția:1
Editura: University of Tennessee Press
Colecția Univ Tennessee Press
Notă biografică
John R. Finger is professor emeritus of history at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His books include Cherokee Americans: The Eastern Band of Cherokees in the Twentieth Century (1993) and Tennessee Frontiers: Three Regions in Transition (2001).
Extras
1
ORIGINS
No one knows how or when they settled in the southern Appalachians or even why they are called Cherokee. According to one legend, they were driven out of the North by an Indian coalition that included their distant kinsmen, the Iroquois. Similarities in the Cherokee and Iroquois languages and the mutual hatred of those peoples lend plausibility to this story. But any such exodus must have occurred in the distant past, for archaeological evidence suggests that the Cherokees' ancestors occupied the Southeast at least a millennium ago. And when they first appear in the historic record they were already ensconced in their mountain valleys, haughtily calling themselves the "principal people" and warring upon their neighbors.1
There were three general divisions among the Cherokees: the Lower Towns along the upper Savannah River in South Carolina; the Middle Towns occupying the upper Little Tennessee River and its tributaries in western North Carolina; and the Upper- or Overhill-Towns in eastern Tennessee and extreme western North Carolina.2 Some scholars divide the Middle Towns into a fourth division, the so-called Out Towns that lay to the north and east of the others. Nestled beneath the towering Great Smoky Mountains and the Balsam Range, these remote villages were a Cherokee backwater. Yet one of them, Kituwha near present-day Bryson City, North Carolina, was apparently the "mother town" of all three divisions. As progenitors of their people, the Out Towns would be a powerful force in preserving the Cherokee identity and homeland.3
The sites and natural phenomena of the southern Appalachians nourished a corpus of legend and lore that helped shape a tribal identity rooted in time, place, and myth. The misty mountain passes and deep pools of streams, for example, were favorite abodes of the fearsomeutkena, a snakelike monster with horns. Even to look upon one meant death. The forests were home to the bear, an animal that once had been human and for whom the Cherokees felt a special affection. And beneath the Nikwasi Mound in present-day Franklin, North Carolina, lived the Nunnehi, a friendly spirit people who once helped the Cherokees rout a powerful invader. 4 These and a host of other sites and legends afforded the tribe a stable link with the past.
At the height of their power the Cherokees claimed an area far exceeding their homeland—about 40,000 square miles encompassing portions of the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, and the Virginias. With perhaps 20,000–25 ,000 people at the time of contact, they were both a formidable potential enemy and a tempting trading partner. Hernando de Soto and other Spanish adventurers paid only brief visits in the mid-sixteenth century, but in 1673 the Cherokees made more enduring contact with the English. After that, traders from the southern colonies, especially South Carolina, made the long overland journey from tidewater with pack trains of goods to exchange for Indian slaves and deerskins.5
Trade brought significant change. The Cherokees quickly discarded the bow and arrow for firearms, incorporated white fabrics and fashions into traditional attire, and adopted the metal hoe and hatchet in place of ancient implements. Gradually, perhaps imperceptibly to themselves, they lost their self-sufficiency. The trade goods provided an incentive to collect more Indian slaves and deerskins, making the individual warrior, whether he realized it or not, an incipient capitalist. Indian warfare, traditionally circumscribed by a sense of honor and limitation, became more mercenary, deadly, and extensive. Southeastern tribes—the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and smaller groups—found themselves entangled in a web of intrigue and rivalry spun in far-off England, France, and Spain. And yet the cultural exchange was not one-sided, the Indians no mere objects of European manipulation. Some southern chiefs were renowned for their diplomatic skills, and white negotiators had to be adaptable and wary when dealing with them.6
Each Cherokee town was an autonomous unit, its inhabitants striving for consensus when discussing major issues. There were no leaders in the European sense, no king or prince who wielded coercive authority over others. At most, a local chief led by persuasion and example. Such an atomized society was unfathomable to Europeans accustomed to more centralized authority. Sir Alexander Cuming, a remarkable English eccentric, boldly addressed this problem in 1730 by traveling to the Cherokee country and proclaiming a single chief, Moytoy, as first chief and "king" of his people. No doubt impressed by such audacity, the Cherokees pledged their allegiance to Great Britain. To legitimize this impromptu alliance, Cuming even escorted a delegation of natives to England for an audience with King George II. Afterward the British usually recognized one principal chief and town, but most Cherokees continued to manifest an exasperating individualism and, in European eyes, near anarchy.7
Most incomprehensible of all to non-Indians was the Cherokee family system. Kinship, as defined by membership in one of seven clans, was the most pervasive feature of tribal life and cut across community lines. Intermarriage within a clan was forbidden. Clan status was inherited through the mother, making the maternal influence and that of her relatives paramount. A father might love his children and provide for their care, but he had no official relationship to them because they were of a different clan. His wife owned both the home and planting fields.8 To the wonderment of Europeans, women also enjoyed considerable sexual freedom and a modicum of political and military influence, leading James Adair, a South Carolina trader, to denounce the men for being ruled by a "petticoat-government."9
To the extent that there was legal coercive power among the Cherokees, it resided within the clan in the form of blood revenge. A clan was obligated to repay in equal measure the murder of one of its own and was also responsible for its members' actions. Revenge for an injustice was a privileged action and not subject to further retribution. The clan system thus embodied restraints that precluded an endless chain of violence. To be without a clan, as was the case of some outsiders living among the Cherokees, was to be without identity as a human being. Such an individual could in theory be murdered with impunity, for there was no one to avenge his death. Clan membership also offered hospitality and sanctuary for a member in whatever Cherokee village he visited, even if he otherwise happened to be a stranger.10
Usually the Cherokees supported the English during the colonial wars, but occasionally they turned on their trading partners. Late in the French and Indian War they deserted the British cause, forced the surrender of Fort Loudoun near the Over hill town of Chota, and then massacred some of its garrison. The British retaliated by destroying a number of Cherokee villages.11 This aberration in Cherokee-English comity had passed by the time of the American Revolution, and the colonists' insatiable land hunger made the Indians enthusiastic allies of the Crown. At almost the same moment the colonies declared their independence, the Cherokees launched widespread attacks on frontier settlements. Though colonial militia units quickly crushed them, intermittent raids against settlers continued for more than a decade after the Revolution. In the meantime, Cherokee villages were destroyed, rebuilt, and moved a number of times according to the exigencies of Indian white relations. Abandoning almost all of South Carolina, the tribe increasingly edged toward the south and west, into southeastern Tennessee and northern Alabama and Georgia.12
The changes among the North Carolina Cherokees, especially the Out Towns, were less profound because they inhabited a region that was remote, mountainous, and uninviting to most whites. Had they lived farther east, there is little doubt they would have suffered the same fate as the Tuscaroras, who were decimated in wars with land-hungry whites and their Indian allies (including the Cherokees). It was therefore no great sacrifice when North Carolina promised in 1783 that the Cherokees could continue to hold the area they already occupied in the state. This did not negate the possibility, of course, that the Indians might cede portions of those lands in treaties negotiated with the new U.S. government.13
Historically the United States has had two objectives in regard to the Indians: first, to "civilize" them, and second, to acquire their lands in order to accommodate white speculators and settlers. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries these twin threads of policy were interwoven in curious ways, with the latter invariably dominating.14 After all, a basic fact of life for Americans during that period was national expansion, an impulse so insistent that no tribe could possibly withstand it. The Indians were forced to give way, a fate some accepted passively while others fiercely resisted.
