How the States Got Their Shapes Too

by Mark Stein

  Sequoyah (ca. 1767-ca. 1843) (photo credit 19.1)

  Sequoyah was not, however, the Cherokee Jefferson. Though many aspects of Sequoyah’s story have been challenged as having been mythologized, Sequoyah was not, by any account, the son of a prominent father, as was Jefferson.1 Sequoyah’s father is traditionally said to have been a white man, this being the reason he was also known as George Guess. If so, his father most likely died or moved on, since Sequoyah never learned English.2 Some maintain, however, that Sequoyah was a full-blooded Cherokee who added to his name that of a white man he had killed. According to this view, to assume that Sequoyah’s identity as George Guess indicates he had a white father implies that his great linguistic achievement was racially enabled.3

  Unlike Jefferson’s, Sequoyah’s early political ambitions are uncertain. What is certain is that politics then were as convoluted as politics today. It was Jefferson who commenced a policy to relocate Indian populations out beyond the Mississippi River, in the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase.4 The Cherokee leaders disagreed on the issue of migration. Recognizing this (having experienced several similar fundamental disagreements), Jefferson sent a message to the leaders, stating:

  I understand by the speeches which you have delivered me that there is a difference of disposition among the people of … your nation; some of them desiring to remain on their lands, to betake themselves to agriculture … while others, retaining their attachment to the hunter’s life, and having little game on their present lands, are desirous to remove across the Mississippi.… Those who wish to remove are permitted to send an exploring party to reconnoiter the country on the waters of the Arkansas and White rivers.

  Benevolence or ethnic cleansing? Paradoxically, it was a joining of the two—which is to say: politics.

  Jefferson’s effort had only partial success. Following the War of 1812, Congress appropriated funds to induce more Cherokees to move. Sequoyah was among the delegation of Cherokees who received a written offer from General Andrew Jackson. Sequoyah had fought under Jackson in a Cherokee regiment (the Cherokees having placed their bets on the Americans in response to their enemy, the Red Stick Creeks, having bet on the British). Jackson did not know Sequoyah, who had only been a private during the war. Nevertheless Sequoyah knew something of Jackson and was sufficiently regarded in his tribe to have been included in the delegation to meet with him. Jackson discovered, however, that the delegates were not high-level leaders. He reported to the secretary of war that “as the Cherokee delegates seemed doubtful as to the extent of their powers, this treaty has been concluded subject to the ratification of the Cherokee nation.”

  A year later, Jackson returned with a more aggressive agreement. Though Sequoyah was not a party to this treaty, its acceptance altered his life. This 1817 treaty offered a land swap in which the United States would “give to that part of the Cherokee nation, on the Arkansas, as much land on said river and White River as [the United States] have or may hereafter receive from the Cherokee nation east of the Mississippi.” To Sequoyah, it seemed like a relatively good deal. Under the leadership of Oolooteka, known also as John Jolly, Sequoyah relocated to the area of present-day Russellville, Arkansas. Other Cherokee chiefs opposed the treaty and bitterly resented that Oolooteka allowed the federal government to divide the Cherokee leadership openly and geographically.5 They sent a delegation to Washington, instructing them:

  1817 Cherokee treaty

  On your arrival at Washington city, you will deliver our letter to our elder brother, the Secretary of War.… You will state that … we have of late years been subjected to the control of the minority of our nation.… Toolchair and others were sent to meet the commissioners with positive instructions to dispose of no lands but, contrary to his instructions, he entered into a conditional treaty … [ratified] not by the whole Cherokee nation, as expressed by General Jackson in the ratification of that treaty but, on the contrary, there were six or seven headmen present who objected to the ratification of the treaty.6

  The federal government, however, having achieved its objective, declared the treaty finished.

  Sequoyah spent the next several years working, often with his daughter, on his longtime interest, the development of a set of symbols that would represent spoken Cherokee syllables. These efforts did not take place in a vacuum. During this era, missionaries were trying to develop a system that would transliterate the Cherokee language using Roman letters, as had been done by other missionaries with some Canadian and Alaskan tribes. Sequoyah too employed Roman letters, but in ways that bore no relation to their former role (indeed, they were often configured upside down or backward), and he invented additional symbols. Unlike the competing transliteration system of the missionaries, Sequoyah’s syllabic approach was an instant success.

