With the final removal of the Cherokee from their native country
and their reunion and reorganization under new conditions in Indian
Territory in 1840 their aboriginal period properly comes to a close
and the rest may be dismissed in a few paragraphs as of concern rather
to the local historian than to the ethnologist. Having traced for
three full centuries their gradual evolution from a savage tribe to a
civilized Christian nation, with a national constitution and national
press printed in their own national alphabet, we can afford to leave
the rest to others, the principal materials being readily accessible
in the Cherokee national archives at Tahlequah, in the files of
the Cherokee Advocate and other newspapers published in the Nation,
and in the annual reports and other documents of the Indian office.
For many years the hunter and warrior had been giving place to the
farmer and mechanic, and the forced expatriation made the change
complete and final. Torn from their native streams and mountains,
their council fires extinguished and their townhouses burned behind
them, and transported bodily to a far distant country where everything
was new and strange, they were obliged perforce to forego the old
life and adjust themselves to changed surroundings. The ballplay
was neglected and the green-corn dance proscribed, while the heroic
tradition of former days became a fading memory or a tale to amuse
a child. Instead of ceremonials and peace councils we hear now of
railroad deals and contracts with cattle syndicates, and instead of the
old warrior chiefs who had made the Cherokee name a terror--Oconostota,
Hanging-maw, Doublehead, and Pathkiller--we find the destinies of the
nation guided henceforth by shrewd mixed-blood politicians, bearing
white men's names and speaking the white man's language, and frequently
with hardly enough Indian blood to show itself in the features.
The change was not instantaneous, nor is it even yet complete,
for although the tendency is constantly away from the old things,
and although frequent intermarriages are rapidly bleaching out
the brown of the Indian skin, there are still several thousand
full-blood Cherokee--enough to constitute a large tribe if set off by
themselves--who speak only their native language and in secret bow
down to the nature-gods of their fathers. Here, as in other lands,
the conservative element has taken refuge in the mountain districts,
while the mixed-bloods and the adopted whites are chiefly on the
richer low grounds and in the railroad towns.
On the reorganization of the united Nation the council ground at
Tahlequah was designated as the seat of government, and the present
town was soon afterward laid out upon the spot, taking its name from
the old Cherokee town of Talikwa', or Tellico, in Tennessee. The
missions were reestablished, the Advocate was revived, and the work
of civilization was again taken up, though under great difficulties,
as continued removals and persecutions, with the awful suffering
and mortality of the last great emigration, had impoverished and
more than decimated the Nation and worn out the courage even of the
bravest. The bitterness engendered by the New Echota treaty led to
a series of murders and assassinations and other acts of outlawry,
amounting almost to civil war between the Ross and Ridge factions,
until the Government was at last obliged to interfere. The Old Settlers
also had their grievances and complaints against the newcomers, so
that the history of the Cherokee Nation for the next twenty years is
largely a chronicle of factional quarrels, through which civilization
and every good work actually retrograded behind the condition of a
generation earlier.
Sequoya, who had occupied a prominent position in the affairs of the
Old Settlers and assisted much in the reorganization of the Nation, had
become seized with a desire to make linguistic investigations among the
remote tribes, very probably with a view of devising a universal Indian
alphabet. His mind dwelt also on the old tradition of a lost band of
Cherokee living somewhere toward the western mountains. In 1841 and
1842, with a few Cherokee companions and with his provisions and papers
loaded in an ox cart, he made several journeys into the West, received
everywhere with kindness by even the wildest tribes. Disappointed
in his philologic results, he started out in 1843 in quest of the
lost Cherokee, who were believed to be somewhere in northern Mexico,
but, being now an old man and worn out by hardship, he sank under the
effort and died--alone and unattended, it is said--near the village
of San Fernando, Mexico, in August of that year. Rumors having come
of his helpless condition, a party had been sent out from the Nation
to bring him back, but arrived too late to find him alive. A pension
of three hundred dollars, previously voted to him by the Nation,
was continued to his widow--the only literary pension in the United
States. Besides a wife he left two sons and a daughter. [370] Sequoyah
district of the Cherokee Nation was named in his honor, and the great
trees of California (Sequoia gigantea) also preserve his memory.