The definition and reduction of Cherokee lands began during the colonial period and continued under the aegis of the U.S. government. The first federal treaty with the Cherokees was at Hopewell, South Carolina, in 1785, followed by a number of others during the next few decades, nearly every one reducing the tribal homeland a bit more. Indian cessions were usually justified by the convenient logic of civilization: if the Indians gave up the "chase" and settled down to farming they would require a smaller land base, leaving the surplus for the just needs of an expanding white population. This argument ignored the fact that eastern Indians were not nomadic hunters but practitioners of a diversified economy of farming, hunting, fishing, and gathering.15
"Civilization" and land-grabbing, then, were inextricably bound together in policymaking. This is not to suggest that federal officials were always duplicitous or hypocritical, but, like most humans, they tended to justify and rationalize their material desires. The justification began in the 1790s with an ambitious federal program to educate, Christianize, and remold the Indian into a redskinned Jeffersonian yeoman. If such objectives seem ethnocentric to a twentieth-century observer, most thoughtful Americans of the time believed they were in the Indians' best interests. Few whites would concede that indigenous native cultures had any merit. The Indians would fully realize their human potential only when they had been assimilated into the dominant white society.16
But white leaders were often disappointed by the tenacity of aboriginal culture. Thomas Jefferson, that incorrigible optimist in matters regarding the human prospect, originally believed the Indians could rapidly change just as the American environment was evolving from pristine wilderness to a more civilized, pastoral ideal. Yet as president he implicitly acknowledged the failure of his policy by suggesting that white society could not patiently await such change, that in the meantime the eastern tribes should leave their homelands and move west of the Mississippi River. His interest in acquiring the Louisiana country partly reflected a desire to find a new homeland for those tribes.17
When traditionalist Indians went to war against the United States, as a portion of the Creeks did in 1813, their resistance simply served as further justification for expropriation. Andrew Jackson taught the Creeks the meaning of "civilized" warfare by killing hundreds and destroying their towns and crops. It is a supreme irony that at the climactic Battle of Horseshoe Bend in March 1814, he had as his staunchest allies a detachment of Cherokee warriors. They served him well and later boasted that he could not have defeated the Creeks without their support. But the general was not inclined to be magnanimous to any Indian, friend or foe. He forced both hostile and friendly Creeks to cede an enormous area to the United States and eventually, when the time was propitious, made similar demands upon his erstwhile Cherokee allies. Junaluska, a renowned warrior from North Carolina, later bitterly declared that had he known Jackson's intentions he would have killed him at Horseshoe Bend.18
From the administration of James Monroe through the Jacksonian era, removal was increasingly incorporated into the warp and woof of federal policy. Civilizing the Indians was still an objective, but it would obviously take time and was often hindered by the influence of unscrupulous whites. Therefore, the logic went, the government should transfer the Indians beyond the Mississippi where, under the tutelage of ministers and teachers, the tribes could absorb the ways of civilization without contamination by unsavory whites—and without holding up the course of empire.19 The Office of Indian Affairs, ironically located within the Department of War, was committed to the idea of creating Indian versions of the Puritans' godly City on a Hill, model societies blossoming in the virgin soil of the West. To put it less kindly, the West would be the laboratory in which Dr. Frankenstein transplanted the values and precepts of white society into the corpse of aboriginal custom.
But the Cherokees were another matter. They did not require a fresh environment to demonstrate their cultural adaptability. By the 1820s many had abandoned their towns and were living as nuclear families in log cabins similar to those of their white neighbors. They tended their own small farms, though the land still belonged to the tribe, and were probably as proficient in agriculture as most southern whites. Some mixed-bloods developed entrepreneurial skills and a capitalist outlook, owning black slaves, farming hundreds of acres for a market economy, and living in large frame or brick houses. A few owned mills, stores, tanneries, and ferries. Protestant missionaries established schools among them and converted many to Christianity. Sequoyah's invention of an easy-to-learn syllabary brought a rapid increase in literacy, and the highly acculturated Elias Boudinot was an articulate spokesman for progress as editor of the tribal newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix.20
By 1827 the Cherokees had established their own nation modeled on that of the United States, complete with a constitution, courts, and system of representation. They had a Principal Chief, John Ross, and a capital at New Echota, Georgia. Ross, analogous to a president, was determined to enforce a tribal law against further sale of their lands. White Georgians were outraged, claiming the tribal government was an unconstitutional infringement on the state's sovereign prerogatives and, far from exemplifying Indian progress, was simply the device of a few mixed-bloods to manipulate and abuse their traditionalist kinsmen.21
Cherokee "progress" supplemented Cherokee treaty rights as an argument against enforced removal, while denying their acculturation was a weapon in the arsenal of dispossession. Eventually, those who disputed their progress won both the political battle and the land, but Cherokee supporters found solace by winning the war of words. During the next 150 years historians and popular writers alike conjured up a compelling stereotype—the "civilized" Cherokee—and, having created it, could hardly challenge its validity. Today, however, one might safely question the extent of tribal civilization; indeed, beneath the upper socioeconomic level was a surprisingly durable stratum of traditionalism, especially in North Carolina.22 But what usually impresses Americans is change rather than continuity; it has always been so for a society whose national ideology, such as it is, embodies not tradition but constant transmutation and progress.
The fact that many Cherokees did acquire the material possessions and skills esteemed by white society does not necessarily reflect a fundamental shift of values. As two scholars have noted, such outward changes do not mean "that the Cherokees were assimilationist or decultured. In many respects they were strongly resistant to deculturation—as their determined opposition to removal indicated. What was taken by contemporary white observers as 'civilization' was simply the acquisition of sufficient skills for economic survival and for political self-government—part of a conscious strategy to resist removal and maintain autonomy."23
Principal Chief Ross, for example, was only one-eighth Cherokee and possessed all the trappings of "civilized" life, but he was as steadfast as any fullblood traditionalist in resisting dispossession and removal. What was perceived as civilization, then, did not necessarily signify loss of Cherokee identity or values. And whites of the day would have denied that the Indians were civilized precisely to the extent they retained such values.
There were several Cherokee paradoxes during this period. One was the way white sympathizers emphasized the remarkable "civilizing" that had occurred, even though traditionalism remained a potent force. A second was that, having accepted Cherokee progress as an article of faith, many whites were less than pleased by such advancement. Since the early colonial period, the "savage Indian" stereotype had been highly useful as justification for dispossession.24 Now Indian policymakers were confronted with the need of finding a rationale for dispossessing "civilized" people. This uncomfortable situation explains why some whites found Cherokee "progress" infuriating, perhaps without understanding why.
