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previous: Chapter 31 This webpage reproduces a chapter of The Five Civilized Tribes by Grant Foreman University of Oklahoma Press Norman, Oklahoma, 1934 The text is in the public domain. This page has been carefully proofread and I believe it to be free of errors. If you find a mistake though, please let me know!

[ Cherokee ]

 p421  Chapter thirty-two
Reconstruction Achieved

And now the Indians stood at another crisis in their lives. The brief interval of peace was drawing to a close. Happily the sorrow and desolation immediately ahead was not revealed to them. The portent of current events was lost upon a people who desired nothing more ardently than complete isolation from the policies and disputes of their white neighbors.

They could look about and meditate upon their surroundings with much satisfaction. Three decades had passed since Jackson's Removal Bill⁠1 decreed the surrender of their beloved homeland. The forbidding countenance of a strange western country had softened until it too became invested with the qualities and sentiment of home. This with patience and perseverance had been achieved at a cost it has been the lot of few peoples to experience. They not only survived the tragedy of eviction from their own country and transfer to a far-off land under the most desolating conditions; but after they recovered from the shock of removal and devastating mortality, they had improved their condition to a state far in advance of that enjoyed by them in the East. Governments were now functioning, public schools were in operation, education had become a passion, agriculture and industry were progressing, all in a degree never before known to them; they had advanced far on the road to civilization.

The achievement was made possible primarily by the intelligence, character, and fortitude of the Indians. But in a measure that can never be adequately appraised, the missionaries were responsible by reviving  p422 the morale, hope, and resolution of these harried people. Removal to a country where the white man ceased from his efforts to take their land contributed much, for it gave the Indians courage and opportunity to improve their condition.

Next to meeting the demands for food and shelter for themselves and their dependents the occupation that engaged their attention more than any other was the pursuit of education. This suddenly developing interest in a primitive people was a phenomenon of more than common interest which had its genesis in recent conditions in which they were involved. Before their removal from the South when they began to realize the menace of the white man's aggressions, some of the leading members of the tribes sensed a method of arming their people for defense. With the aid of the missionaries they shrewdly strove to imitate the white man by educating their people and taking a more secure hold on their homeland through the medium of constitutional governments. By approximating a stabilized social order and availing themselves of the white man's knowledge of letters and methods of thinking and acting, they equipped themselves to defend their rights. This development resulted in some remarkable demonstrations of sagacity and clear thinking by the leaders among the Indians. The threat of intelligent resistance provoked and was soon met by more power­ful aggressions of the whites and state and Federal governments, that quickly turned the tide against the weaker red people who were driven before it to the West. But the seed of education sown by the missionaries had taken root and survived to flourish after the desolation of removal.⁠2

The Choctaw people were the first to be located after emigration and they were the first to send their children to the schools made possible by their annuities and the help of the missionaries. But it was the Cherokee who set the example of a national school system. The early settlers of this tribe had a few schools but they were almost entirely dependent on the missionaries for such education as their children received. It was not until after the arrival of the large body of emigrants and the inauguration of the new government under Chief John Ross, that a national school system was established in December, 1841. Eleven months later the Choctaw Nation followed this example  p423 and made similar provision. From this time there was friendly rivalry that placed these two nations far to the front in the field of education.

The leading men of the tribes exercised a paternal influence over the "common people" that contributed to their welfare and progress. The laws enacted in their legislative councils bear the marks of these men who were responsible for them. The great majority of the people did not think in terms of conventional laws or rules of conduct. They understood the tribal customs and clan rules handed down from parent to child and revealed by their old men and they were content to let their chiefs and counsellors make all other laws. This is illustrated by the numerous laws relating to their slaves. The great majority of the people had no slaves; it was only the comparatively few rich Indians who enjoyed this luxury.

Exercising the power they possessed the leaders of the tribes would have been more than human if they had not derived financial profit from their opportunities. Yet they labored for the good of their people and in the main were trusted by them. That some of the signers of the Indian treaties surrendering their lands in the East received substantial bribes for their acts was notorious and fully established by the records. It became a sort of custom in some of the tribes that the station of chief carried with it as a perquisite the right to receive from the Government financial rewards for which they were not expected to account to their people. This developed from the policy of the Government of so treating the members who were in a position to bind the tribes; it was a species of bribery employed by the Government to accomplish its ends and was known to the "common people" as something they were powerless to prevent and therefore a necessary evil, though not condoned by them.

