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TRAIL OF TEARS

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It is estimated that the Cherokees inhabited the land now known as the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama for hundreds or even thousands of years prior to European contact. For the most part women farmed, and men hunted. The Cherokees governed themselves through consensus and allowed both men and women to join in debates. It was not until European settlers arrived that the ownership of land became an issue and the Cherokees found it necessary to create laws and treaties to protect their homeland.

THE LOSS OF HOME

On 28 November 1785 the Cherokees signed the first of such treaties, the Treaty of Hopewell. This served as a peace treaty between European settlers and the Cherokees intended to ensure protection of Cherokee land. Yet Georgia refused to acknowledge the treaty; in 1828 Georgia outlawed the Cherokee national government, which by 1827 consisted of a constitution that allowed for a bicameral legislature, a chief executive, and a judicial system. The state of Georgia required a loyalty oath for whites living within the Cherokee Nation and created the Georgia Guard to enforce state law. The fate of the Cherokees' land was ultimately determined once gold was discovered in Dahlonega, Georgia, in 1829. As a result President Andrew Jackson (1767–1845) signed the Indian Removal Act on 28 May 1830.

The Cherokee Nation fought removal by taking their case to the Supreme Court in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia in 1831. The Court had to choose whether to uphold the laws of the Cherokee national government or those of the state of Georgia. Chief Justice John Marshall (1755–1835), while declining to rule on the validity of Cherokee law, declared the Cherokee Nation a "domestic dependent nation" that would not be affected by the laws of individual states even though it was considered part of the United States and so was subject to federal rule.

In late December 1830 Georgia passed a law requiring white men to acquire a license from the state before entering Indian country. After the law took effect on 1 March 1831, eleven missionaries were arrested because they had not sought licenses, and nine received pardons from the governor in exchange for a promise that they would obey Georgia law in the future. Samuel A. Worcester and Elizur Butler, who refused the pardon, were sentenced to prison for four years. Their challenge to the verdict came before the Supreme Court in March 1832 as Worcester v. Georgia. The court ruled in favor of the Cherokees and claimed that Georgia law was not valid within the Cherokee Nation. The Georgia Guard continued to enforce state law in the Cherokee Nation in spite of this verdict. When President Jackson did nothing to prevent the guard's attacks on the Cherokee people, some Cherokees began to question the feasibility and success of a continued resistance against removal.

In the midst of Georgia's refusal to recognize the Cherokee Nation, several Cherokees began to lose faith in the idea of resistance. One such figure was Elias Boudinot (1740–1821), who had been educated in a missionary school. Previously Boudinot held the position of editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, the national newspaper printed in English and the Cherokee syllabary. The first issue appeared on 21 February 1828 and was widely read by Native Americans and settlers. Initially Boudinot chose to run articles and editorials that championed the idea of resistance to removal from Georgia. In 1832 his views on resistance began to change in light of Georgia's refusal to recognize the decision in Worcester v. Georgia and President Jackson's refusal to force the state to comply with the federal ruling. At this point Boudinot opened the issue of Indian removal up for debate. Despite his efforts to garner editorials from both sides, the Cherokee Council refused to allow Boudinot to publish articles questioning the feasibility of resistance. As a result he resigned as editor. Perhaps the most notable pieces of resistance literature were the Cherokee Memorials, documents that held the status of petitions in the nineteenth century. These memorials were written by members of the Cherokee Council and citizens to protest the impending Indian Removal Act of 1830.

The majority of Cherokees sided with John Ross (1790–1866), the chief of their tribe, and his efforts to resist removal. However, Boudinot, Major Ridge (1771–1839), and several other Cherokee leaders chose to negotiate with the U.S. Senate and formed what would be known as the Treaty Party. In December 1835 the Treaty Party signed the Treaty of New Echota despite the absence of John Ross and the Cherokee Council. Out of twenty thousand, only two hundred Cherokees met and ratified the treaty that called for their removal west of the Mississippi. The treaty gave the Cherokees two years to prepare for the removal. General Winfield Scott (1786–1866) was placed in charge of the forced removal that later came to be known as the Trail of Tears. The removal began in the summer of 1838, and many Cherokees died from exhaustion, hunger, and disease. In the winter of 1838–1839 fourteen thousand Cherokees marched twelve hundred miles into what is now Oklahoma. It is estimated that four thousand died. On 22 June 1839 a band of Cherokee assassins killed Major Ridge, his son John Ridge, and Elias Boudinot for signing the Treaty of New Echota.

THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS' RESPONSE

The violent "removal" that came to be known as the Trail of Tears evoked varied responses from the general public and literary world alike. But it was a group of writers who would come to be known as the transcendentalists who seemed to evince the most ardent response. The transcendentalists were drawn to the Cherokees because they perceived them as children of nature and celebrated their primitive connection to the earth. They also found within the Cherokee a character indigenous to American literature. Yet ironically these same authors stressed that the Cherokees should abandon their "primitivism" and assimilate into Western culture if they hoped to escape extinction. The Cherokees' "primitive" nature made for a good read, but in reality this behavior was unacceptable. Many transcendentalists also wrote about the removal of the Cherokees from their homeland. While Ralph Waldo Emerson's (1803–1882) letter to President Martin Van Buren (1782–1862) proves the most direct in his criticism of the Cherokee removals, other transcendentalists such as Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) and Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) briefly address the Trail of Tears while exploring the impending fate of the Cherokees through their journals and travel writings.

Emerson's letter to President Van Buren was most likely a tribute to his late brother Charles Emerson. Charles wrote several letters to his brothers encouraging them to take a stand on the removals. In 1832 Emerson encountered Major Ridge at Federal Street Church and was captivated by his powerful oratorical abilities (Emerson, "To Charles Chauncy Emerson," p. 346). He wrote Charles informing him that Ridge, in his oratory, took full advantage of the "romance" surrounding the plight of the Indians. In his 1837 lecture "Manners," Emerson romanticizes the "infantile simplicity" of the "Indian in the woods" (p. 135). He also appears to embrace the archetype of the noble savage, a hero who possesses the simplicity of a child. After pressure from his friends and family, Emerson wrote a letter in defense of the Cherokees to President Van Buren on 23 April 1838. In his diary Emerson complains about having to write the letter. He states: "Then is this disaster of Cherokees brought to me by a sad friend to blacken my days & nights. I can do nothing. Why shriek? Why strike ineffectual blows?" (Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 5:475). Several of Emerson's friends debated the idea of civilizing the noble savage through education and, most importantly, religion. Emerson himself praised the "Apostle" John Eliot, a widely respected missionary responsible for converting many Cherokees to Christianity. Yet in the end the author begins to doubt the Cherokees' ability to assimilate into Western culture based on their own "eternal inferiority." Once Emerson decides to write the letter out of guilt and a sense of duty to his brother, he declares, "I stir in it for the sad reason that no other mortal will move & if I do not, why it is left undone" (Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 5:477).

In the letter Emerson appeals to the moral sentiment of President Van Buren. He writes in regard to the "sinister rumors" concerning the Cherokees. Emerson acknowledges the achievements of the Cherokees and expresses a sense of indignation at the ratification of the Treaty of New Echota. He refers to it as a "sham treaty" and exposes the egregious circumstances under which it was ratified. Additionally he openly accuses the president and his government of ignoring the crisis of the Cherokee people and shipping them out west. After this declaration, Emerson retreats a bit rhetorically and incredulously asks, "In the name of God, sir, we ask you if this be so?" (p. 543). In addition to appealing to the president's sense of morality, Emerson also introduces the idea of ethics. He claims that never before was there such a "gross misrepresentation" and "denial of justice" (p. 543). Emerson refers to the removals as a crime and suggests that the president will debase his own office and nation if he does not reconsider the removal debate. He claims that he argues on behalf of the people and their sense of duty to civilize the Cherokees. Finally, he warns the president that the citizens have begun to doubt the moral character of their government and have grown despondent. He urges the president in all of his wisdom and authority to adhere to the will of the people and put an end to injustice.

Despite his attempt to alter the fate of the Cherokee, Emerson romanticizes them as a children of nature who merely need to adopt the ways of civilization in order to survive. Similar to Emerson, Thoreau depicted the Native American as possessing a lost innocence. In A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and selected portions of Walden, Thoreau celebrates the Native American's primitivism and animal nature. In his Journal dated 1837–1846 he suggests that the Cherokees' primitive role as hunters is what will seal their doomed fate. Thoreau suggests that the Cherokee should "forsake the hunter's life and enter into the agricultural, the second, state of man" (p. 444). Here the author expresses frustration over the Cherokees' refusal to evolve as farmers. He claims that "if they had grasped their [plow] handles more firmly, they would never have been driven beyond the Mississippi" (p. 446). Thoreau explains that white farmers would not think twice about taking land that is hunted as opposed to land that is farmed. Thoreau, who spent much of his life as a surveyor in the Concord area, aptly notes that the hunting field lacks clear property boundaries, unlike those around a farm. According to Thoreau, the land is "property not held by the hunter so much as by the game which roams it, and was never well secured by warranty deeds" (p. 446). Thus, according to the author, the Cherokees' refusal to assimilate into an agricultural-based economy that stresses landownership is what led to their removal.