In 1846 a treaty was concluded at Washington by which the conflicting
claims of the Old Settlers and later emigrants were adjusted,
reimbursement was promised for sums unjustly deducted from the
five-million-dollar payment guaranteed under the treaty of 1835,
and a general amnesty was proclaimed for all past offenses within the
Nation. [371] Final settlement of the treaty claims has not yet been
made, and the matter is still a subject of litigation, including all
the treaties and agreements up to the present date.
In 1859 the devoted missionary Samuel Worcester, author of numerous
translations and first organizer of the Advocate, died at Park Hill
mission, in the Cherokee Nation, after thirty-five years spent in
the service of the Cherokee, having suffered chains, imprisonment,
and exile for their sake. [372]
The breaking out of the civil war in 1861 found the Cherokee divided
in sentiment. Being slave owners, like the other Indians removed
from the southern states, and surrounded by southern influences, the
agents in charge being themselves southern sympathizers, a considerable
party in each of the tribes was disposed to take active part with the
Confederacy. The old Ridge party, headed by Stand Watie and supported
by the secret secession organization known as the Knights of the
Golden Circle, declared for the Confederacy. The National party,
headed by John Ross and supported by the patriotic organization
known as the Kitoowah society--whose members were afterward known
as Pin Indians--declared for strict neutrality. At last, however,
the pressure became too strong to be resisted, and on October 7,
1861, a treaty was concluded at Tahlequah, with General Albert Pike,
commissioner for the Confederate states, by which the Cherokee Nation
cast its lot with the Confederacy, as the Creeks, Choctaw, Chickasaw,
Seminole, Osage, Comanche, and several smaller tribes had already
done. [373]
Two Cherokee regiments were raised for the Confederate service,
under command of Stand Watie and Colonel Drew, respectively, the
former being commissioned as brigadier-general. They participated in
several engagements, chief among them being the battle of Pea Ridge,
Arkansas, on March 7, 1862. [374] In the following summer the Union
forces entered the Cherokee country and sent a proposition to Ross,
urging him to repudiate the treaty with the Confederate states,
but the offer was indignantly declined. Shortly afterward, however,
the men of Drew's regiment, finding themselves unpaid and generally
neglected by their allies, went over almost in a body to the Union
side, thus compelling Ross to make an arrangement with the Union
commander, Colonel Weir. Leaving the Cherokee country, Ross retired
to Philadelphia, from which he did not return until the close of the
war. [375] In the meantime Indian Territory was ravaged alternately by
contending factions and armed bodies, and thousands of loyal fugitives
were obliged to take refuge in Kansas, where they were cared for by
the government. Among these, at the close of 1862, were two thousand
Cherokee. In the following spring they were sent back to their homes
under armed escort to give them an opportunity to put in a crop,
seeds and tools being furnished for the purpose, but had hardly begun
work when they were forced to retire by the approach of Stand Watie
and his regiment of Confederate Cherokee, estimated at seven hundred
men. Stand Watie and his men, with the Confederate Creeks and others,
scoured the country at will, destroying or carrying off everything
belonging to the loyal Cherokee, who had now, to the number of nearly
seven thousand, taken refuge at Fort Gibson. Refusing to take sides
against a government which was still unable to protect them, they
were forced to see all the prosperous accumulations of twenty years
of industry swept off in this guerrilla warfare. In stock alone their
losses were estimated at more than 300,000 head. [376]
"The events of the war brought to them more of desolation and ruin
than perhaps to any other community. Raided and sacked alternately,
not only by the Confederate and Union forces, but by the vindictive
ferocity and hate of their own factional divisions, their country
became a blackened and desolate waste. Driven from comfortable homes,
exposed to want, misery, and the elements, they perished like sheep in