The Cherokees were, at the same time, too logical and too naive in believing their gestures toward acculturation would protect their lands. The pressures for land cessions and removal continued to mount even while Presbyterian ministers beamed at Cherokee children singing Christian hymns. And, in truth, a sizable minority of the tribe was willing to move, particularly those who preferred a place where whites were less intrusive and the hunting was better. In this situation one sees the flexibility of American policymaking: at the same time the government emphasized civilization by saying removal would promote that end, officials were assuring Indian conservatives that emigration west would allow them to continue their old ways. Federal agents unashamedly used whatever argument would most effectively promote removal. By the 1820s several thousand Cherokees—later called Old Settlers—had voluntarily located in present-day Arkansas and Oklahoma.25
The Cherokee treaty of 1819 supplemented one of 1817 and provided for a land cession that diminished the tribal domain to a block encompassing western North Carolina, northern Georgia, southeastern Tennessee, and northeastern Alabama. This cession was compensation for a large area the United States had made available to those Cherokees who wished to live in the West. The government agreed to pay for all improvements on the surrendered property and even promised that a Cherokee head of family could remain in the ceded area by applying for a 640-acre reservation and becoming a citizen of the United States.26
Following the treaty, most of the affected Indians relocated in what remained of tribal lands. But in North Carolina at least forty-nine Cherokee heads of families registered with federal officials and had their private reservations surveyed.27 In this fashion such Cherokees as Euchella and Yonaguska, conservative members of the Middle and Out Towns, retained· their lands along the tumbling watercourses flanking the Great Smoky Mountains—the Little Tennessee, Tuckasegee, Oconaluftee, and their tributaries. Since the boundary of the diminished tribal domain was nearby, they could enjoy frequent contact with their relatives who were still part of the Cherokee Nation.28 North Carolina was so hasty in taking possession of the ceded lands that eager officials even sold some of the reservations which the federal government had guaranteed to individual Indians. There was no malice in this, simply a traditional Anglo-American desire to acquire new lands. The resulting chaos and acrimony involving conflicting claims led to an 1824 decision by the state supreme court in Euchella v. Welsh, in which the court firmly upheld the validity of the federal treaty and Indian titles to reservations. Having acknowledged its error, the state decided to rectify it by buying the land from the Cherokee claimants and allowing them to settle elsewhere in the area. In August 1824 state commissioners negotiated terms for buying most of these Cherokee reservations, a process that was completed over the next several years. Eventually the state was reimbursed by the federal government.29
Euchella was among the sellers and moved back to the tribal lands, obtaining a small farm along the Nantahala River. Yonaguska (Drowning Bear) sold his tract on the Tuckasegee but, along with most of the former reservees, remained apart from the tribe and settled near the junction of Saco Creek and the Oconaluftee, at a site later called Quallatown. A tall, dignified man renowned for his oratorical eloquence and occasional alcoholic binges, he served as chief of the reservees for the next fifteen years. These people, known as the Oconaluftee or Lufty or Qualia Indians, were the nucleus of what became the Eastern Band of Cherokees.30
The Qualia Indians lived quietly, abided by the laws of North Carolina, and received no annuities from either the federal government or the Cherokees. Despite claiming to be citizens by virtue of the 1817 and 1819 treaties, they never attempted to exercise any of the normal rights of citizenship and wanted only to be left alone. At first they farmed very little, contenting themselves with trading some cattle and sheep to whites and selling ginseng at Felix Walker's Saco Creek store for ten cents a pound.31 Yet their placid existence was not without troubles. Alcohol, the bane of Indians everywhere, was plentiful and Yonaguska's overindulgence set a poor example. And while there were no outward troubles with their few white neighbors, the Cherokees' ignorance of the law made them inviting targets. In 1829, claiming they had been "imposed on, cheated, and defrauded by some of the people of this country," they appointed John L. Dillard as attorney to protect their interests. This arrangement was merely temporary, however, for they soon came to rely on William Holland Thomas.32
William Thomas was without doubt the most important individual connected with the Eastern Band's history for forty years or more. Born in 1805 near Waynesville, North Carolina, and raised by his widowed mother, he was employed .as a youth at Felix Walker's store. Yonaguska took a liking to the waif, adopted him into the band, and treated him as a son. Called Wil-Usdi (Little Will), Thomas quickly became knowledgeable in every aspect of Cherokee ways and formed a lifelong devotion to his adoptive kinsmen. In 1831 he became their legal counsel as well as confidant. Having spent much of his time poring over law books, he was as well qualified as anyone to handle their affairs. By then he had succeeded Walker as merchant to the Quallatown band, and before long he owned several more stores in western North Carolina that did business with other Cherokees.33
The mixed-blood Cherokee elites resided in Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama, as did most missionaries for the American Board of Commissioners and other Protestant organizations. The North Carolina Indians, both within and without the Cherokee Nation, were almost forgotten stepchildren. They were predominantly fullbloods, had less wealth, and were more traditional than their brethren. As early as 1808 George Barber Davis characterized them as "at least twenty years behind" other Cherokees, a view often expressed in later years.34 An effort to change this came in 1817, when the Reverend Humphrey Posey, a Baptist, began preaching to these "poor benighted" people. Three years later, at the urging of tribal officials, he established a mission school on the north bank of the Hiwassee River, squarely in the midst of the Valley Towns. Before long he had constructed several buildings, enclosed eighty acres as a mission farm, and started a school for about fifty Indian children. Among those assisting him were the Reverend Evan Jones and wife, who for many years would be stalwarts in missionary activities among the Cherokees. In 1824Jones became pastor of the local church and soon assumed supervision of Baptist missionary activities throughout the region.35
The mission farm, which had been thought necessary in order to attract Cherokee interest, was gradually abandoned as the missionaries concentrated more and more on conversion. In 1823 John Timson and his wife, of Peachtree District, became the first Cherokees to join the Valley Town church. Jones soon established several outlying mission stations, where he frequently preached and attracted large crowds. Cherokee ministers assisted him, especially Jesse Bushyhead, who had been baptized by an American Board minister and then started his own congregation at Amohee, where he became acquainted with the Valley Town mission. Soon ordained a Baptist, he worked at various mission posts in the area. By 1833, according to one church report, there were at least 250 Cherokee Baptists in western North Carolina. Nonetheless, the Valley Town mission remained a remote backwoods enterprise that made little headway with most of the traditionalist Indians. By the time of removal General John Wool could still describe the Cherokees there as the most backward and recalcitrant of their tribe—and the least disposed to emigrate west.36
The Qualla Indians were even farther removed from organized religion than the Valley Towns, though they possibly attended occasional frontier revivals or meetings of the Tuckasegee Baptist Association. Insofar as there was any missionary activity among them, it seems to have come from periodic visits by Methodist preachers. Methodism, after all, had a long history in the area, and the original circuit rider himself—Bishop Francis Asbury—had often crisscrossed the mountains between North Carolina and Tennessee.37
Despite their isolation, the Qualia Cherokees made some notable improvements in their lifestyle. Yonaguska finally became a teetotaler and, with Thomas's encouragement, organized a local temperance society. Thomas worked diligently to protect their interests and encouraged them to become more systematic farmers. Their neighbors, moreover, testified that they had shown significant progress since dissociating from the tribe—a disingenuous and self-serving compliment, for many whites viewed the Indians primarily as a convenient pool of cheap labor.38