Margaret Fuller, like Emerson and Thoreau, felt pressed to address the plight of the Cherokees. In her 1844 memoir Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 she comments on the Indian's unique, spiritual appreciation of nature. She also compares him to a Greek tragic hero of sorts. Throughout most of the work, Fuller is most invested in unearthing the plight of the Native American woman and comparing and contrasting her fate to that of the European woman. Fuller also ponders the fate of the Native Americans as a whole and at one point offers amalgamation as the answer. She quickly decides that this is not an option because "those of mixed blood fade early, and are not generally a fine race" (p. 96). Her final suggestion is to allow the Native Americans to govern themselves, yet she questions rather fatalistically that "the designs of such [plans] will not always be frustrated by barbarous selfishness, as they were in Georgia" (p. 101). Here Fuller suggests that even if the Cherokees did have competent leaders to act on their behalf, they would still be confronted with Georgia's oppressive state laws.

Retrospectively Fuller's comments about the future of the Cherokees proved rather prophetic. She felt, as did the members of the Treaty Party, that resistance against the state laws of Georgia would prove futile. Thoreau as well somewhat echoed her sentiments. He felt that the answer to the Cherokee's success could be found in agriculture, yet he still considered them a doomed race. Emerson's letter to President Van Buren and the Cherokee Memorials pose the most convincing arguments for resistance to removal. Ironically the majority of the Cherokees were against removal, yet the few men who signed the Treaty of New Echota ultimately determined the fate of the Cherokee people.

See also Cherokee Memorials; Ethnology; Indians; Indian Wars and Dispossession; Oratory; Romanticism; Transcendentalism

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Works

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Vol. 5, 1835–1838, edited by Merton M. Sealts Jr. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Manners." In The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 2, 1836–1838, edited by Stephen E. Whicher, Robert E. Spiller, and Wallace E. Williams. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1964.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "To Charles Chauncy Emerson, Boston, March 4, 1832." In The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited by Ralph L. Rusk, pp. 345–347. New York: Columbia University Press, 1939.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "To Martin Van Buren, Concord, April 23, 1838." In Emerson's Prose and Poetry, edited by Joel Porte and Saundra Morris. New York: Norton, 2001.

Fuller, Margaret. Summer on the Lakes. 1844. 2nd ed. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. New York: Haskell House, 1970.

Marshall, John. Cherokee Nation v. Georgia. 1831. Edited by Nathan Aaseng. San Diego, Calif.: Lucent Books, 2000.

Marshall, John. Worcester v. Georgia. 1832. In The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History with Documents, edited by Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1995.

Thoreau, Henry D. The Journal of Henry D. Thoreau, 1837–1846. 1906. Edited by Bradford Torrey and Francis H. Allen. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949.

Secondary Works

Alexander, Floyce. "Emerson and the Cherokee Removal." ESQ 29, no. 3 (1983): 127–137.

Bellin, Joshua David. "Apostle of Removal: John Eliot in the Nineteenth Century." New England Quarterly 69, no. 1 (1996): 3–32.

Ehle, John. Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation. New York: Doubleday, 1988.

Foreman, Grant. Indian Removal: The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians. 1932. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1953.

Garvey, Gregory T. "Mediating Citizenship: Emerson, the Cherokee Removals, and the Rhetoric of Nationalism." Centennial Review (1997): 461–469.

Johoda, Gloria. The Trail of Tears. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1975.

Maddox, Lucy. Removals: Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Politics of Indian Affairs. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

McLoughlin, William G. Cherokees and Missionaries, 1789–1839. 1984. Foreword by William L. Anderson. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.

Perdue, Theda, ed. Cherokee Editor: The Writings of Elias Boudinot. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983.

Perdue, Theda, and Michael D. Green, eds. The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1995.

Remini, Robert V. Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars. New York: Viking, 2001.

Rozema, Vicki. Cherokee Voices: Early Accounts of Cherokee Life in the East. Winston-Salem, N.C.: J. F. Blair, 2002.

Jennifer M. Wing