a snow storm. Their houses, fences, and other improvements were burned,
their orchards destroyed, their flocks and herds slaughtered or driven
off, their schools broken up, their schoolhouses given to the flames,
and their churches and public buildings subjected to a similar fate;
and that entire portion of their country which had been occupied by
their settlements was distinguishable from the virgin prairie only by
the scorched and blackened chimneys and the plowed but now neglected
fields." [377]
After five years of desolation the Cherokee emerged from the war
with their numbers reduced from 21,000 to 14,000, [378] and their
whole country in ashes. On July 19, 1866, by a treaty concluded at
Tahlequah, the nation was received back into the protection of the
United States, a general amnesty was proclaimed, and all confiscations
on account of the war prohibited; slavery was abolished without
compensation to former owners, and all negroes residing within the
Nation were admitted to full Cherokee citizenship. By articles 15 and
16 permission was given the United States to settle friendly Indians
within the Cherokee home country or the Cherokee strip by consent
and purchase from the Nation. By article 17 the Cherokee sold the
800,000-acre tract in Kansas secured by the treaty of 1835, together
with a two-mile strip running along the southern border of Kansas,
and thereafter to be included within the limits of that state, thus
leaving the Cherokee country as it was before the recent cession of the
Cherokee strip. Payment was promised for spoliations by United States
troops during the war; and $3,000 were to be paid out of the Cherokee
funds to the Reverend Evan Jones, then disabled and in poverty, as a
reward for forty years of faithful missionary labors. By article 26
"the United States guarantee to the Cherokees the quiet and peaceable
possession of their country and protection against domestic feuds
and insurrection as well as hostilities of other tribes. They shall
also be protected from intrusion by all unauthorized citizens of the
United States attempting to settle on their lands or reside in their
territory." [379]
The missionary, Reverend Evan Jones, who had followed the Cherokee
into exile, and his son, John B. Jones, had been admitted to Cherokee
citizenship the year before by vote of the Nation. The act conferring
this recognition recites that "we do bear witness that they have done
their work well." [380]
John Ross, now an old man, had been unable to attend this treaty, being
present at the time in Washington on business for his people. Before
its ratification he died in that city on August 1, 1866, at the age
of seventy-seven years, fifty-seven of which had been given to the
service of his Nation. No finer panegyric was ever pronounced than
the memorial resolution passed by the Cherokee Nation on learning
of his death. [381] Notwithstanding repeated attempts to subvert his
authority, his people had remained steadfast in their fidelity to him,
and he died, as he had lived for nearly forty years, the officially
recognized chief of the Nation. With repeated opportunities to enrich
himself at the expense of his tribe, he died a poor man. His body
was brought back and interred in the territory of the Nation. In
remembrance of the great chief one of the nine districts of the
Cherokee Nation has been called by his Indian name, Cooweescoowee (46).
Under the provisions of the late treaty the Delawares in Kansas,
to the number of 985, removed to Indian territory in 1867 and became
incorporated as citizens of the Cherokee Nation. They were followed
in 1870 by the Shawano, chiefly also from Kansas, to the number of
770. [382] These immigrants settled chiefly along the Verdigris, in the
northwestern part of the Nation. Under the same treaty the Osage, Kaw,
Pawnee, Ponca, Oto and Missouri, and Tonkawa were afterward settled on
the western extension known then as the Cherokee strip. The captive
Nez Percés of Joseph's band were also temporarily located there,
but have since been removed to the states of Washington and Idaho.
In 1870 the Missouri, Kansas and Texas railway, a branch of the Union
Pacific system, was constructed through the lands of the Cherokee
Nation under an agreement ratified by the Government, it being the
first railroad to enter that country. [383] Several others have since
been constructed or projected.
