ARMED-M
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The
Armed M is a publication of the 2nd Amendment SIG, a special interest group of
American Mensa Ltd. Opinions expressed herein are the opinions of the writers,
and not of American Mensa, Ltd., which has no opinions. This newsletter is
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Mar-April 2004 I have moved and am now in
Wilmington North Carolina. My E-Mail address is Smith705@Juno.com. I can always
use contributions to the newsletter. If you write something or find something
e-mail it to me I'll put it in the newsletter as space and theme allows. Bob
Smith -----
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I
have been having computer problems with my juno setup on my computer.
So this will be a joint issue and short.
The
movie the Alamo is coming out so I thought I would do a relevant piece.
Many years ago I was in San Antonio for my son’s commissioning as a Air
Force office and toured the Alamo. My
son just made Lieutenant Colonel so it was a while ago
Mexico had the area of Texas and the Mexican government
wanted it populated. They said if a
person would be baptized in the Catholic Church and swear an allegiance to
Mexico they could migrate to Texas and get a land grant.
Slavery had been abolished in Mexico about thirty years earlier but it
would be allowed in Texas. One of
the survivors of the battle of the Alamo was Joe, Travis’s slave.
A few years after the battle Joe ran away and Travis’s relatives put up
a reward for his return. So much
for gratefulness. Joe reappeared
about 1881 and then disappeared again.. One
of the heroes of the Alamo was Davie Crocket.
He had been a politician and lost the election over the Indian removal
Act. He said, “If I were the only
one in the country to believe in this I would still vote against the Indian
removal Act.” In Cherokee Alabama
the removal is known as the “Trail of Tears.”
Data on a lot to government actions is hard to get but the Batan Death
March of WWII had approximately an 8-12% death rate of Americans. Because of this, in the war crimes Trials of WWII the
commander and some of his assistants in the Death march were executed as war
criminals. The death rate on the
Trail of Tears was in the same range as the Batan Death March.
The Trail Where They Cried
nu na hi du na tlo hi lu i
"There were ten million Native Americans on this
continent when the first non-Indians arrived. Over the next 300 years, 90% of
all Native American original population was either wiped out by disease, famine,
or warfare imported by the whites."
By 1840 all the eastern tribes had been subdued, annihilated or forcibly removed
to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi.
The discovery of the New World by European explorers caused endless problems
for American Indians, whose homelands were gradually taken from them and whose
cultures were dramatically altered, and in some cases destroyed, by the
invasion.
The first contact between southeastern American Indians and Europeans was
the expedition of Hernando de Soto in 1540. De Soto took captives for use as
slave labor, while others were abused because the Europeans deemed them savages.
Epidemic diseases brought by the Europeans spread through the Indian villages,
decimating native populations.
Over the next two centuries more and more white settlers arrived, and the native
cultures responded to pressures to adopt the foreign ways, leading to the
deterioration of their own culture. During the colonial period Indian tribes
often became embroiled in European colonial wars. If they were on the losing
side, they frequently had to give up parts of their homelands.
After the American Revolution the Indians faced another set of problems. Even
though it took time for the new government to establish a policy for dealing
with the Indians, the precedent had been set during the colonial period. The
insatiable desire of white settlers for lands occupied by Indian people
inevitably led to the formulation of a general policy of removing the unwanted
inhabitants.
Political leaders including President Thomas Jefferson believed that the Indians
should be civilized, which to him meant converting them to Christianity and
turning them into farmers. Many other whites agreed, and missionaries were sent
among the tribes. But when the transformation did not happen quickly enough,
views changed about the Indian people's ability to be assimilated into white
culture.
"We, the great mass of the people think only of the love we have to our
land for...we do love the land where we were brought up. We will never let our
hold to this land go...to let it go it will be like throwing away...[our] mother
that gave...[us] birth."
(Letter from Aitooweyah, to John Ross, principal chief of the Cherokees.)