This quiet isolation could not immunize the Quallatown people against the fear and uncertainty that spread like a cancer as whites, particularly those f Georgia, stridently demanded Cherokee removal to the West. When Georgia ceded her western claims to the federal government in 1802, she stipulated that the government do all in its power to convince the Creeks and Cherokees within her boundaries to give up their lands and leave. By the late 1820s many Georgians were incensed that the Indians still remained, and they adopted a bellicose policy. The discovery of gold in northern Georgia, the heartland of the Cherokee Nation, predictably reinforced demands for Indian eviction. The tribal capital was there, as was most of the population. Pointing to various federal treaties that guaranteed their lands, Principal Chief Ross denied that Georgia was sovereign over the Cherokees and could evict them. In rebuttal the Georgians claimed the Indians were mere tenants at will, occupying lands only on the sufferance of the state. The presumptuousness of the Cherokees in establishing their own nation within the state simply solidified the Georgians' determination to evict them.39
Confronted with Indian intransigence, the state resorted to coercion. It extended its authority over all Cherokee lands within its boundaries, refused to recognize the validity of tribal laws, courts, or claims, and distributed tribal lands to whites in a lottery. Defiant state officials in effect dared the federal government to intervene. But Andrew Jackson, who became president early in 1829, had no intention of opposing Georgia. He had always been firmly committed to removal and warned the various tribes that the central government had no right to interfere with what the states were doing. The Indians would either have to move, which was in their best interest, or come under the laws of the states in which they lived—the latter hardly an attractive alternative. By 1830 the president's message was very clear when, after a bitter fight in Congress, he secured passage of a general removal act that made it official policy to encourage Indian emigration to the West. It did not provide for the use of force, but Jackson intended to employ every measure short of actual violence to secure his ends.40
North Carolina was not as aggressive as Georgia or some other southern states, but it clearly favored a final cession of land by the Cherokees and their removal. In 1828 the General Assembly deplored continued Indian residency and informed Congress that "the red men are not within the pale of civilization; they are not under the restraints of morality, nor the influence of religion; and they are always disagreeable and dangerous neighbors to a civilized people. The proximity of those red men to our white population subjects the latter to depredations and annoyance, and is a source of perpetual and mutual irritation."41 Despite such an unflattering opinion of them, the North Carolina Cherokees, assisted by the Reverend Jones, staunchly resisted federal efforts to enroll them for emigration.42
Meanwhile, Georgia's oppression reached almost unbearable levels and U.S. agents worked diligently to convince the Cherokees that removal made sense. Bribery, the suspension of annuity payments, and other forms of cajolery and intimidation were commonplace. While other tribes were capitulating one by one, the desperate Cherokees took their tormentors to court. Though they obtained a favorable Supreme Court decision in the landmark case of Worcester v. Georgia, Jackson had neither the power nor inclination to enforce it. The Cherokees must go.43
A prelude to removal was the 1835 tribal census authorized by the federal government. Before arrangements could be made for emigration,' it was necessary to have accurate information regarding the Cherokee population, their distribution, the lands they occupied, their improvements, and other such matters. According to the census, 8,946 Cherokees lived in Georgia; 3,644 in North Carolina (including those in Quallatown); 2,528 in Tennessee; and 1,424 in Alabama—making a total of 16,542. The Indians owned 1,592 slaves, only 37 of whom lived in North Carolina. This and other data in the census confirm that the North Carolina Cherokees were significantly behind their kinsmen in material possessions and white skills.44
By the time of the census some Cherokee leaders had already decided the tribe could not survive in the midst of such hostility. A few even succumbed to the blandishments of white agents who offered attractive bribes. And so a small minority—including Elias Boudinot, Major and John Ridge, and a few others—signed the infamous Treaty of New Echota on December 29, 1835. By its terms the Cherokee Nation was to give up all its land in the Southeast for $5 million, a large tract of land in the West, and other concessions. The Indians would have to relocate beyond the Mississippi within two years of the ratification of the treaty.45
John Ross and the Cherokee majority used every conceivable ploy to prevent ratification. They lobbied incessantly with senators, and the North Carolina Cherokees, among others, pointed out that they had not been represented at New Echota. To no avail. After failing to convince the holdouts to reconsider, officials still contended that the pending treaty would be binding on all members of the Cherokee Nation. In contrast, the Quallatown residents were in a unique position because they had been living outside the Nation for about sixteen years. While they still held a proportionate interest in the lands of the Nation as their birthright, they were no longer subject to its authority. They claimed they had become citizens of North Carolina and did not have to leave. Even if authorities insisted they were still members of the Nation, the unratified treaty contained a loophole by which certain Cherokees could remain. According to Article 12,
In January 1836, William Thomas agreed to represent the people of Quallatown, Cheoah (Buffalo Town), and several smaller settlements at the conferences in Washington prior to ratification of the treaty. He was to inform federal authorities that these people intended to stay in North Carolina and was also to obtain recognition of their claims to a proportionate share of the treaty benefits. After collecting any money owed his clients, he was to keep a percentage as his compensation and then purchase land and other necessities for them. The resourceful Thomas won recognition of their rights both from government officials and the so-called treaty party of the Cherokee Nation, successfully concluding the first of what would become many treks to the capital in behalf of his Indian kinsmen and clients.48
After ratification of the treaty by the margin of a single vote on May 23, 1836, Benjamin F. Currey superintended the preparatory stages of removal, and a contingent of agents appraised the improvements which the Indians would surrender. William Welch, Nimrod S. Jarrett, and Joseph W. McMillen performed this task in North Carolina. They were also to note the names of those Cherokees who wished to remain and become citizens of the state, after which officials would decide whether they were qualified to do so. Among those making such decisions was John Timson, the Christianized mixed-blood who had already been recognized as a permanent resident and freeholder of North Carolina.49
In the fall of 1836 Thomas assembled the Qualla Indians and again asked whether they desired to move west or remain in their homeland. Posting two men a few feet apart, he directed those who wished to stay to pass between them. Everyone did so. Obviously, they valued the advice of their beloved Yonaguska, who, with a prescience based on long experience, had argued against moving. If they did, he said, the government would soon want their new lands, too. There was no limit to white greed.50
The Cheoah Indians and others in western North Carolina were equally emphatic in expressing their intention to stay. Some later received certificates attesting to their qualifications to become citizens, but others did not. Perhaps the harassed authorities were too busy to issue them; or perhaps, being federal agents, they were simply reluctant to acknowledge the Cherokees' right to stay. Whatever the explanation, the situation offered obvious possibilities for misunderstanding and, on the part of the Indians, apprehension and fear.51
The Qualla Cherokees, at least, were confident they could avoid removal because of their peculiar legal position and recent recognition of their rights in Washington. Yet Thomas left nothing to chance, beginning an intensive campaign to persuade the state to sanction explicitly their continued residency in North Carolina. Through his influence, the Haywood County Court sent a memorial to Governor Edward B. Dudley, averring that the Qualla Indians were peaceful and industrious, making progress in civilization, and had already become citizens. The Indians themselves beseeched the state to extend its protection over them, noting that North Carolina had always treated them kindly. The General Assembly responded in January 1837 by passing an act which set up means to protect the Indians from fraud and which was to go into effect after the expected removal of most of the tribe. Only in this indirect, tacit fashion did the state acknowledge the right of Quallatown Indians to remain. And in no way did the state endorse their claim to citizenship. Despite this, sixty Qualla heads of families, representing 333 Indians, petitioned the federal commissioners to allow them "to con tinue" as citizens of North Carolina. Preliminary approval for them to remain was granted in September 1837, but the commissioners deferred final endorsement.52 The Qualla Indians would have to endure uncertainty and anxiety as they watched the army round up their fellow Cherokees and deport them to the West.