Much has been said about the Cherokee "false treaty" of 1835; but there is no evidence that the signers received financial rewards for their acts. Nor is there any evidence that Chief John Ross profited to the extent of a dollar through the opportunity presented by the large amount of money employed in the removal of his people. To this day there persist stories that Ross did make money out of that business; stories based upon nothing more than tradition handed down these many years. The Author has pursued every available source of information and has reached the conclusion that these stories originated at that time in the heated discussions and feuds growing out of the  p424 jealousies and heart burnings of the minority faction. One of Ross's bitterest critics, Benjamin F. Curry, commissioner for Cherokee removal, leveled the charge against him that he "did the thinking" for his great following.⁠3 It was probably true in a measure; they trusted Ross and through this trust his personality dominated the great majority of the tribe and accounted for his long tenure as chief. It was his success­ful sway over the Cherokee Nation that embittered the minority faction against him. Colonel Hitchcock's exoneration of Ross would seem to be conclusive on the point.

Wonder at the achievements of the Indians in the field of reconstruction and advancement is increased when one considers the difficulties deliberately created by the Government. It was concerned first with the removal of the Indians by any means available; all other considerations yielded to this; if it was necessary to employ bribery, so be it. The Government early adopted the policy of dealing with a minority of a tribe and then pretending that the whole tribe was bound. This it did when it bribed William McIntosh to sign the Creek Treaty of 1825⁠4 which initiated a feud and division of the tribe that lasted for sixty years and greatly retarded its recovery and reconstruction after removal. A period of almost civil war prevailed in the Cherokee Nation from the feud growing out of inducing a handful of unauthorized men of the tribe to sign the "Treaty" of 1835 and then going through the fraud of ratification by the United States Senate of what was called a treaty, but which notoriously was not a treaty.⁠5

The fatuous effort to compel the Creeks and Seminole Indians to amalgamate and an equally foolish and futile attempt to force a similar union of the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians were only slightly less mischievous. These four outstanding instances of injustice and ineptitude by the Government interposed such tremendous difficulties to normal recovery that their success and progress in spite of them were remarkable. Much of what they accomplished is to be attributed to the loyalty, good sense, and patience of some of the Indian agents for which some of them — not all — were notable. The missionaries again deserve a generous share of the credit.

 p425  The Government clearly did not know what to do with these immigrant Indians and had no definite policy for dealing with them and promoting their welfare. Its legislation and administration were therefore often expedient, ill-advised and inadequate. Having but a vague knowledge of the character, condition, and needs of the Indians, there was the added difficulty of the great distance between their homes in the Indian Territory and the seat of government in Washington where the Administration was engaged in making laws and regulations for a people it had never seen.

In some ways this isolation was an advantage to the Indians for in spite of the inefficiency of the administration of their affairs by the Government, when left much to their own resources they made amazing progress in adjusting themselves to their new surroundings; a progress that developed at a more rapid pace than in any period since the Civil War when initiative and self-reliance were supplanted by government paternalism. The Government at times actively interfered with the aspirations and natural progress of these people. They had been promised in their treaties that they should be allowed to govern themselves and that they should never be made part of a state of the Union. But to the great exasperation and anxiety of the Indians the Government for years in violation of its promises pursued them with plans approaching coercion, to unite them in a confederacy of civilized and wild Indians;⁠6 a policy that left the Indians in a state of uncertainty and unrest and interfered seriously with their normal recovery. However when released from this interference the resilient spirit of the tribes caught step again with the tempo of their interrupted progress.

Streams and settlements, council grounds and geographic divisions were given cherished names brought from their old nation. Time aided the older people to forget the grief over the loss of their old home, and to substitute the new in their affections. Younger generations having no recollection of any other, had no regrets to live down, and contributed with greater facility and in a large measure to reconstruction and readjustment.

It is undeniable that the Government did greatly aid the Indians by providing a home for them then far removed from the devastating influence of the white man. Relieving them from the hopeless struggle  p426 against the whites who were determined to have their land, the hopes and aspirations of these red people found an atmosphere in which they could expand; in which they could assert the manhood and freedom they cherished and could live in their own normal way. In this atmosphere, in sincere pride of their race and conscious of a state of independence, they organized their governments and other institutions of an orderly people and pursued a course that earned for them the name of The Five Civilized Tribes.

---

The Author's Notes:

1 For an account of this legislation and the removal of the Indians see Foreman, Indian Removal, op. cit.

2 Robert Sparks Walker, Torchlights to the Cherokees: Grant Foreman, Indians and Pioneers.

3 Indian Removal, 246.

4 Kappler, op. cit., 151.

5 Ibid., 324.

6 For an extended treatment of this subject see Grant Foreman, Advancing the Frontier, 185.

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