  Except for the moment between “instant” and “success” when Sequoyah and his daughter were accused by their clan’s shamans of fraudulently claiming magical powers—a serious offense. The two were placed in separate locations, and Sequoyah was told to use his magic pencil to make a particular statement. His interrogators then took this message to his daughter and asked her to tell them what it was. She did. After she wrote what they told her to, they took it to Sequoyah, and he repeated it. Then they demanded to be shown how the markings worked. Within weeks, Sequoyah’s former accusers were teaching family and friends this new system for communication. Messages began being conveyed between the Cherokees of Arkansas and their brethren back east, who also immediately learned and taught each other to read.

  Everyone was thrilled except, initially, the missionaries. While Sequoyah’s creation clearly contributed to Cherokee literacy, it did so in a way that also contributed to Cherokee independence. “By the use of this alphabet,” one missionary wrote, “so unlike any other, the Cherokees cut themselves from the sympathies and respect of the intelligent of other nations.”7

  As with the shamans, this pocket of dissension was quickly overwhelmed by an avalanche of admiration and support. By 1825 a report to the secretary of war stated that the Cherokees “are in advance of all other tribes. They may be considered as a civilized people. Their march has been rapid.”

  After acquiring special printing fonts, the Cherokees began churning out a tribal newspaper. Soon English-language newspapers were running stories about the new Cherokee alphabet. Sequoyah was now a national celebrity.

  His fame coincided with increased conflicts with white settlers in the Arkansas land (to which they had agreed to migrate in order to escape such conflicts). Settlements were springing up in an area known as Lovely’s Purchase. Years back, Indian agent William Lovely had bought land from the Osages (in a legally dubious transaction) to serve as buffer between the Cherokees who had accepted President Jefferson’s invitation to migrate and the local, resentful Osages. By the time the 1817 treaty was signed, Lovely had passed away, but his widow, Persis Lovely, remained on their homestead. Hence, in the 1817 treaty, the United States promised that “all citizens of the United States, except P. Lovely, who is to remain where she lives during life, [will be] removed from within the bounds as above named.” The federal government, however, was yet to fulfill its promise to remove the whites from within the stipulated boundaries.

  Seeking enforcement of the treaty, the Cherokees sent a delegation to Washington in early 1828 that included, as a shrewd public relations move, their nationally known figure, Sequoyah. The delegates met in several sessions with the secretary of war and once with President John Quincy Adams. Sequoyah was a big hit. He was interviewed (via translators) by scholars and sat for his portrait. President Adams himself noted in his diary, “George Guess is the inventor of the Cherokee alphabet, by which, I told him, he had rendered a great service to his nation in opening to them a new fountain of knowledge.” The only thing absent from everyone’s good wishes to Sequoyah and his fellow Cherokees was any expression of enforcing the treaty.

  Indeed, even when the government had been negotiating the 1817 treaty, pla
ns were afoot for the future removal of the Cherokees from the land being promised. In 1816 Andrew Jackson’s fellow negotiator, Jonathan Meigs Sr., wrote to the secretary of war:

  [The Cherokees] are aware, even if placed in the west of Arkansas, that they must probably make cession of lands to the United States in that country, but they presume that they shall be less pressed on that subject there than here; and to guard against, or rather to provide for such a contingency, it has been suggested to me by an intelligent Cherokee that in allotting a tract of land for them … to have only three definite lines drawn to designate such allotment, leaving the boundary westward open as a wilderness, so that as they make cessions on the east side, they may make proportionate advances on the west.

  Quite possibly some Cherokees were aware of the government’s plan; if not, clearly the Arkansas chiefs suspected it, since they instructed the delegation to Washington not to make any concessions of land.