The same year saw a Cherokee literary revival. The publication of the
Advocate, which had been suspended since some years before the war,
was resumed, and by authority of the Nation John B. Jones began the
preparation of a series of schoolbooks in the Cherokee language and
alphabet for the benefit of those children who knew no English. [384]
In the spring of 1881 a delegation from the Cherokee Nation visited
the East Cherokee still remaining in the mountains of North Carolina
and extended to them a cordial and urgent invitation to remove and
incorporate upon equal terms with the Cherokee Nation in the Indian
territory. In consequence several parties of East Cherokee, numbering
in all 161 persons, removed during the year to the western Nation,
the expense being paid by the Federal government. Others afterwards
applied for assistance to remove, but as no further appropriation was
made for the purpose nothing more was done. [385] In 1883 the East
Cherokee brought suit for a proportionate division of the Cherokee
funds and other interests under previous treaties, [386] but their
claim was finally decided adversely three years later on appeal to
the Supreme Court. [387]
In 1889 the Cherokee female seminary was completed at Tahlequah at a
cost of over $60,000, supplementing the work of the male seminary,
built some years before at a cost of $90,000. The Cherokee Nation
was now appropriating annually over $80,000 for school purposes,
including the support of the two seminaries, an orphan asylum, and
over one hundred primary schools, besides which there were a number
of mission schools. [388]
For a number of years the pressure for the opening of Indian territory
to white settlement had been growing in strength. Thousands of
intruders had settled themselves upon the lands of each of the five
civilized tribes, where they remained upon various pretexts in spite
of urgent and repeated appeals to the government by the Indians
for their removal. Under treaties with the five civilized tribes,
the right to decide citizenship or residence claims belonged to the
tribes concerned, but the intruders had at last become so numerous and
strong that they had formed an organization among themselves to pass
upon their own claims, and others that might be submitted to them,
with attorneys and ample funds to defend each claim in outside courts
against the decision of the tribe. At the same time the Government
policy was steadily toward the reduction or complete breaking up
of Indian reservations and the allotment of lands to the Indians in
severalty, with a view to their final citizenship, and the opening of
the surplus lands to white settlement. As a part of the same policy
the jurisdiction of the United States courts was gradually being
extended over the Indian country, taking cognizance of many things
hitherto considered by the Indian courts under former treaties with the
United States. Against all this the Cherokee and other civilized tribes
protested, but without avail. To add to the irritation, companies of
armed "boomers" were organized for the express purpose of invading
and seizing the Cherokee outlet and other unoccupied portions of the
Indian territory--reserved by treaty for future Indian settlement--in
defiance of the civil and military power of the Government.
We come now to what seems the beginning of the end of Indian
autonomy. In 1889 a commission, afterward known as the Cherokee
Commission, was appointed, under act of Congress, to "negotiate with
the Cherokee Indians, and with all other Indians owning or claiming
lands lying west of the ninety-sixth degree of longitude in the
Indian territory, for the cession to the United States of all their
title, claim, or interest of every kind or character in and to said
lands." In August of that year the commission made a proposition
to Chief J. B. Mayes for the cession of all the Cherokee lands
thus described, being that portion known as the Cherokee outlet or
strip. The proposition was declined on the ground that the Cherokee
constitution forbade its consideration. [389] Other tribes were
approached for a similar purpose, and the commission was continued,
with changing personnel from year to year, until agreements for
cession and the taking of allotments had been made with nearly all
the wilder tribes in what is now Oklahoma.