ORIGINS
No one knows how or when they settled in the southern Appalachians or even why they are called Cherokee. According to one legend, they were driven out of the North by an Indian coalition that included their distant kinsmen, the Iroquois. Similarities in the Cherokee and Iroquois languages and the mutual hatred of those peoples lend plausibility to this story. But any such exodus must have occurred in the distant past, for archaeological evidence suggests that the Cherokees' ancestors occupied the Southeast at least a millennium ago. And when they first appear in the historic record they were already ensconced in their mountain valleys, haughtily calling themselves the "principal people" and warring upon their neighbors.1
There were three general divisions among the Cherokees: the Lower Towns along the upper Savannah River in South Carolina; the Middle Towns occupying the upper Little Tennessee River and its tributaries in western North Carolina; and the Upper- or Overhill-Towns in eastern Tennessee and extreme western North Carolina.2 Some scholars divide the Middle Towns into a fourth division, the so-called Out Towns that lay to the north and east of the others. Nestled beneath the towering Great Smoky Mountains and the Balsam Range, these remote villages were a Cherokee backwater. Yet one of them, Kituwha near present-day Bryson City, North Carolina, was apparently the "mother town" of all three divisions. As progenitors of their people, the Out Towns would be a powerful force in preserving the Cherokee identity and homeland.3
The sites and natural phenomena of the southern Appalachians nourished a corpus of legend and lore that helped shape a tribal identity rooted in time, place, and myth. The misty mountain passes and deep pools of streams, for example, were favorite abodes of the fearsomeutkena, a snakelike monster with horns. Even to look upon one meant death. The forests were home to the bear, an animal that once had been human and for whom the Cherokees felt a special affection. And beneath the Nikwasi Mound in present-day Franklin, North Carolina, lived the Nunnehi, a friendly spirit people who once helped the Cherokees rout a powerful invader. 4 These and a host of other sites and legends afforded the tribe a stable link with the past.
At the height of their power the Cherokees claimed an area far exceeding their homeland—about 40,000 square miles encompassing portions of the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, and the Virginias. With perhaps 20,000–25 ,000 people at the time of contact, they were both a formidable potential enemy and a tempting trading partner. Hernando de Soto and other Spanish adventurers paid only brief visits in the mid-sixteenth century, but in 1673 the Cherokees made more enduring contact with the English. After that, traders from the southern colonies, especially South Carolina, made the long overland journey from tidewater with pack trains of goods to exchange for Indian slaves and deerskins.5
Trade brought significant change. The Cherokees quickly discarded the bow and arrow for firearms, incorporated white fabrics and fashions into traditional attire, and adopted the metal hoe and hatchet in place of ancient implements. Gradually, perhaps imperceptibly to themselves, they lost their self-sufficiency. The trade goods provided an incentive to collect more Indian slaves and deerskins, making the individual warrior, whether he realized it or not, an incipient capitalist. Indian warfare, traditionally circumscribed by a sense of honor and limitation, became more mercenary, deadly, and extensive. Southeastern tribes—the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and smaller groups—found themselves entangled in a web of intrigue and rivalry spun in far-off England, France, and Spain. And yet the cultural exchange was not one-sided, the Indians no mere objects of European manipulation. Some southern chiefs were renowned for their diplomatic skills, and white negotiators had to be adaptable and wary when dealing with them.6
Each Cherokee town was an autonomous unit, its inhabitants striving for consensus when discussing major issues. There were no leaders in the European sense, no king or prince who wielded coercive authority over others. At most, a local chief led by persuasion and example. Such an atomized society was unfathomable to Europeans accustomed to more centralized authority. Sir Alexander Cuming, a remarkable English eccentric, boldly addressed this problem in 1730 by traveling to the Cherokee country and proclaiming a single chief, Moytoy, as first chief and "king" of his people. No doubt impressed by such audacity, the Cherokees pledged their allegiance to Great Britain. To legitimize this impromptu alliance, Cuming even escorted a delegation of natives to England for an audience with King George II. Afterward the British usually recognized one principal chief and town, but most Cherokees continued to manifest an exasperating individualism and, in European eyes, near anarchy.7
Most incomprehensible of all to non-Indians was the Cherokee family system. Kinship, as defined by membership in one of seven clans, was the most pervasive feature of tribal life and cut across community lines. Intermarriage within a clan was forbidden. Clan status was inherited through the mother, making the maternal influence and that of her relatives paramount. A father might love his children and provide for their care, but he had no official relationship to them because they were of a different clan. His wife owned both the home and planting fields.8 To the wonderment of Europeans, women also enjoyed considerable sexual freedom and a modicum of political and military influence, leading James Adair, a South Carolina trader, to denounce the men for being ruled by a "petticoat-government."9
To the extent that there was legal coercive power among the Cherokees, it resided within the clan in the form of blood revenge. A clan was obligated to repay in equal measure the murder of one of its own and was also responsible for its members' actions. Revenge for an injustice was a privileged action and not subject to further retribution. The clan system thus embodied restraints that precluded an endless chain of violence. To be without a clan, as was the case of some outsiders living among the Cherokees, was to be without identity as a human being. Such an individual could in theory be murdered with impunity, for there was no one to avenge his death. Clan membership also offered hospitality and sanctuary for a member in whatever Cherokee village he visited, even if he otherwise happened to be a stranger.10
Usually the Cherokees supported the English during the colonial wars, but occasionally they turned on their trading partners. Late in the French and Indian War they deserted the British cause, forced the surrender of Fort Loudoun near the Over hill town of Chota, and then massacred some of its garrison. The British retaliated by destroying a number of Cherokee villages.11 This aberration in Cherokee-English comity had passed by the time of the American Revolution, and the colonists' insatiable land hunger made the Indians enthusiastic allies of the Crown. At almost the same moment the colonies declared their independence, the Cherokees launched widespread attacks on frontier settlements. Though colonial militia units quickly crushed them, intermittent raids against settlers continued for more than a decade after the Revolution. In the meantime, Cherokee villages were destroyed, rebuilt, and moved a number of times according to the exigencies of Indian white relations. Abandoning almost all of South Carolina, the tribe increasingly edged toward the south and west, into southeastern Tennessee and northern Alabama and Georgia.12
The changes among the North Carolina Cherokees, especially the Out Towns, were less profound because they inhabited a region that was remote, mountainous, and uninviting to most whites. Had they lived farther east, there is little doubt they would have suffered the same fate as the Tuscaroras, who were decimated in wars with land-hungry whites and their Indian allies (including the Cherokees). It was therefore no great sacrifice when North Carolina promised in 1783 that the Cherokees could continue to hold the area they already occupied in the state. This did not negate the possibility, of course, that the Indians might cede portions of those lands in treaties negotiated with the new U.S. government.13
Historically the United States has had two objectives in regard to the Indians: first, to "civilize" them, and second, to acquire their lands in order to accommodate white speculators and settlers. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries these twin threads of policy were interwoven in curious ways, with the latter invariably dominating.14 After all, a basic fact of life for Americans during that period was national expansion, an impulse so insistent that no tribe could possibly withstand it. The Indians were forced to give way, a fate some accepted passively while others fiercely resisted.