  Initially, President Adams advised his secretary of war as to how the United States could squirm out of the treaty’s obligations. He confided in his diary:

  [Secretary of War] Barbour called for a decision upon the application of the Arkansas Cherokee Indians. Westward of the spot on which they are located is a large tract which goes by the name of Lovely’s Purchase.… White people have discovered that the land is excellent and they are swarming thither like bees. They are covering it with unlicensed settlements, and the people of the territory are loudly claiming that the land should be offered for sale. This collision between the just and the reasonable demands of our own people and the pledge seemingly given to the Indians is very embarrassing. I observed, however, to Mr. Barbour that, as the pledge in its utmost extent assured to the Indians only an outlet, or, in other words a right of way, they might be informed that in the grants of lands upon Lovely’s Purchase a right of peaceful way would be reserved for them.

  The following week, Arkansas’s territorial delegate (and future senator) Ambrose Sevier complained to the president that the new treaty would be the second time that the eastern end of Arkansas had been given to Indian peoples. The first reduction, in 1824, had resulted from the fact that General Jackson, making treaties right and left after the War of 1812, inadvertently had granted to the Choctaws land upon which whites had already settled. This second reduction resulted from a compromise that gave the Cherokees the bulk of Lovely’s Purchase. Under the proposed compromise, the upper half of Arkansas’s western border would shift eastward to the corner of Missouri, then angle from that point through Lovely’s Purchase to the Arkansas River (the southern extent of the Cherokee lands). The lower half of the Arkansas border would then also shift eastward to connect with the upper half, resulting in today’s bent western border.

  1828 treaty: Arkansas boundary adjustments

  Arkansas’s territorial delegate wasn’t the only one who objected. The Cherokee delegates opposed the treaty as well. Their instructions were clear: get the government to abide by its promise to remove the whites from Lovely’s Purchase and do not cede any land. But the government made it equally clear that it would only abide by that promise if the Cherokees moved further west.

  Some of the delegates suggested that they simply go home. That too, however, had risks. The 1828 presidential campaign was in full swing. Jackson had been nominated for a rematch against Adams. Should Jackson win, the Cherokees would lose; Jackson was not a compromiser. If any of the English-speaking members of the Cherokee delegation read Washington’s Daily National Journal while in town, they may have encountered its article on Jackson. Referring to the War of 1812 battle at Horseshoe Bend, when Jackson faced the British-allied Red Sticks, the article stated what the Cherokee delegates no doubt already knew: “The battle had ended—the poor untutored, misguided, and deluded savages had thrown down their arms and sued for mercy; but Jackson orders them to be exterminated; and keeps up the massacre until the shades of night stay the wave of human slaughter.… Cold is their bed of clay, while Jackson is worshipped as a God.”8 Many voters subscribed to the view of the Carolina Observer that Jackson had displayed patriotism “in the defense of his country … controlling and directing the irregular valor of militia … with which he chastised the cruelty and overawed the ferocity of the Indians.”

  The Cherokee delegates took the deal.

  When news of the treaty reached the Arkansas Cherokees, the esteem in which Sequoyah had been held evaporated. To say that the Cherokees were upset would be an understatement. “Poles have been erected,” the Arkansas Gazette reported, “in front of the houses of the delegation, on which their heads are to be exhibited as soon as they return.” Learning of this, Sequoyah did not go home. He sought refuge among the Cherokees still living in Georgia.9 By October there were news reports that, though anger still pulsed among the Arkansas Cherokees, some delegates had begun drifting back and had not been killed. Sequoyah, too, eventually returned and migrated west with his people to the land accorded them in the new treaty.

  Sequoyah lived quietly from then on, venturing into political affairs only when the eastern Cherokees, forced to the reservation in 1838, vied with their western predecessors for dominance. He contributed to the drafting of an 1839 Cherokee constitution, hoping it—words on paper—would resolve the feud. It didn’t. Only time did.