In the meantime the Attorney-General had rendered a decision denying
the right of Indian tribes to lease their lands without permission
of the Government. At this time the Cherokee were deriving an annual
income of $150,000 from the lease of grazing privileges upon the strip,
but by a proclamation of President Harrison on February 17, 1890,
ordering the cattlemen to vacate before the end of the year, this
income was cut off and the strip was rendered practically valueless
to them. [390] The Cherokee were now forced to come to terms, and a
second proposition for the cession of the Cherokee strip was finally
accepted by the national council on January 4, 1892. "It was known to
the Cherokees that for some time would-be settlers on the lands of
the outlet had been encamped in the southern end of Kansas, and by
every influence at their command had been urging the Government to
open the country to settlement and to negotiate with the Cherokees
afterwards, and that a bill for that purpose had been introduced in
Congress." The consideration was nearly $8,600,000, or about $1.25
per acre, for something over 6,000,000 acres of land. One article
of the agreement stipulates for "the reaffirmation to the Cherokee
Nation of the right of local self-government." [391] The agreement
having been ratified by Congress, the Cherokee strip was opened by
Presidential proclamation on September 16, 1893. [392]
The movement for the abolition of the Indian governments and the
allotment and opening of the Indian country had now gained such force
that by act of Congress approved March 3, 1893, the President was
authorized to appoint a commission of three--known later as the Dawes
Commission, from its distinguished chairman, Senator Henry L. Dawes
of Massachusetts--to negotiate with the five civilized tribes of
Indian territory, viz, the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and
Seminole, for "the extinguishment of tribal titles to any lands within
that territory, now held by any and all of such nations and tribes,
either by cession of the same or some part thereof to the United
States, or by the allotment and division of the same in severalty
among the Indians of such nations or tribes respectively as may be
entitled to the same, or by such other method as may be agreed upon
... to enable the ultimate creation of a state or states of the Union,
which shall embrace the land within the said Indian territory." [393]
The commission appointed arrived in the Indian territory in January,
1894, and at once began negotiations. [394]
At this time the noncitizen element in Indian Territory was
officially reported to number at least 200,000 souls, while those
having rights as citizens of the five civilized tribes, including
full-blood and mixed-blood Indians, adopted whites, and negroes,
numbered but 70,500. [395] Not all of the noncitizens were intruders,
many being there by permission of the Indian governments or on
official or other legitimate business, but the great body of them
were illegal squatters or unrecognized claimants to Indian rights,
against whose presence the Indians themselves had never ceased to
protest. A test case brought this year in the Cherokee Nation was
decided by the Interior Department against the claimants and in favor
of the Cherokee. Commenting upon threats made in consequence by the
rejected claimants, the agent for the five tribes remarks: "It is not
probable that Congress will establish a court to nullify and vacate
a formal decision of the Interior Department." [396] A year later
he says of these intruders that "so long as they have a foothold--a
residence, legal or not--in the Indian country they will be disturbers
of peace and promoters of discord, and while they cry aloud, and spare
not, for allotment and statehood, they are but stumbling blocks and
obstacles to that mutual good will and fraternal feeling which must be
cultivated and secured before allotment is practicable and statehood
desirable." [397] The removal of the intruders was still delayed,
and in 1896 the decision of citizenship claims was taken from the
Indian government and relegated to the Dawes Commission. [398]
In 1895 the commission was increased to five members, with enlarged
powers. In the meantime a survey of Indian Territory had been ordered
and begun. In September the agent wrote: "The Indians now know that
a survey of their lands is being made, and whether with or without
their consent, the survey is going on. The meaning of such survey
is too plain to be disregarded, and it is justly considered as the
initial step, solemn and authoritative, toward the overthrow of their
present communal holdings. At this writing surveying corps are at work
in the Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw Nations, and therefore each one
of these tribes has an ocular demonstration of the actual intent and
ultimate purpose of the government of the United States." [399]
The general prosperity and advancement of the Cherokee Nation at
this time may be judged from the report of the secretary of the
Cherokee national board of education to Agent Wisdom. He reports 4,800
children attending two seminaries, male and female, two high schools,
and one hundred primary schools, teachers being paid from $35 to $100
per month for nine months in the year. Fourteen primary schools were
for the use of the negro citizens of the Nation, besides which they
had a fine high school, kept up, like all the others, at the expense
of the Cherokee government. Besides the national schools there were
twelve mission schools helping to do splendid work for children of both
citizens and noncitizens. Children of noncitizens were not allowed to
attend the Cherokee national schools, but had their own subscription
schools. The orphan asylum ranked as a high school, in which 150
orphans were boarded and educated, with graduates every year. It
was a large brick building of three stories, 80 by 240 feet. The
male seminary, accommodating 200 pupils, and the female seminary,
accommodating 225 pupils, were also large brick structures, three
stories in height and 150 by 240 feet on the ground. Three members,
all Cherokee by blood, constituted a board of education. The secretary
adds that the Cherokee are proud of their schools and educational
institutions, and that no other country under the sun is so blessed
with educational advantages at large. [400]
At this time the Cherokee Nation numbered something over 25,000 Indian,
white, and negro citizens; the total citizen population of the three
races in the five civilized tribes numbered about 70,000, while the
noncitizens had increased to 250,000 and their number was being rapidly
augmented. [401] Realizing that the swift, inevitable end must be the
destruction of their national governments, the Cherokee began once more
to consider the question of removal from the United States. The scheme
is outlined in a letter written by a brother of the principal chief
of the Cherokee Nation under date of May 31, 1895, from which we quote.