National policy to move Indians west of the
Mississippi developed after the Louisiana Territory was purchased from the
French in 1803. Whites moving onto these lands pressed the U.S. government to do
something about the Indian presence. In 1825 the U.S. government formally
adopted a removal policy, which was carried out extensively in the 1830's by
Presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren. The result was particularly
overwhelming for the Indians of the southeastern United States - primarily the
Cherokee, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles - who were finally removed
hundreds of miles to a new home.
Perhaps the most culturally devastating episode of this era is that concerning
the removal of the Cherokee Indians, who called themselves (Italicized- Ani Yun
wiya.) Traditionally the Cherokees had lived in villages in the southern
Appalachians - present-day Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, western
North Carolina, and South Carolina, northern Georgia, and northeastern Alabama.
Here in a land of valleys, ridges, mountains, and streams they developed a
culture based on farming, hunting, and fishing.
The Cherokees took on some of the ways of white society. They built
European-style homes and farmsteads, laid out European-style fields and farms,
developed a written language, established a newspaper, and wrote a constitution.
But they found that they were not guaranteed equal protection under the law and
that they could not prevent whites from seizing their lands. They were driven
from their homes, herded into internment camps, and moved by force to a strange
land.
Cherokee Relations With The U.S. Government
Beginning in 1791 a series of treaties between the
United States and the Cherokees living in Georgia gave recognition to the
Cherokees as a nation with their own laws and customs. Nevertheless, treaties
and agreements gradually whittled away at this land base, and in the late 1700's
some Cherokees sought refuge from white interference by moving to northwestern
Arkansas between the White and Arkansas rivers. As more and more land cessions
were forced on the Cherokees during the first two decades of the 1800's, the
number moving to Arkansas increased. Then in 1819 the Cherokee National council
notified the federal government that it would no longer cede land, thus
hardening their resolve to remain on their dispute traditional homelands.
States' Rights Issue
The Cherokee situation was further complicated by the
issue of state's rights and a prolonged dispute between Georgia and the federal
government. In 1802 Georgia was the last of the original colonies to cede its
western lands to the federal government. In doing so, Georgia expected all
titles to the land held by Indians to be extinguished. However, that did not
happen, and the Principal People continued to occupy their ancestral homelands,
which had been guaranteed to them by treaty.
"...Inclination to remove from this land has no abiding place in our
hearts, and when we move we shall move by the course of nature to sleep under
this ground which the Great Spirit gave to our ancestors and which now covers
them in their undisturbed peace."
Cherokee Legislative Council
New Echota July 1830
Georgia residents resented the Cherokees success in
holding onto their tribal lands and governing themselves. Settlers continued to
encroach on Cherokee lands, as well as those belonging to the neighboring Creek
Indians. In 1828 Georgia passed a law pronouncing all laws of the Cherokee
Nation to be null and void after June 1, 1830, forcing the issue of states'
rights with the federal government. Because the state no longer recognized the
rights of the Cherokees, tribal meetings had to held just across the state line
at Red Clay, Tennessee. When gold was discovered on Cherokee land in northern
Georgia in 1829, efforts to dislodge the Principal People from their lands were
intensified. At the same time President Andrew Jackson began to aggressively
implement a broad policy of extinguishing Indian land titles in affected states
and relocating the Indian population.
"No eastern tribe had struggled harder or more successfully to make white
civilization their own. For generations the Cherokee had lived side by side with
whites in Georgia. They had devised a written language, published their own
newspaper, adopted a constitution, and a Christian faith. But after gold was
discovered on their land, even they were told they would have to start over
again in the West."
The West, a documentary by Ken Burns and Stephen Ives
Supreme Court Cases
In 1830 Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, which
directed the executive branch to negotiate for Indian lands. This act, in
combination with the discovery of gold and an increasingly untenable position
with the state of Georgia, prompted the Cherokee Nation to bring suit in the
U.S. Supreme Court. In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) Chief Justice John
Marshall, writing for the majority, held that the Cherokee Nation was a
"domestic dependent nation," and therefore Georgia state law applied
to them.
That decision, however, was reversed the following year in Worcester v. Georgia.