  In the spring of 1842, the now elderly Sequoyah enlisted several companions to join him on a journey to Mexico. There he sought to find Cherokees with whom contact had been lost. This branch, having foreseen a future of loss in the United States, had migrated to land controlled by Spain, believing their chances there would be better. Age and illness pursued Sequoyah, but in August of the following year he and his companions found a Cherokee village near the present-day town of Zaragoza, Mexico, fifteen miles southeast of El Paso. There he connected with brethren who predated the rift between the eastern and western tribes and who welcomed him wholeheartedly. Several days later, he died among them. Shortly before he passed away, Sequoyah wrote a letter home. But his final message has been lost.

  · · · MICHIGAN, OHIO · · ·

  STEVENS T. MASON

  The Toledo War

  Never in the course of my life have I known a controversy of which all the right was so clearly on one side, and all the power so overwhelmingly on the other.

  —JOHN QUINCY ADAMS1

  Michigan officially became a state on January 26, 1837, yet its state seal bears the date 1835. The discrepancy represents the period during which Stevens T. Mason led the self-declared state in what has come to be called the Toledo War.

  The seed of this dispute was inadvertently planted by Congress in 1787, when it stipulated how the Northwest Territory would eventually be divided into states. Among those boundaries was one that divided “the said [Northwest] territory which lies north of an east-and-west line drawn through the southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan.” Unfortunately, Congress was using an inaccurate map.2 If an accurate map had been available, the stipulated line would have put Toledo in Michigan, had Toledo existed in 1787. As American commerce on the Great Lakes swiftly increased, however, Toledo not only came into existence, it brought Ohio and Michigan to the brink of war.

  In 1802 a hunter told delegates to Ohio’s statehood convention that he believed Lake Michigan extended considerably farther south, so much so that Toledo, whose first white settlers had arrived eight years earlier, might be in the territory to be created north of Ohio.3 Since no one knew for sure the latitude at which Lake Michigan ended, or the latitude at which the Maumee River (known then as the Miami River) emptied into Lake Erie, the delegates defined Ohio’s northern border slightly differently than in the 1787 Northwest Ordinance. They stipulated it as being “a direct line running from the southern extremity of Lake Michigan to the most northerly cape of the Miami Bay.” Congress was aware of this alteration in wording, as was President Thomas Jefferson, who had authored the report that led to the boundaries specified in the Northwest Ordinance. Given the uncertainties, how
ever, a report jointly issued by his administration and Congress concluded that it was “unnecessary to take it at this time into consideration.”4

  Stevens T. Mason (1811-1843) (photo credit 20.1)

  Toledo, Ohio, or Toledo, Michigan?

  Meanwhile, Americans were beginning to migrate to the region above Ohio in larger numbers, and in 1805 Congress created the territory of Michigan. Yet twelve more years were to pass before Michigan challenged Ohio’s boundary adjustment. Why so long? Possibly because of another event that took place in 1817, the year their boundary dispute commenced. Construction began that year on the Erie Canal.

  Toledo, at the western end of Lake Erie, was now of such importance that Michigan’s territorial governor, Lewis Cass, wrote to the surveyor general, “Report says that the line which has been recently run, purporting to be the line between the State of Ohio and this Territory, was not run [along] a due east course from the southern extremity of Lake Michigan to Lake Erie, but a course somewhat to the north of this, although how much I am unable to ascertain.” Cass went on to cite the boundary mandated by the Northwest Ordinance, then said of the altered boundary in Ohio’s constitution, “This proposition has never been acceded to by Congress … [and] no agreement, even by that body, without our consent, could alter these lines.”5

  The fact remained, however, that Congress had approved the constitution of Ohio with the boundaries it had stipulated.6 But also a fact was that the Northwest Ordinance mandated that the “following articles shall be considered as articles of compact between the original states and the people, and states in the said territory, and forever remain unalterable, unless by common consent.” Cass’s letter resulted in a second survey of the Michigan-Ohio boundary. The first survey, to which he’d referred in his letter, came to be known as the Harris Line. It followed the boundary stipulated in the constitution of Ohio. The second survey, which came to known as the Fulton Line, conformed to the boundary stipulated in the Northwest Ordinance. Both surveys were then presented to Congress. It did nothing.