After prefacing that the government of the United States seems
determined to break up the tribal autonomy of the five civilized
tribes and to divide their lands, thus bringing about conditions
under which the Cherokee could not exist, he continues:
Then for a remedy that will lead us out of it, away from it, and
one that promises our preservation as a distinct race of people
in the enjoyment of customs, social and political, that have been
handed down to us from remote generations of the past. My plan is
for the Cherokees to sell their entire landed possessions to the
United States, divide the proceeds thereof per capita, then such
as desire to do so unite in the formation of an Indian colony,
and with their funds jointly purchase in Mexico or South America
a body of land sufficient for all their purposes, to be forever
their joint home.... I believe also that for such Indians as did
not desire to join the colony and leave the country provision
should be made for them to repurchase their old homes, or such
other lands in the country here as they might desire, and they
could remain here and meet such fate as awaits them. I believe
this presents the most feasible and equitable solution of the
questions that we must decide in the near future, and will prove
absolutely just and fair to all classes and conditions of our
citizens. I also believe that the same could be acted upon by
any or all of the five civilized tribes.... [402]
The final chapter is nearly written. By successive enactments
within the last ten years the jurisdiction of the Indian courts
has been steadily narrowed and the authority of the Federal courts
proportionately extended; the right to determine Indian citizenship
has been taken from the Indians and vested in a Government commission;
the lands of the five tribes have been surveyed and sectionized by
Government surveyors; and by the sweeping provisions of the Curtis
act of June 28, 1898, "for the protection of the people of the Indian
Territory," the entire control of tribal revenues is taken from the
five Indian tribes and vested with a resident supervising inspector,
the tribal courts are abolished, allotments are made compulsory, and
authority is given to incorporate white men's towns in the Indian
tribes. [403] By this act the five civilized tribes are reduced to
the condition of ordinary reservation tribes under government agents
with white communities planted in their midst. In the meantime the
Dawes commission, continued up to the present, has by unremitting
effort broken down the opposition of the Choctaw and Chickasaw, who
have consented to allotment, while the Creeks and the Seminole are
now wavering. [404] The Cherokee still hold out, the Ketoowah secret
society (47) especially being strong in its resistance, and when
the end comes it is possible that the protest will take shape in a
wholesale emigration to Mexico. Late in 1897 the agent for the five
tribes reports that "there seems a determined purpose on the part of
many fullbloods ... to emigrate to either Mexico or South America
and there purchase new homes for themselves and families. Such
individual action may grow to the proportion of a colony, and it
is understood that liberal grants of land can be secured from the
countries mentioned. [405] Mexican agents are now (1901) among the
Cherokee advocating the scheme, which may develop to include a large
proportion of the five civilized tribes. [406]
By the census of 1898, the most recent taken, as reported by Agent
Wisdom, the Cherokee Nation numbered 34,461 persons, as follows:
Cherokee by blood (including all degrees of admixture), 26,500;
intermarried whites, 2,300; negro freedmen, 4,000; Delaware, 871;
Shawnee, 790. The total acreage of the Nation was 5,031,351 acres,
which, if divided per capita under the provisions of the Curtis bill,
after deducting 60,000 acres reserved for town-site and other purposes,
would give to each Cherokee citizen 144 acres. [407] It must be noted
that the official rolls include a large number of persons whose claims
are disputed by the Cherokee authorities.