Trail of Tears Diaspora 1838-2013 (175th Anniversary)

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On contemplating modern America's original sin - the Cherokee holocaust of 1838

Remembering the Trail of Tears Diaspora 1838

  

The problem of writing the social history of the Native peoples of the Southeast is formidable. One has to simultaneously represent both synchronic social and cultural systems and the diachronic change that transforms them. One has to both represent the exotic world of the Southeastern chiefdoms and the European world-system that impinged upon them as storms brewed in other men's lands’ and in time destroyed, dissolved, or enveloped by them. And we must do it with the merest fragments of archaeological and oral evidence. As cultural and social beings, the Native peoples of the Southeast have been fundamentally transformed by history several times over, as have we all. If the Native peoples of the Americas are ever to be more than moral fodder for various ideologies — whether left, right, or postmodern — they must find their proper place in the social history of the modern world. Since 1976 some progress has been made on this front by archaeologists, ethnohistorians, and historians, but much more remains to be done.            

Charles M. Hudson, 2000, Franklin Professor of Anthropology and History Emeritus, University of Georgia, Athens; authority on the history and culture of the indigenous peoples of Georgia and the Southeastern United States.

What we know of aboriginals in Northwest Georgia

Aboriginal native Americans belonging to the Muskogee tribe are the first historically documented modern human inhabitants of present day Northwest Georgia. While their archival culture dates from about 1,000 BCE, modern anthropologists estimate their ancestors’ arrival as far back as 10,000 BCE, contemporaneous with the first farming in the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia, the birthplace of writing and the wheel.

According to Muskogean tradition: in the beginning, the earth was a water world, awash in a churning blue ocean. The only land was a solitary promontory called Nunne Chaha, composed of brilliant red earth. On the summit dwelled Esaugetuh Emissee — the Master of Breath — who created the first humans from fists-full of native red clay. Their progeny, everlastingly bearing the rich cinnabar pigmentation, would ultimately people the ever-expanding terrestrial planet as the waters inexorably withdrew.

While uncannily reminiscent of Genesis from the creation myth standpoint, geologists would no doubt concur that the Muskogean shamans practically nailed the earth science part, unlike Moses, who allegedly penned the Judeo-Christian version, featuring a primeval garden, a talking snake, a misogynistic smack down, and a homicidal child. But, hey, that was only the bollixed exhibition game. Ultimately the Abrahamic God Almighty, opted for a total do-over, commandeering a 480-year-old taxonomist-cum-mariner, by the name of Noah as his clean-up hitter.

And then came the Euros

While Hernando de Soto penetrated Northwest Georgia in a failed 1540 expedition, he mercifully died in the process, sparing North America the depredation of the Iberian onslaught which ultimately conquered and subjugated South America.

Fast-forward some 230 years, contemporaneous with the Declaration of Independence, The Great Valley, in present-day North Georgia, belonged to the Cherokee Nation, an intelligent and resourceful tribe that had already adopted much European convention, including the ownership of black slaves — to be fair — by only a handful of high-up clan leaders. After all it was perfectly legal. Why hold them to higher standards than white people?

New Echota, the capital of the Cherokee Nation, strategically sited where the Conasagua and Coosawatee Rivers converge to form the Oostanaula, near present day Calhoun, was a big-time center of government and commerce. Amenities included a weekly newspaper, printed in the Cherokee language by means of a brilliant phonetic syllabus invented by Chief Sequoyah — who already had English, German, and French under his belt.

Sequoyah (English: George Gist or George Guess) (c.1767-1843), inventor of the Cherokee Syllabary. This was the only time in recorded history that a member of a non-literate people independently created an effective writing system. He was also the namesake of California's giant Sequoia sempervirens redwood tree.

All that started to unwind in 1828 when gold was discovered on Cherokee land. While white men never needed an excuse, they now had a glittering reason to appropriate the Cherokee’s property.

