Having monitored the chatter of his guards, Ross concluded that his detention was not directed by the state. The Georgia Guard seemed to have acted at the urging of a federal Indian agent—the Superintendent of Cherokee Emigration, a representative of President Jackson. Ross’s suspicion proved to be correct. The agent, Major Benjamin F. Currey, a native of Nashville and an associate of the president, had been taking progressively more extreme measures. It was Currey who persuaded the Georgia Guard to seize the printing press, and who persuaded a friendly guard unit to stage the cross-border raid. He was hoping that an illegal detention would separate Ross from his people, even though his eventual release was inevitable. It was a bonus to have John Howard Payne swept up in the dragnet. In a letter to a newspaper, Currey declared that Payne was a member “of the whig party, and rumor makes him an abolitionist,” who was conspiring with hostile newspapers to publish articles for “political effect.”
• • •
The most revealing part of Ross’s capture was the chain of events leading up to it. The raid on his house went forward only after Major Currey tried for years to bypass the chief using less drastic measures.
When first assigned to the Cherokee country in 1831, Major Currey and other Jackson men assumed they were battling corrupt tribal elites. Their attitude resembled that of Americans in later generations who tried to control nations such as Iraq. They were so convinced of the righteousness of their values and their commonsense policies that it was hard to imagine that any native could honestly disagree. If the natives opposed U.S. policy, it could only mean that they were deluded or intimidated by corrupt leaders. Jackson’s men, infused with the democratic spirit of the era, were so certain that the common people of the Cherokee Nation must be on their side against John Ross that they repeatedly tried to appeal to the Cherokee masses through democratic means. In this way they created a lengthy record of what many Cherokees actually believed.
White authorities’ starting assumption about the Cherokees was put on paper around the time of Major Currey’s arrival in 1831. In that year a Georgia official investigated the Cherokee leadership and concluded that Ross and his allies were not Indian enough. The official’s report found that “the native Indian has but little part” in ruling the Cherokee Nation, which was controlled “exclusively by those who are so remotely related to the Indian, as gives them but slender claims to be classed among that people.” Halfbreeds and mixed-bloods could not possibly represent the will of the more numerous full-blooded Indians. It was to break the grip of these mixed-bloods that Currey and other white officials attempted to apply the corrective tonic of democracy.
They arranged a series of public votes on the issue of Cherokee annuities. Jackson was still refusing to pay the Cherokee government for past sales of land rights, vowing instead that the money must be distributed to individuals. In 1834 Jackson’s men called for a plebiscite to resolve the stalemate at a poorly attended meeting at Red Clay, Tennessee. Though Jackson’s men refused to allow Ross to observe the balloting, Ross won the vote, with 388 in favor of paying the Cherokee government, and only one single Cherokee voting to pay individuals. Concluding that this must have been a Ross-orchestrated fraud, the administration still held back the money and tried democracy again. There was another vote at a much larger meeting of Cherokees in the summer of 1835. This mass meeting was addressed by the Reverend John F. Schermerhorn, a representative of Jackson’s administration who had taken on Indian removal as a holy cause. Schermerhorn, regarding Ross as the “devil,” wanted to become the instrument of Cherokee salvation. He had a pulpit constructed from which to deliver his speech. Ross, too, addressed the crowd, and when it came time to vote, Ross won, 2,225–114, capturing 95 percent of the vote.
In October 1835 Reverend Schermerhorn and Major Currey tried yet again at a meeting of the Cherokee legislature. They wanted the lawmakers to endorse a proposed removal treaty that had been worked out by a renegade delegation of the Treaty Party. The legislators rejected the treaty. Ross not only won again, he even managed to unite his party and the opposition, at least on the surface. It was agreed that Cherokees from both parties would be included in the delegation to be sent to Washington that winter—John Ridge and Elias Boudinot would be there alongside Ross, seeking to find some agreement with the government together. This was the final outrage for Major Currey. “The strange results of this council, and the increased insolence of the Indians,” he wrote, must be a result of Ross’s vile influence as well as that of Payne the writer. Casting off democracy, Currey summoned a friendly unit of the Georgia Guard, and the November arrest went ahead.
It is hard to say what role Ross’s days out of circulation in November played in the disaster that followed soon after. He could not keep his coalition together. John Ridge remained a member of the delegation assigned to travel to Washington, but made it clear that he was hoping to persuade his chief to sign a removal treaty. Elias Boudinot dropped out of the delegation entirely. By December Ross was leaving the Cherokee Nation, heading for the capital while leaving Boudinot and dissenting members of the Treaty Party behind. As soon as Ross was gone, Reverend Schermerhorn proposed a national council for a treaty negotiation to begin in the Cherokee Nation on December 19. He declared that any Indians who failed to attend this national council would be presumed to accept whatever was done. To give the meeting what legitimacy he could, Schermerhorn said the negotiation should take place in New Echota, the Cherokee capital, from which the government had been forced to relocate long ago.
