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[6823] F. W. Greenough, Se-Quo-Yah [Sequoiah] (c. 1836), courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZC4-4815].
During the debates over the Indian Removal Act, many Cherokee writers penned impassioned letters, pamphlets, and editorials to defend their tribe’s right to its sovereignty and its land. Drawing on a long tradition of eloquence and a high rate of literacy and fluency in English among tribe members, the Cherokee produced articulate and compelling defenses of their position. In some cases they appealed to Congress and the courts directly with their letters and memorials–the nineteenth-century equivalent of petitions. The Cherokee Council, which was the official leadership body of the tribe, composed its own memorial to send to Congress, while also submitting twelve other memorials written by Cherokee citizens who, as the council put it, “wish to speak of their wishes and determination… themselves.”
John Ridge (the father of John Rollin Ridge), who held the position of council clerk, probably authored the Council’s official memorial with the help of the other council members. The document uses formal, polished, legalistic language to articulate its claim that the forced removal of the Cherokee would be unnecessary, contrary to established agreements, and immoral. In its efforts to appeal to its white audience, the memorial stresses the Cherokees’ commitment to “civilization” and their wish to “pursue agriculture and to educate their sons and daughters in the sciences,” thus implying that the Cherokees’ willingness to assimilate with white culture should strengthen their claim of sovereignty. At the same time, the memorial also insists on the Cherokees’ separateness from the United States and on their historical claim to their land–a claim that long predates the arrival of Europeans in America. Perhaps most powerfully, the memorial skillfully employs American republican ideals of independence, natural rights, and self-government to point out the hypocrisy of nineteenth-century American policy and to support the Cherokees’ claims. The citizens’ memorials use many of the same rhetorical strategies, but are generally characterized by less formal language than the document composed by the council. The Cherokee memorials provided a model of rhetoric for subsequent Native American protest literature, such as William Apess’s “An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man” (featured in Unit 4).
Tragically, for all their eloquence, the memorials were not effective. The state of Georgia, backed up by the federal government, continued to exert pressure upon the tribe to remove. Eventually, Ridge and some other leaders came to believe that resistance was futile and signed the Treaty of New Echota, agreeing to cede Cherokee lands to the state of Georgia. Most of the tribe, however, did not agree with the treaty and did not want to vacate their lands. In 1838, the United States government enforced the treaty by sending in federal troops and private contractors to compel the Cherokee to move west to what is now Oklahoma. One-third of the tribe died on the forced westward march, along what came to be known as the Trail of Tears.
[5595] Gales and Seaton’s Register, Register of Debates, House of Representatives, 23rd Congress, 2nd Session, Pages 1007 through 1008, Cherokee Memorial (1835),
courtesy of the Library of Congress.
This is a record of Congress’s reception of the Cherokee Council Memorial. Despite their petitions and appropriation of the republican ideals of natural rights and independence, the Cherokee people were forced off their lands in 1838.
[5916] John Ross to Abraham Lincoln, September 16, 1862 [Re: Relations between the U.S. and the Cherokee Nation] (1862),
courtesy of the Library of Congress.
During the early nineteenth century, Cherokee politics were highly factionalized. Author John Rollin Ridge’s grandfather, Major Ridge, argued that it was useless to resist the U.S. government and hence supported removal. John Ross led the opposing faction, which urged complete resistance.
[6823] F. W. Greenough, Se-Quo-Yah [Sequoiah] (c. 1836),
courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZC4-4815].
Half-length portrait of Sequoyah holding a tablet that shows the Cherokee alphabet. Sequoyah developed a Cherokee syllabary that enabled his people to write in their own language.
[8688] Arch C. Gerlach, editor, Map of Early Indian Tribes, Culture Areas, and Linguistic Stocks [from The National Atlas of the United States, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Geological Survey] (1970),
courtesy of the General Libraries, University of Texas at Austin.
The Cherokee Nation originally lived in the southeastern part of what is now the United States, but after the unsuccessful petitions of the Cherokee memorials, the Cherokee people were removed to present-day Oklahoma.