After The Trail Of Tears: The Cherokees' Struggle For Sovereignty, 1839 1880

After The Trail Of Tears: The Cherokees' Struggle For Sovereignty, 1839 1880 by William Gerald McLoughlin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



What an amazing book! Histories of the Cherokee people tend to go up to the Removal and no further, as if Cherokee history ends at that point. Of course, that's not true. The Removal can possibly be said to be the most important single event in Cherokee history, although the event with the most damaging legacy is the passage of the Dawes and Curtis Acts collectively, as they illegally abrogated over two hundred years' worth of treaties between sovereign nations and ended the United States' recognition of the Cherokee tribe (as well as all others) as sovereign nations. Unfortunately, there are many, many fewer books about the Cherokee after the Removal than there are about the Cherokee before it.

This book goes a long way towards filling in the gap between the Removal and current times. As the title states, it specifically covers the years from 1839 to 1880 (the end date seemed rather arbitrary, but it was as good a place to stop as any). 1839 is the year that the Removal began, and although the author does cover it, it's really the starting point for McLoughlin's story of the Cherokee in their new homeland in Indian Territory.

For those who haven't read any Cherokee history whatsoever, this book may not be the best starting point. It doesn't absolutely require foreknowledge of major actors like The Ridge, his son John Ridge, John Ross, Elias Boudinot, Stand Watie and others of note, but it certainly is useful to have some of that knowledge even if it's only because it's easier to keep track of who's on which side. McLoughlin doesn't take a lot of time to build the back story, so it's probably not obvious why The Ridge was such a formidable leader and had so much influence even though he was never Principal Chief. Also, understanding the century and a half of Cherokee history (especially their dealings with white men) before the Removal would explain why there was a faction of Cherokees in favor of moving the tribe West.

In any case, the book quickly moves on to the efforts to rebuild the nation and deal with the factionalism that really only ended once the nation had been destroyed by the US in the early 1900s. Not only was the enmity between the Ross and Ridge factions deadly to members of both parties, it proved to be the focal point upon which the nation broke during the Civil War. But even aside from that, the early Cherokee settlers (those who had voluntarily moved as early as the 1820s) regarded the latecomers as potential usurpers of what they considered their established nation. Dealing with this degree of factionalism within the Cherokee nation consumed much of Principal Chief John Ross's time and efforts up until his death shortly after the Civil War.

McLoughlin covers this period of time in great detail. One of the best things about his book is that not only is he always talking about the national political situation, he gives an overview of what life was like for ordinary Cherokees at the same time. Obviously, the poor full-blood farmers had lost most of their possessions during the Removal and were expected to restart their lives as farmers in a new land that presented them with incredible challenges. They had been moved to worse farmland where the soil and vegetation as well as the climate were different from what they knew. They had no farm implements, no livestock, no seed, and not enough healthy people to put in all the work necessary even if they'd had the tools to do it. For a time they reverted to their oldest crafts, making earthenware pottery to serve and cook food in, as well as carving wooden utensils.

However, the Cherokee survived and prospered, eventually stabilizing and gaining some semblance of normality. Unfortunately, at the same time, the US was falling apart over the issue of slavery. Now, one of the lesser known aspects of Cherokee history is that there were Cherokee slave owners. The majority of Cherokees certainly did not own slaves, for the same reasons that most poor Southerners did not own slaves. Among the Cherokee however, there was no common feeling between the class of poor full-bloods and the richer (mostly) mixed-bloods (such was the common terminology at the time). When the US erupted into civil war, the Cherokee were caught between a rock and a hard place. The Cherokee Nation's leaders in the Ross Party and the majority of full-bloods (which means the majority of people) had no desire to side with the Confederate States. The reality, however, was that they had no power to resist the coercion of the Confederacy to side with them as the Union had no ability to project military power that far West and South at the time (or at least not the will to do it). In addition to that, the Ridge Party (led by Stand Watie, Ridge's nephew) was attempting to use John Ross's resistance to siding with the South as leverage with which to oust him from power, aided by the Confederacy. Ross decided that the only way to keep the Cherokee Nation in his party's hands was to at least temporarily side with the South. This may sound like a crass political ploy, which his opponents did accuse him of, but at the time the Ridge Party was petitioning the US government to separate the nation into two because they were tired of the "tyranny" of Ross and the full-bloods (this despite the fact that Ross was the representative of the majority). Ross saw this as a prelude to the destruction of the nation and determined that it would not happen. If that meant the nation had to side with the South in order to survive, he would do it. The Cherokee, as it happened, did not side with the Confederacy for long. Almost immediately after forming a couple of brigades, the one consisting primarily of full-bloods deserted. The anti-slavery, anti-Ridge Keetoowahs began organizing and fighting Watie's Confederate soldiers and supporters on their own. Eventually, Ross was willingly captured and went to Washington, where he affirmed that he'd only submitted to siding with the Confederacy under duress.

The Civil War, despite being a white man's war, split the Nation once again by reinforcing the division between the Ridge and Ross parties. This division, as well as the struggle to once again rebuild the nation, is the topic of much of the rest of the book. Eventually, as McLoughlin details, some reconciliation was achieved, but the Ridge supporters remained alienated from the leadership of the nation for the rest of the Cherokee Nation's history, right up until it was dissolved. Their original dislike for Ross stemmed from his staunch refusal to consider removal, which led to the treasonous Treaty of New Echota in 1835. After that, their contempt for Ross's government led to outright hatred when some Ross men (without his knowledge) assassinated Major Ridge, John Ridge, and Elias Boudinot. Not only were Watie and the other slave-owning mixed-bloods looking out for their economic interests when they sided with the South, they were seeking to use the conflict as a means to unseat Ross from power. When that was unsuccessful, after the Civil War their party morphed into opposition of the Downing government based on the fact that many of the wealthy mixed-bloods felt that their interests would be better served by some apportionment of the land and US citizenship, which naturally the full-bloods were dead-set against.

McLoughlin's book captures the complexity of Cherokee politics in this time wonderfully. He substantiates his arguments with plenty of evidence, and presents both sides in an unprejudiced light. This is exactly the kind of book that is necessary to give a counterbalance of all the stories of the Plains Indians during the same time period which is the image most Americans have of Natives post-Civil War. The story is not one merely of the inexorable expansion of Americans into Indian territory, but how the Indians dealt with whites all along as equals, or even as a method to gain influence in their own political systems. It is instructive and informative, and should be required reading for anyone looking to learn how Native societies deal with the encroachment of white societies.

The book's subtitle would imply that none of the history after 1880 is covered, but the author actually does go into a little bit of what happened up to the early 1900s. Obviously, as he says, the time of allotment and everything that happened during that is enough material for a book on its own (which unfortunately, he did not write), but he sketches out a rough image of what occurred. The story ends, basically, with the Cherokees left almost entirely landless, poor, and second-class citizens of a nation that didn't want them so much as it wanted their land.

All in all, this book is well-written, well-researched, and very, very informative for the student of Cherokee history. I highly recommend it.



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