• • •
The leaders of the Treaty Party began gathering in New Echota in the week before Christmas. They found the village, which had never been large, partly empty and decrepit. The council house and courthouse had not served their appointed functions in years. The printshop was empty except for some scattered Cherokee type. The Worcesters were long gone from their house down the path, although Elias and Harriett Boudinot still had their home in the lonely village, where they were expecting another child. Buildings were in disrepair. As discussions began in the council house, the roof caught fire, forcing a temporary evacuation. But for ten days before and after Christmas the village came to life.
There was relatively little negotiation required. The Treaty Party already had a template, the provisional treaty Cherokee legislators had just rejected. They had a price range as well, the offer of $5 million John Ross had rejected at the start of the year. What remained was for the Treaty Party and the federal negotiators to agree on details and persuade the world that their act represented the will of the Cherokee people. This would not be easy. Public attendance at the conference was disappointingly small. At most, a few hundred Cherokees attended. The one time a vote was held, only eighty-two men were counted, seventy-five for the motion and seven against. But if they did not have numbers or the sanction of Cherokee law, they did have a giant among them—a leader, a diplomat, the uncle of Elias Boudinot, the father of John Ridge, the onetime political sponsor of John Ross. He was the friend of Andrew Jackson, known in Washington for his wealth and cultivation, whose portrait hung for years in the Indian office: a man substantial enough to make a dubious treaty seem real.
The Treaty Party had Major Ridge.
Why did he proceed? There is one account of a speech Major Ridge is said to have given to the group at New Echota. “The Georgians have shown a grasping spirit lately,” he is recorded as saying, “but I can do them justice in my heart. They think the Great Father, the President, is bound by the compact of 1802 to purchase this country for them, and they justify their conduct by the end in view. They are willing to buy these lands… . We can never forget [our] homes, I know, but an unbending, iron necessity tells us we must leave them … any forcible effort to keep them will cost us our lands, our lives, and the lives of our children.” It was an eloquent speech, though it is uncertain Ridge ever said it. It only appeared in print fifty years later, and even then was recorded by a sympathetic white Georgian who was unlikely t
o be familiar with the original Cherokee. Better evidence of Ridge’s thoughts is contained in the letters of his son and nephew, who probably reflected some of Ridge’s views. John Ridge recorded the sufferings of the Cherokee people and the unrealistic stubbornness of Chief John Ross. Elias Boudinot argued for the right of an elite group like the Treaty Party to make a decision for the people at large. Never pretending to command a majority in this age of majority rule, Boudinot knew that he must explain. “If one hundred persons are ignorant of their true situation,” he wrote, “we can see strong reasons to justify the action of a minority of fifty persons—to do what the majority would do if they understood their condition.” The minority must save the people from “destruction” and from “moral degradation.”
Major Ridge’s personal economic calculation was significantly different from that of the common people on whose behalf he acted. Removal would cost him his land, but Ridge would find new land in the West. He would be paid for his handsome house and other improvements that he was leaving behind. And he would be able to take along his most valuable property, his highly portable workforce of slaves. Poorer people could not see the move the same way. They had less portable property and would be paid much less for their improvements. But the decision for Ridge could not have been merely financial, for observers twice recorded him saying he expected to be killed for signing the treaty. By way of explanation it can only be said that Ridge was a leader. He had led the way in overturning the ancient law of revenge. He had led the way in the civilization program. Now he would lead his people west.
Ridge and the others negotiated a treaty under excellent terms, so long as they were not viewed too closely. The treaty called for the Cherokees to be paid the unprecedented sum of “five millions of dollars.” There was to be a school fund, investments in “safe and most productive public stocks,” and much more. Only a careful reading showed how these benefits were minimized. The money for the school fund and the investments were to be subtracted from the “five millions of dollars.” The compensation for houses and fences and other improvements on the land were also to be subtracted from the “five millions of dollars,” meaning that in reality, the Cherokees would receive much less than $5 million for the acreage itself. Debts the Cherokees supposedly owed would be deducted from any payments they received. The United States would pay for the support of Cherokees who were near starvation after the upheaval of recent years, but this money would be taken out of their future annuity payments—meaning the Cherokees were being relieved from their years of pain and suffering not with federal funds but with their own money. Whatever was left of the “five millions” would be divided equally among individual Cherokees, a democratic touch that would probably benefit many poor families, though it would also scatter the legacy of the land sale and keep the Cherokee government cash-poor. Dividing a federal payment among individuals was precisely the idea that 95 percent of Cherokee voters had rejected the previous summer.
There could be no submitting such a treaty to the Cherokee legislature, which would reject it. But on December 29, at the home of Elias Boudinot, Major Ridge signed the Treaty of New Echota. So did Boudinot and a number of other prominent men, including John Ross’s brother Andrew. Reverend Schermerhorn and Major Currey signed it too, and Currey rushed it to Washington. He arrived in mid-January to find that John Ross had begun his own negotiations with Jackson’s administration, but as soon as the administration learned of the Treaty of New Echota, it broke off talks with Ross. It had no more use for him. The game was over. Jackson sent the treaty for ratification by the Senate, which after bitter debate held a vote in the spring of 1836. A two-thirds majority was required. Henry Clay’s anti-Jackson forces had the votes to block the treaty, if they were united. They were not. The treaty prevailed by a single vote. The majority ruled.