And so it was in 1830 the U.S. Congress passed the enabling legislation: The Indian Removal Act. This gave then President Andrew Jackson, a rabid proponent of the bill, free reign to oblige the powerful moneyed interests chaffing at the bit to lay claim to all things Indian.

The Cherokee Nation, under the brilliant leadership of Chief John Ross (himself only one-eighth Cherokee), challenged the constitutionality of the legislation, all the way to the Supreme Court.

In 1832, in a landmark decision (Cherokee Nation v. Georgia) rendered by Chief Justice John Marshall, the high court declared:  … the forced removal of the entire Cherokee Nation from their ancestral homes in the South Eastern United States to be illegal, unconstitutional, and against [all previous] treaties made.

You see Marshall was a dreaded activist judge — translation: he actually presided over adjudication of the facts relative to the nuts and bolts of the United States Constitution and was not really into rubber-stamping a verdict kowtowing to screeching majoritarian sentiment and the bully pulpit of the President.

In utter contempt for the separation of powers, Jackson, had this to say about that: "[John] Marshall has made his decision; let him enforce it now if he can."

This seemed a tad backwards, as it is the President who swears to uphold federal law. But hey, we’re talking Indians here.

Despite the slam-dunk legal vindication, when Jackson — in the same year — was reelected to a second term by a landslide, the Cherokees, no political rookies, knew they were in proverbial deep shit. With the felonies of bigamy and murder already under his belt, pogrom was no moral obstacle to the preening and defiant Old Hickory.

Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), with the felonies of bigamy and murder already under his belt, pogrom was no moral obstacle to the preening and defiant Old Hickory. Jackson was a tireless proponent of violence as resolution to conflict. Daniel O'Brien, author of The Five Most Bad-Assed Presidents of All Times, sums up Jackson's deportment in a stunning economy of words: "He was a fucking lunatic."

But Jackson was not alone in his fervor to rid Georgia of the Cherokees. Governor Wilson Lumpkin who took office in 1831 was famously anti-Indian. Under the patrician guise of noblesse oblige, Lumpkin was piously convinced that the two cultures could not live together peaceably. 

His justification in this contention was that white people would continue to take advantage of the indigenous — not exactly a ringing endorsement of the rule of law. He did magnanimously opine that once removed to Oklahoma, the noble savages might acculturate themselves and apply for statehood on their own at some distant point in the future — cold comfort to the Cherokees for what was about to happen.

For starters Lumpkin rammed through legislation in 1831 to subdivide all Cherokee Territory in Northwest Georgia — some 6,500 square miles — into ten separate counties, officially annexing the land into the state, in bald-face defiance of The Supreme Court of the United States. But Lumpkin could have cared less, as president Jackson had his political back-side.

Georgia Governor Wilson Lumpkin (1783-1870)

 

Map of Northwest Georgia circa 1830

 

State of Georgia's 1832 Annex of Cherokee holdings in Northwest Georgia, subdivided into ten new counties, in bald-face defiance of the Supreme Court of the United States. Between 1837 and 1857, these counties were further subdivided to create Catoosa, Chatooga, Dade, Dawson, Fannin, Gordon, Milton, Pickens, Towns, Walker, and Whitfield Counties. (Cass County was renamed Bartow County in 1861, and Milton County went bankrupt and was annexed into Fulton County in 1932.)

But Lumpkin's legislative centerpiece was the Georgia Land Lottery and Gold Lottery Acts of 1832, the final of seven separate uniquely state-sponsored larcenies between 1805 and 1832 which divvied up and retitled some 45,000 square miles of Indian land to white European settlers, more than three-quarters of the present state of Georgia.

This last tranche of contiguous Northwest Georgia totaled some 285 million acres, composed of 160-acre land lots and 40-acre gold lots, so designated as the state deemed deposits of gold to be likely, thus upping their relative value.

Those allowed to participate in the lotteries were required to pay a fee – $18 for a 160-acre land lot and $10 for a 40-acre gold lot — according to the qualifications below. Each lot was numbered, committed to a slip of paper, and placed in a barrel. Because there were more persons qualified to draw than the number of lots, the barrel was inflated with blank pieces of paper compensating for the total participants. Those drawing real lots were deemed fortunate draws. Those drawing blank pieces of paper were out of luck.