The definition and reduction of Cherokee lands began during the colonial period and continued under the aegis of the U.S. government. The first federal treaty with the Cherokees was at Hopewell, South Carolina, in 1785, followed by a number of others during the next few decades, nearly every one reducing the tribal homeland a bit more. Indian cessions were usually justified by the convenient logic of civilization: if the Indians gave up the "chase" and settled down to farming they would require a smaller land base, leaving the surplus for the just needs of an expanding white population. This argument ignored the fact that eastern Indians were not nomadic hunters but practitioners of a diversified economy of farming, hunting, fishing, and gathering.15
"Civilization" and land-grabbing, then, were inextricably bound together in policymaking. This is not to suggest that federal officials were always duplicitous or hypocritical, but, like most humans, they tended to justify and rationalize their material desires. The justification began in the 1790s with an ambitious federal program to educate, Christianize, and remold the Indian into a redskinned Jeffersonian yeoman. If such objectives seem ethnocentric to a twentieth-century observer, most thoughtful Americans of the time believed they were in the Indians' best interests. Few whites would concede that indigenous native cultures had any merit. The Indians would fully realize their human potential only when they had been assimilated into the dominant white society.16
But white leaders were often disappointed by the tenacity of aboriginal culture. Thomas Jefferson, that incorrigible optimist in matters regarding the human prospect, originally believed the Indians could rapidly change just as the American environment was evolving from pristine wilderness to a more civilized, pastoral ideal. Yet as president he implicitly acknowledged the failure of his policy by suggesting that white society could not patiently await such change, that in the meantime the eastern tribes should leave their homelands and move west of the Mississippi River. His interest in acquiring the Louisiana country partly reflected a desire to find a new homeland for those tribes.17
When traditionalist Indians went to war against the United States, as a portion of the Creeks did in 1813, their resistance simply served as further justification for expropriation. Andrew Jackson taught the Creeks the meaning of "civilized" warfare by killing hundreds and destroying their towns and crops. It is a supreme irony that at the climactic Battle of Horseshoe Bend in March 1814, he had as his staunchest allies a detachment of Cherokee warriors. They served him well and later boasted that he could not have defeated the Creeks without their support. But the general was not inclined to be magnanimous to any Indian, friend or foe. He forced both hostile and friendly Creeks to cede an enormous area to the United States and eventually, when the time was propitious, made similar demands upon his erstwhile Cherokee allies. Junaluska, a renowned warrior from North Carolina, later bitterly declared that had he known Jackson's intentions he would have killed him at Horseshoe Bend.18
From the administration of James Monroe through the Jacksonian era, removal was increasingly incorporated into the warp and woof of federal policy. Civilizing the Indians was still an objective, but it would obviously take time and was often hindered by the influence of unscrupulous whites. Therefore, the logic went, the government should transfer the Indians beyond the Mississippi where, under the tutelage of ministers and teachers, the tribes could absorb the ways of civilization without contamination by unsavory whites—and without holding up the course of empire.19 The Office of Indian Affairs, ironically located within the Department of War, was committed to the idea of creating Indian versions of the Puritans' godly City on a Hill, model societies blossoming in the virgin soil of the West. To put it less kindly, the West would be the laboratory in which Dr. Frankenstein transplanted the values and precepts of white society into the corpse of aboriginal custom.
But the Cherokees were another matter. They did not require a fresh environment to demonstrate their cultural adaptability. By the 1820s many had abandoned their towns and were living as nuclear families in log cabins similar to those of their white neighbors. They tended their own small farms, though the land still belonged to the tribe, and were probably as proficient in agriculture as most southern whites. Some mixed-bloods developed entrepreneurial skills and a capitalist outlook, owning black slaves, farming hundreds of acres for a market economy, and living in large frame or brick houses. A few owned mills, stores, tanneries, and ferries. Protestant missionaries established schools among them and converted many to Christianity. Sequoyah's invention of an easy-to-learn syllabary brought a rapid increase in literacy, and the highly acculturated Elias Boudinot was an articulate spokesman for progress as editor of the tribal newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix.20
By 1827 the Cherokees had established their own nation modeled on that of the United States, complete with a constitution, courts, and system of representation. They had a Principal Chief, John Ross, and a capital at New Echota, Georgia. Ross, analogous to a president, was determined to enforce a tribal law against further sale of their lands. White Georgians were outraged, claiming the tribal government was an unconstitutional infringement on the state's sovereign prerogatives and, far from exemplifying Indian progress, was simply the device of a few mixed-bloods to manipulate and abuse their traditionalist kinsmen.21
Cherokee "progress" supplemented Cherokee treaty rights as an argument against enforced removal, while denying their acculturation was a weapon in the arsenal of dispossession. Eventually, those who disputed their progress won both the political battle and the land, but Cherokee supporters found solace by winning the war of words. During the next 150 years historians and popular writers alike conjured up a compelling stereotype—the "civilized" Cherokee—and, having created it, could hardly challenge its validity. Today, however, one might safely question the extent of tribal civilization; indeed, beneath the upper socioeconomic level was a surprisingly durable stratum of traditionalism, especially in North Carolina.22 But what usually impresses Americans is change rather than continuity; it has always been so for a society whose national ideology, such as it is, embodies not tradition but constant transmutation and progress.
The fact that many Cherokees did acquire the material possessions and skills esteemed by white society does not necessarily reflect a fundamental shift of values. As two scholars have noted, such outward changes do not mean "that the Cherokees were assimilationist or decultured. In many respects they were strongly resistant to deculturation—as their determined opposition to removal indicated. What was taken by contemporary white observers as 'civilization' was simply the acquisition of sufficient skills for economic survival and for political self-government—part of a conscious strategy to resist removal and maintain autonomy."23
Principal Chief Ross, for example, was only one-eighth Cherokee and possessed all the trappings of "civilized" life, but he was as steadfast as any fullblood traditionalist in resisting dispossession and removal. What was perceived as civilization, then, did not necessarily signify loss of Cherokee identity or values. And whites of the day would have denied that the Indians were civilized precisely to the extent they retained such values.
There were several Cherokee paradoxes during this period. One was the way white sympathizers emphasized the remarkable "civilizing" that had occurred, even though traditionalism remained a potent force. A second was that, having accepted Cherokee progress as an article of faith, many whites were less than pleased by such advancement. Since the early colonial period, the "savage Indian" stereotype had been highly useful as justification for dispossession.24 Now Indian policymakers were confronted with the need of finding a rationale for dispossessing "civilized" people. This uncomfortable situation explains why some whites found Cherokee "progress" infuriating, perhaps without understanding why.