Under an 1830 law Georgia required all white residents in Cherokee country to
secure a license from the governor and to take an oath of allegiance to the
state. Missionaries Samuel A. Worcester and Elizur Butler refused and were
convicted and imprisoned. Worcester appealed to the Supreme Court. This time the
court found that Indian nations are capable of making treaties, that under the
Constitution treaties are the supreme law of the land, that the federal
government had exclusive jurisdiction within the boundaries of the Cherokee
Nation, and that state law had no force within the Cherokee boundaries.
Worcester was ordered released from jail.
President Jackson refused to enforce the court's decision and along with legal
technicalities, the fate of the Principal People seemed to be in the hands of
the federal government. Even though the Cherokee people had adopted many
practices of the white culture, and had used the court system in two major
Supreme Court cases, they were unable to halt the removal process.
"John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it."
President Andrew Jackson re: Worcester v. Georgia
Treaty
of New Echota
The
state of Georgia continued to press for Indian lands, and a group of Cherokees
known as the Treaty Party began negotiating a treaty with the federal
government. The group led by Major Ridge and including his son John, Elias
Boudinot, and his brother Stand Watie, signed a treaty at New Echota in 1835.
Despite the majority opposition to this treaty - opposition led by Principal
Chief John Ross - the eastern lands were sold for $5 million, and the Cherokees
agreed to move beyond the Mississippi River to Indian Territory. The Senate
ratified the treaty despite knowledge that only a minority of Cherokees had
accepted it. Within two years the Principal People were to move from their
ancestral homelands.
The Roundup
"My friends, circumstances render it impossible that you can flourish in
the midst of a civilized community. You have but one remedy within your reach,
and that is to remove to the west. And the sooner you do this, the sooner you
will commence your career of improvement and prosperity."
Andrew Jackson
President Martin Van Buren ordered the implementation
of the Treaty of New Echota in 1838, and U.S. Army troops under the command of
Gen. Winfield Scott began rounding up the Cherokees and moving them into
stockades in North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee. Altogether 31
forts were constructed for this purpose - 13 in Georgia, five in North Carolina,
eight in Tennessee, and five in Alabama. All of the posts were near Cherokee
towns, and they served only as temporary housing for the Cherokees.
As soon as practical, the Indians were transferred from the removal forts to 11
internment camps that were more centrally located - 10 in Tennessee and one in
Alabama. In North Carolina, for example, Cherokees at the removal forts were
sent to Fort Butler, and by the second week in July on to the principal agency
at Fort Cass. By late July 1838, with the exception of the Oconaluftee Citizen
Indians, the fugitives hiding in the mountains, and some scattered families,
virtually all other Cherokees remaining in the East were in the internment
camps.
According to a military report for July 1838, the seven camps in and around
Charleston, Tennessee, contained more than 4,800 Cherokees: 700 at the agency
post, 600 at Rattlesnake Spring, 870 at the first encampment on Mouse Creek,
1,600 at the second encampment of Mouse Creek, 900 at Bedwell Springs, 1,300 on
Chestooee, 700 on the ridge east of the agency, and 600 on the Upper Chatate.
Some 2,000 Cherokees were camped at Gunstocker Spring 13 miles from Calhoun,
Tennessee.
One group of Cherokees did not leave the mountains of North Carolina. This group
traced their origin to an 1819 treaty that gave them an allotment of land and
American citizenship on lands not belonging to the Cherokee Nation. When the
forced removal came in 1838, this group--now called the Oconaluftee Cherokees -
claimed the 1835 treaty did not apply to them as they no longer lived on
Cherokee lands. Tsali and his sons were involved in raids on the U.S. soldiers
who were sent to drive the Cherokees to the stockades. The responsible Indians
were punished by the army, but the rest of the group gained permission to stay,
and North Carolina ultimately recognized their rights. Fugitive Cherokees from
the nation also joined the Oconaluftee Cherokees, and in time this group became
the Eastern Band of Cherokees, who still reside in North Carolina.
nu na hi du na tlo hi lu i Trail Where They Cried
"One by one Indian peoples were removed to the West. The Delaware, the
Ottawa, Shawnee, Pawnee and Potawatomi, the Sauk and Fox, Miami and Kickapoo,
the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole. In all some 90 thousand Indians were
relocated. The Cherokee were among the last to go. Some reluctantly agreed to
move. Others were driven from their homes at bayonet point. Almost two thousand
of them died along the route they remembered as the Trail of Tears."