1832 Land Lottery Eligibility

·       Bachelor, 18 years or over, 3-year residence in Georgia, citizen of the United States — 1 draw

·       Married man with wife and/or minor son under 18 and/or unmarried daughter, 3-year residence in Georgia, citizen of United States — 2 draws

·       Widow, 3-year residence in Georgia — 1 draw

·       Wife and/or child, 3-year residence in Georgia, of husband and/or father absent from state for 3 years — 1 draw

·       Family (one or two) of orphans under 18 years, residence since birth in state — 1 draw

·       Family (three or more) of orphans under 18 years, residence since birth in state — 2 draws

·       Widow, husband killed or died in Revolutionary War, War of 1812, or Indian Wars, 3-year residence in Georgia — 2 draws

·       Orphan, father killed in Revolutionary War, War of 1812, or Indian War — 2 draws

·       Wounded or disabled veteran of War of 1812 or Indian Wars, unable to work — 2 draws

·       Veteran of Revolutionary War — 2 draws

·       Veteran of Revolutionary War who had been a fortunate drawer in any previous lottery — 1 draw

·       Child or children of a convict, 3-year residence in Georgia — 1 draw

·       Male idiots, lunatics or insane, deaf and dumb, or blind, over 10 years and under 18 years, 3-year residence in Georgia — 1 draw

·       Female idiots, insane or lunatics or deaf and dumb or blind, over 10 years, 3-year residence in Georgia — 1 draw

·       Family (one or two) of illegitimates under 18 years, residence since birth in Georgia — 1 draw

·       Family (three or more) of illegitimates under 18 years, residence since birth in Georgia — 2 draws

1832 Gold Lottery Eligibility

·       Bachelor, 18 years or over, 3-year residence in Georgia, citizen of United States — 1 draw

·       Widow, 3-year residence in Georgia — 1 draw

·       Family of orphans, 3-year residence in Georgia, citizen of United States — 2 draws

·       Married man, head of family, 3-year residence in Georgia (officers in the army or navy of the United States, 3-year residence not required), citizen of United States — 2 draws

But Lumpkin wasn’t done yet. Under his executive order, the Georgia militia proceeded to seize New Echota, forcing the Tribal Council into exile in East Tennessee where they attempted to conduct business for the next three years. Meanwhile, white lottery winners poured into Cherokee land by the thousands.

And, indeed, President Jackson was not done yet either. He cut a deal with an old Cherokee buddy by the name of Major Ridge — who, with some few hundred Cherokees, had thrown-in with then General Jackson in the Creek War back in 1813.

Ridge, a wealthy slave-owning planter, presented himself as the official representative of the Cherokees, whom he certainly was not — not that it mattered to Jackson. When the U.S. government sets out in bad faith, there are no historic limits to the treachery. 

Cherokee turncoat Major Ridge (1771-1839) rubber-samped the scandalous treaty to broker $5 million in move-money - for which he paid dearly, as he was promptly assassinated by a gang of young Cherokees on his first trip back to Georgia..

And so it was, in 1835 the Treaty of New Echota was penned, swapping the lush Great Valley for a large tract of property in the northeastern corner of unincorporated territory which is now Oklahoma — considered worthless prairie — plus $5 million (less than $300 for every man woman and child) in move money, which Ridge, in another act of selflessness, agreed to broker. Since CNN was about 150 years away, the rank and file Cherokee was in the dark as to this spectacular larceny.

In 1836 Jackson rammed the treaty through Congress by a margin of one vote, effectively trumping Chief Justice Marshall’s earlier ruling. When word got out, 16,000 royally pissed-off Cherokees signed a petition of protest which was delivered to Congress in an impassioned letter by John Ross on December 28, 1836 — a remarkable accomplishment in those days. 