The Cherokees were, at the same time, too logical and too naive in believing their gestures toward acculturation would protect their lands. The pressures for land cessions and removal continued to mount even while Presbyterian ministers beamed at Cherokee children singing Christian hymns. And, in truth, a sizable minority of the tribe was willing to move, particularly those who preferred a place where whites were less intrusive and the hunting was better. In this situation one sees the flexibility of American policymaking: at the same time the government emphasized civilization by saying removal would promote that end, officials were assuring Indian conservatives that emigration west would allow them to continue their old ways. Federal agents unashamedly used whatever argument would most effectively promote removal. By the 1820s several thousand Cherokees—later called Old Settlers—had voluntarily located in present-day Arkansas and Oklahoma.25
The Cherokee treaty of 1819 supplemented one of 1817 and provided for a land cession that diminished the tribal domain to a block encompassing western North Carolina, northern Georgia, southeastern Tennessee, and northeastern Alabama. This cession was compensation for a large area the United States had made available to those Cherokees who wished to live in the West. The government agreed to pay for all improvements on the surrendered property and even promised that a Cherokee head of family could remain in the ceded area by applying for a 640-acre reservation and becoming a citizen of the United States.26
Following the treaty, most of the affected Indians relocated in what remained of tribal lands. But in North Carolina at least forty-nine Cherokee heads of families registered with federal officials and had their private reservations surveyed.27 In this fashion such Cherokees as Euchella and Yonaguska, conservative members of the Middle and Out Towns, retained· their lands along the tumbling watercourses flanking the Great Smoky Mountains—the Little Tennessee, Tuckasegee, Oconaluftee, and their tributaries. Since the boundary of the diminished tribal domain was nearby, they could enjoy frequent contact with their relatives who were still part of the Cherokee Nation.28 North Carolina was so hasty in taking possession of the ceded lands that eager officials even sold some of the reservations which the federal government had guaranteed to individual Indians. There was no malice in this, simply a traditional Anglo-American desire to acquire new lands. The resulting chaos and acrimony involving conflicting claims led to an 1824 decision by the state supreme court in Euchella v. Welsh, in which the court firmly upheld the validity of the federal treaty and Indian titles to reservations. Having acknowledged its error, the state decided to rectify it by buying the land from the Cherokee claimants and allowing them to settle elsewhere in the area. In August 1824 state commissioners negotiated terms for buying most of these Cherokee reservations, a process that was completed over the next several years. Eventually the state was reimbursed by the federal government.29
Euchella was among the sellers and moved back to the tribal lands, obtaining a small farm along the Nantahala River. Yonaguska (Drowning Bear) sold his tract on the Tuckasegee but, along with most of the former reservees, remained apart from the tribe and settled near the junction of Saco Creek and the Oconaluftee, at a site later called Quallatown. A tall, dignified man renowned for his oratorical eloquence and occasional alcoholic binges, he served as chief of the reservees for the next fifteen years. These people, known as the Oconaluftee or Lufty or Qualia Indians, were the nucleus of what became the Eastern Band of Cherokees.30
The Qualia Indians lived quietly, abided by the laws of North Carolina, and received no annuities from either the federal government or the Cherokees. Despite claiming to be citizens by virtue of the 1817 and 1819 treaties, they never attempted to exercise any of the normal rights of citizenship and wanted only to be left alone. At first they farmed very little, contenting themselves with trading some cattle and sheep to whites and selling ginseng at Felix Walker's Saco Creek store for ten cents a pound.31 Yet their placid existence was not without troubles. Alcohol, the bane of Indians everywhere, was plentiful and Yonaguska's overindulgence set a poor example. And while there were no outward troubles with their few white neighbors, the Cherokees' ignorance of the law made them inviting targets. In 1829, claiming they had been "imposed on, cheated, and defrauded by some of the people of this country," they appointed John L. Dillard as attorney to protect their interests. This arrangement was merely temporary, however, for they soon came to rely on William Holland Thomas.32
William Thomas was without doubt the most important individual connected with the Eastern Band's history for forty years or more. Born in 1805 near Waynesville, North Carolina, and raised by his widowed mother, he was employed .as a youth at Felix Walker's store. Yonaguska took a liking to the waif, adopted him into the band, and treated him as a son. Called Wil-Usdi (Little Will), Thomas quickly became knowledgeable in every aspect of Cherokee ways and formed a lifelong devotion to his adoptive kinsmen. In 1831 he became their legal counsel as well as confidant. Having spent much of his time poring over law books, he was as well qualified as anyone to handle their affairs. By then he had succeeded Walker as merchant to the Quallatown band, and before long he owned several more stores in western North Carolina that did business with other Cherokees.33
The mixed-blood Cherokee elites resided in Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama, as did most missionaries for the American Board of Commissioners and other Protestant organizations. The North Carolina Indians, both within and without the Cherokee Nation, were almost forgotten stepchildren. They were predominantly fullbloods, had less wealth, and were more traditional than their brethren. As early as 1808 George Barber Davis characterized them as "at least twenty years behind" other Cherokees, a view often expressed in later years.34 An effort to change this came in 1817, when the Reverend Humphrey Posey, a Baptist, began preaching to these "poor benighted" people. Three years later, at the urging of tribal officials, he established a mission school on the north bank of the Hiwassee River, squarely in the midst of the Valley Towns. Before long he had constructed several buildings, enclosed eighty acres as a mission farm, and started a school for about fifty Indian children. Among those assisting him were the Reverend Evan Jones and wife, who for many years would be stalwarts in missionary activities among the Cherokees. In 1824Jones became pastor of the local church and soon assumed supervision of Baptist missionary activities throughout the region.35
The mission farm, which had been thought necessary in order to attract Cherokee interest, was gradually abandoned as the missionaries concentrated more and more on conversion. In 1823 John Timson and his wife, of Peachtree District, became the first Cherokees to join the Valley Town church. Jones soon established several outlying mission stations, where he frequently preached and attracted large crowds. Cherokee ministers assisted him, especially Jesse Bushyhead, who had been baptized by an American Board minister and then started his own congregation at Amohee, where he became acquainted with the Valley Town mission. Soon ordained a Baptist, he worked at various mission posts in the area. By 1833, according to one church report, there were at least 250 Cherokee Baptists in western North Carolina. Nonetheless, the Valley Town mission remained a remote backwoods enterprise that made little headway with most of the traditionalist Indians. By the time of removal General John Wool could still describe the Cherokees there as the most backward and recalcitrant of their tribe—and the least disposed to emigrate west.36
The Qualla Indians were even farther removed from organized religion than the Valley Towns, though they possibly attended occasional frontier revivals or meetings of the Tuckasegee Baptist Association. Insofar as there was any missionary activity among them, it seems to have come from periodic visits by Methodist preachers. Methodism, after all, had a long history in the area, and the original circuit rider himself—Bishop Francis Asbury—had often crisscrossed the mountains between North Carolina and Tennessee.37
Despite their isolation, the Qualia Cherokees made some notable improvements in their lifestyle. Yonaguska finally became a teetotaler and, with Thomas's encouragement, organized a local temperance society. Thomas worked diligently to protect their interests and encouraged them to become more systematic farmers. Their neighbors, moreover, testified that they had shown significant progress since dissociating from the tribe—a disingenuous and self-serving compliment, for many whites viewed the Indians primarily as a convenient pool of cheap labor.38
This quiet isolation could not immunize the Quallatown people against the fear and uncertainty that spread like a cancer as whites, particularly those f Georgia, stridently demanded Cherokee removal to the West. When Georgia ceded her western claims to the federal government in 1802, she stipulated that the government do all in its power to convince the Creeks and Cherokees within her boundaries to give up their lands and leave. By the late 1820s many Georgians were incensed that the Indians still remained, and they adopted a bellicose policy. The discovery of gold in northern Georgia, the heartland of the Cherokee Nation, predictably reinforced demands for Indian eviction. The tribal capital was there, as was most of the population. Pointing to various federal treaties that guaranteed their lands, Principal Chief Ross denied that Georgia was sovereign over the Cherokees and could evict them. In rebuttal the Georgians claimed the Indians were mere tenants at will, occupying lands only on the sufferance of the state. The presumptuousness of the Cherokees in establishing their own nation within the state simply solidified the Georgians' determination to evict them.39