Thirty-one
The War Department Does Not Understand These People
Soon after the Senate ratified the Treaty of New Echota, President Jackson sent the army to the Cherokee Nation. More precisely, he sent a single army general, John E. Wool. There weren’t troops available to send along with Wool, since much of the army was tied down by the Seminole war in Florida, and some of the rest was battling an Indian insurgency as the Creeks were driven out of Alabama. Brigadier General Wool was instructed to proceed to East Tennessee, recruit a thousand volunteers, and plant them in Cherokee country. Wool’s recruits marched from the Tennessee River down to New Echota, repairing roads and handing out rations to people left hungry by the Georgians’ depredations—trying to win hearts and minds while also showing their strength.
General Wool was a veteran of the War of 1812, in his early fifties, with the last of his hair elaborately combed forward to obscure his baldness; yet he was nearer the beginning of his career than the end of it. He would serve with distinction for decades after his duty in the Cherokee Nation, leading troops in combat in Mexico and even serving, in his late seventies, in the Civil War. First, however, he would spend a year in Cherokee country as the conduit between Jackson and John Ross—outmaneuvered by one, rebuked by the other, and increasingly doubtful of the course each pursued.
Senate ratification had started a clock ticking. The treaty allowed two years from ratification for all Cherokees to be gone—two years exactly after May 23, 1836. Wool was to make sure nothing slowed preparations for the migration. In the early days he met with Major Ridge and other members of the treaty faction, who convinced him that the only real obstacle to removal was John Ross. Wool was so certain of this that his troops briefly arrested the principal chief and several other leaders on the morning of August 3, 1836, Ross’s second detention in less than a year. Like the Georgians, Wool had to let Ross go. Later, when Wool had seen more of the Cherokee country for himself, he began to sense the true nature of his mission. “The War Department does not understand these people, and no man can understand them until he goes among them,” Wool declared in a letter to the War Department.
For three weeks after my arrival at Athens [Tennessee], from the daily reports made to me, I was induced to believe that a large proportion of the nation was prepared to submit to the treaty and remove west at the proper time; a few days at the mouth of Valley river convinced me I was mistaken. A few white men and some few halfbreeds only could be found to advocate a submission to the treaty. This is not fiction but truth.
A “large majority” of the Cherokee Nation not only opposed the treaty but did not believe it would ever be enforced. “What course,” Wool asked his superiors, “under such circumstances, would you pursue?” Wool foresaw disaster. Cherokees would make no preparations to move. They would also remain “the prey of the white men” who were inventing “debts” that the Cherokees supposedly owed. When the deadline arrived, chaos or war would ensue.
Wool met the Cherokees’ principal chief, and did not find him helpful. Ross informed the general that he planned to hold a mass meeting in September 1836 to discuss the treaty with his people. He asked if Wool had the authority to prevent a meeting; Wool, not wanting to repeat his initial heavy-handed tactics, said that he did not.
I advised [Ross], however, to be careful … any discussion [of opposing the treaty] would find no favor with the President, who was determined to have the treaty executed. He merely replied that he thought the President would be convinced that he had been in error, and that he would finally yield, and be willing to do justice to the Cherokees. I answered … that the President I knew was determined to have the treaty executed.
The meeting must be used only to explain the treaty and to plan for obedience to it. Ross nodded mildly and went away without having made any promises.
On the appointed day Ross arrived at Red Clay, Tennessee, where his government had held its meetings for several years. It was a clearing in the woods, in a wide green valley, with an abundant source of cool water from a limestone spring. Contemporary visitors were charmed by the sight of Cherokee mass meetings there. When large crowds gathered, the wo
ods and clearings around the council house became a temporary city, with “huts for the accommodation of strangers,” and a kind of main street lined with “huts, booths and stores.” Around these structures and through the woods flowed “an unceasing current of … men, women, youths, and children, moving about in every direction, and in the greatest order; and all, except the younger ones, preserving a grave and thoughtful demeanor.” People might linger for days, waiting on the meeting to begin, their many cooking fires visible throughout the neatly cleared woods as they ate corn and freshly killed beef. When the time came for government business, horns would echo through the woods. People congregated around the council house, a roof mounted on poles, open except for a railing on all sides so that thousands outside could listen.
General Wool, whose troops camped near the meeting ground, estimated before the meeting started that the crowd already numbered three thousand. Eventually attendance grew to between four and five thousand; yet Wool found them “peaceful,” operating with “order and decorum.” Once the meeting came to order, the Cherokees calculated the approximate number of voters who were attending, “upwards of twenty-one hundred male adults.” This was out of a total Cherokee population of about 16,500, of whom about half were male, and 3,992 were males over the age of eighteen. “Upwards of twenty-one hundred” male adults, if the count was accurate, would be a clear majority of the entire voting population, who had come over terrible roads during a time of severe economic deprivation. This great crowd fell silent as their principal chief stood up to speak in the council house.
Jacksonland: A Great American Land Grab Page 28