Cherokee Chief John Ross (1790-1866)

Ross’ majestic phrases read from the floor of the House of Representatives stand alone in their eloquence.

… By the stipulations of this instrument [Treaty of New Echota], we are despoiled of our private possessions, the indefeasible property of individuals. We are stripped of every attribute of freedom and eligibility for legal self-defense. Our property may be plundered before our eyes; violence may be committed on our persons; even our lives may be taken away, and there is none to regard our complaints. We are denationalized; we are disfranchised. We are deprived of membership in the human family! We have neither land nor home, nor resting place that can be called our own. And this is effected by the provisions of a compact which assumes the venerated, the sacred appellation of treaty …

… We are overwhelmed! Our hearts are sickened, our utterance is paralyzed, when we reflect on the condition in which we are placed, by the audacious practices of unprincipled men, who have managed their stratagems with so much dexterity as to impose on the Government of the United States, in the face of our earnest, solemn, and reiterated protestations …

… On your kindness, on your humanity, on your compassion, on your benevolence, we rest our hopes. To you we address our reiterated prayers. Spare our people! Spare the wreck of our prosperity! Let not our deserted homes become the monuments of our desolation! But we forbear! We suppress the agonies which wring our hearts, when we look at our wives, our children, and our venerable sires! We restrain the forebodings of anguish and distress, of misery and devastation and death, which must be the attendants on the execution of this ruinous compact …

But, the Cherokees were out of luck, Jackson having, at last, gotten what he was itching for.

A few hundred stoic Cherokees, knowing the jig was up, voluntarily moved to Oklahoma, including Major Ridge who promptly collected the move money — a bad move on his part, as he was promptly assassinated by a gang of young Cherokees on his first trip back to Georgia.

The remaining Cherokees dug in their heels in defiance of the bogus treaty — adopting the position that they had been screwed over, inside and out. In 1838, Commander-in-Chief Jackson, decided to play hardball. In the ensuing genocide, 17,000 aboriginals — men, women, and children — were rounded up like livestock by a stunning overkill of 7,000 Federal troops under the command of Gen. Winfield Scott. Deemed the Trail of Tears, over 4,000 Cherokees died en route to Oklahoma.

Private John G. Burnett, a deployed mounted infantryman, noted in his journal: … I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven at bayonet point into the stockades. And in the chill of a drizzling rain on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle or sheep into 645 wagons and started toward the west … On the morning of November the 17th we encountered a terrific sleet and snow storm with freezing temperatures and from that day until we reached the end of the fateful journey on March the 26th 1839, the sufferings of the Cherokees were awful. The trail of the exiles was a trail of death. They had to sleep in the wagons and on the ground without fire. And I have known as many as twenty-two of them to die in one night of pneumonia due to ill treatment, cold and exposure ...

Trail of Tears route maps tracing the various routes Cherokees were evicted

And there you have it: if not the nadir of U.S. history, one would be hard pressed to one-up it in terms of unrepentant depredation.

But the U.S. of A. wasn’t done yet. Cherokee Nation sovereignty and tribal government in the Oklahoma Territory was promptly dissolved by fiat in 1907 when Oklahoma became a state. It would take until 1934 and endless court fights to attain reservation status — the unofficial American gulag.

That their Oklahoma reservation later proved a mother lode of high grade crude — black gold — is living proof that God has a sophisticated sense of irony. That this American Holocaust took place, gave me an early object lesson in civics: if you’re a fan of social justice, you had better asterisk that all-men-are-created-equal nonsense they spoon-feed you in grammar school. 

Best I can tell, from my read of U.S. history and my personal hands-on experience — there is precious little self-evident about those so-called truths. By point of fact, craven politicians are itching to put the Bill of Rights up for majority vote — and will do so in a New York minute if not watched like a hawk.

And thus - on this Memorial Day 2013 - we commemorate the 175th anniversary of the infamous Trail of Tears: E Pluribus Unum.

Shitepoke.com May 27, 2013

Calhoun GA