Confronted with Indian intransigence, the state resorted to coercion. It extended its authority over all Cherokee lands within its boundaries, refused to recognize the validity of tribal laws, courts, or claims, and distributed tribal lands to whites in a lottery. Defiant state officials in effect dared the federal government to intervene. But Andrew Jackson, who became president early in 1829, had no intention of opposing Georgia. He had always been firmly committed to removal and warned the various tribes that the central government had no right to interfere with what the states were doing. The Indians would either have to move, which was in their best interest, or come under the laws of the states in which they lived—the latter hardly an attractive alternative. By 1830 the president's message was very clear when, after a bitter fight in Congress, he secured passage of a general removal act that made it official policy to encourage Indian emigration to the West. It did not provide for the use of force, but Jackson intended to employ every measure short of actual violence to secure his ends.40
North Carolina was not as aggressive as Georgia or some other southern states, but it clearly favored a final cession of land by the Cherokees and their removal. In 1828 the General Assembly deplored continued Indian residency and informed Congress that "the red men are not within the pale of civilization; they are not under the restraints of morality, nor the influence of religion; and they are always disagreeable and dangerous neighbors to a civilized people. The proximity of those red men to our white population subjects the latter to depredations and annoyance, and is a source of perpetual and mutual irritation."41 Despite such an unflattering opinion of them, the North Carolina Cherokees, assisted by the Reverend Jones, staunchly resisted federal efforts to enroll them for emigration.42
Meanwhile, Georgia's oppression reached almost unbearable levels and U.S. agents worked diligently to convince the Cherokees that removal made sense. Bribery, the suspension of annuity payments, and other forms of cajolery and intimidation were commonplace. While other tribes were capitulating one by one, the desperate Cherokees took their tormentors to court. Though they obtained a favorable Supreme Court decision in the landmark case of Worcester v. Georgia, Jackson had neither the power nor inclination to enforce it. The Cherokees must go.43
A prelude to removal was the 1835 tribal census authorized by the federal government. Before arrangements could be made for emigration,' it was necessary to have accurate information regarding the Cherokee population, their distribution, the lands they occupied, their improvements, and other such matters. According to the census, 8,946 Cherokees lived in Georgia; 3,644 in North Carolina (including those in Quallatown); 2,528 in Tennessee; and 1,424 in Alabama—making a total of 16,542. The Indians owned 1,592 slaves, only 37 of whom lived in North Carolina. This and other data in the census confirm that the North Carolina Cherokees were significantly behind their kinsmen in material possessions and white skills.44
By the time of the census some Cherokee leaders had already decided the tribe could not survive in the midst of such hostility. A few even succumbed to the blandishments of white agents who offered attractive bribes. And so a small minority—including Elias Boudinot, Major and John Ridge, and a few others—signed the infamous Treaty of New Echota on December 29, 1835. By its terms the Cherokee Nation was to give up all its land in the Southeast for $5 million, a large tract of land in the West, and other concessions. The Indians would have to relocate beyond the Mississippi within two years of the ratification of the treaty.45
John Ross and the Cherokee majority used every conceivable ploy to prevent ratification. They lobbied incessantly with senators, and the North Carolina Cherokees, among others, pointed out that they had not been represented at New Echota. To no avail. After failing to convince the holdouts to reconsider, officials still contended that the pending treaty would be binding on all members of the Cherokee Nation. In contrast, the Quallatown residents were in a unique position because they had been living outside the Nation for about sixteen years. While they still held a proportionate interest in the lands of the Nation as their birthright, they were no longer subject to its authority. They claimed they had become citizens of North Carolina and did not have to leave. Even if authorities insisted they were still members of the Nation, the unratified treaty contained a loophole by which certain Cherokees could remain. According to Article 12,
Those individuals and families of the Cherokee nation that are averse to a removal to the Cherokee country west of the Mississippi and are desirous to become citizens of the States where they reside and such as are qualified to take care of themselves and their property shall be entitled to receive their due portion of all the personal benefits accruing under this treaty for their claims, improvements and per capita; as soon as an appropriation is made for this treaty.
Such heads of Cherokee families as are desirous to reside within the States of No. Carolina Tennessee and Alabama subject to the laws of the same; and who are qualified or calculated to become useful citizens shall be entitled, on the certificate of the commissioners to a preemption right to one hundred and sixty acres of land or one quarter section at the minimum Congress price46
A Cherokee could remain, then, if he was "qualified" and willing to come under state law. Jackson was confident few would wish to subject themselves to this, but to be certain he removed the provision allowing a preemption claim to those who stayed. Any Cherokees choosing to remain would have to acquire their own land and otherwise fend for themselves.47Such heads of Cherokee families as are desirous to reside within the States of No. Carolina Tennessee and Alabama subject to the laws of the same; and who are qualified or calculated to become useful citizens shall be entitled, on the certificate of the commissioners to a preemption right to one hundred and sixty acres of land or one quarter section at the minimum Congress price46
In January 1836, William Thomas agreed to represent the people of Quallatown, Cheoah (Buffalo Town), and several smaller settlements at the conferences in Washington prior to ratification of the treaty. He was to inform federal authorities that these people intended to stay in North Carolina and was also to obtain recognition of their claims to a proportionate share of the treaty benefits. After collecting any money owed his clients, he was to keep a percentage as his compensation and then purchase land and other necessities for them. The resourceful Thomas won recognition of their rights both from government officials and the so-called treaty party of the Cherokee Nation, successfully concluding the first of what would become many treks to the capital in behalf of his Indian kinsmen and clients.48
After ratification of the treaty by the margin of a single vote on May 23, 1836, Benjamin F. Currey superintended the preparatory stages of removal, and a contingent of agents appraised the improvements which the Indians would surrender. William Welch, Nimrod S. Jarrett, and Joseph W. McMillen performed this task in North Carolina. They were also to note the names of those Cherokees who wished to remain and become citizens of the state, after which officials would decide whether they were qualified to do so. Among those making such decisions was John Timson, the Christianized mixed-blood who had already been recognized as a permanent resident and freeholder of North Carolina.49
In the fall of 1836 Thomas assembled the Qualla Indians and again asked whether they desired to move west or remain in their homeland. Posting two men a few feet apart, he directed those who wished to stay to pass between them. Everyone did so. Obviously, they valued the advice of their beloved Yonaguska, who, with a prescience based on long experience, had argued against moving. If they did, he said, the government would soon want their new lands, too. There was no limit to white greed.50
The Cheoah Indians and others in western North Carolina were equally emphatic in expressing their intention to stay. Some later received certificates attesting to their qualifications to become citizens, but others did not. Perhaps the harassed authorities were too busy to issue them; or perhaps, being federal agents, they were simply reluctant to acknowledge the Cherokees' right to stay. Whatever the explanation, the situation offered obvious possibilities for misunderstanding and, on the part of the Indians, apprehension and fear.51
The Qualla Cherokees, at least, were confident they could avoid removal because of their peculiar legal position and recent recognition of their rights in Washington. Yet Thomas left nothing to chance, beginning an intensive campaign to persuade the state to sanction explicitly their continued residency in North Carolina. Through his influence, the Haywood County Court sent a memorial to Governor Edward B. Dudley, averring that the Qualla Indians were peaceful and industrious, making progress in civilization, and had already become citizens. The Indians themselves beseeched the state to extend its protection over them, noting that North Carolina had always treated them kindly. The General Assembly responded in January 1837 by passing an act which set up means to protect the Indians from fraud and which was to go into effect after the expected removal of most of the tribe. Only in this indirect, tacit fashion did the state acknowledge the right of Quallatown Indians to remain. And in no way did the state endorse their claim to citizenship. Despite this, sixty Qualla heads of families, representing 333 Indians, petitioned the federal commissioners to allow them "to con tinue" as citizens of North Carolina. Preliminary approval for them to remain was granted in September 1837, but the commissioners deferred final endorsement.52 The Qualla Indians would have to endure uncertainty and anxiety as they watched the army round up their fellow Cherokees and deport them to the West.
Recenzii
“Most scholars, like most Cherokees, have tended to follow the Trail of Tears west with scarcely a backward glance at the more than 1,000 Indians who stayed behind in the North Carolina mountains. In this pathbreaking book John R. Finger combs federal, state, and local archives to tell the story of these forgotten natives.”
— Journal of Southern History
“This work is a significant contribution to the literature on this long-ignored group. . . . Finger works [his] sources well and out of them has produced a narrative that is readable and that puts the Eastern Band of Cherokees as a tribal entity into a clear, historical perspective.”
— American Historical Review
— Journal of Southern History
“This work is a significant contribution to the literature on this long-ignored group. . . . Finger works [his] sources well and out of them has produced a narrative that is readable and that puts the Eastern Band of Cherokees as a tribal entity into a clear, historical perspective.”
— American Historical Review