Documentary: The West (Ken Burns/Stephen Ives)
During the roundup intimidation and acts of cruelty
at the hands of the troops, along with the theft and destruction of property by
local residents, further alienated the Cherokees. Finally, Chief Ross appealed
to President Van Buren to permit the Cherokees to oversee their own removal. Van
Buren consented, and Ross and his brother Lewis administered the effort. The
Cherokees were divided into 16 detachments of about 1,000 each.
Water Route
Three detachments of Cherokees, totaling about 2,800
persons, traveled by river to Indian Territory. The first of these groups left
on June 6 by steamboat and barge from Ross's Landing on the Tennessee River
(present-day Chattanooga). They followed the Tennessee as it wound across
northern Alabama, including a short railroad detour around the shoals between
Decatur and Tuscumbia Landing. The route then headed north through central
Tennessee and Kentucky to the Ohio River. The Ohio took them to the Mississippi
River, which they followed to the mouth of the Arkansas River. The Arkansas led
northwest to Indian Territory, and they arrived aboard a steamboat at the mouth
of Salisaw Creek near Fort Coffee on June 19, 1838. The other two groups
suffered more because of a severe drought and disease (especially among the
children), and they did not arrive in Indian Territory until the end of the
summer.
Land Routes
The rest of the Principal People traveled to Indian
Territory overland on existing roads. They were organized into detachments
ranging in size from 700 to 1,600, with each detachment headed by a conductor
and an assistant conductor appointed by John Ross. The Cherokees who had signed
the treaty of New Echota were moved in a separate detachment conducted by John
Bell and administered by US. Army Lt. Edward Deas. A physician, and perhaps a
clergyman, usually accompanied each detachment. Supplies of flour and corn, and
occasionally salt pork, coffee, and sugar, were obtained in advance, but were
generally of poor quality. Drought and the number of people being moved reduced
forage for draft animals, which often were used to haul possessions, while the
people routinely walked.
The most commonly used overland route followed a northern alignment, while other
detachments (notably those led by John Being and John Bell) followed more
southern routes, and some followed slight variations. The northern route started
at, Tennessee, and crossed central Tennessee, southwestern Kentucky, and
southern Illinois. After crossing the Mississippi River north of Cape Girardeau,
Missouri, these detachments trekked across southern Missouri and the northwest
corner of Arkansas.
Road conditions, illness, and the distress of winter, particularly in southern
Illinois while detachments waited to cross the ice-choked Mississippi, made
death a daily occurrence. Mortality rates for the entire removal and its
aftermath were substantial, totaling approximately 8,000.
"I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their homes, and
driven at the 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 six
hundred and forty-five 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..."
Private John G. Burnett
Captain Abraham McClellan's Company,
2nd Regiment, 2nd Brigade, Mounted Infantry
Cherokee Indian Removal 1838-39
Most of the land route detachments entered
present-day Oklahoma near Westville and were often met by a detachment of US.
troops from Fort Gibson and the Arkansas River. The army officially received the
Cherokees, who generally went to live with those who had already arrived, or
awaited land assignments while camped alone the Illinois River and its
tributaries east of present-day Tahlequah.
Aftermath
In the Indian Territory problems quickly developed
among the new arrivals and Cherokees who had already settled, especially as
reprisals were taken against the contingent who had signed the Treaty of New
Echota. As these problems were resolved, the Cherokees proceeded to adapt to
their new homeland, and they reestablished their own system of government, which
was modeled on that of the United States.
"A common ancestry promotes understanding between Cherokee full bloods and
the mixed bloods. They are poles apart in many respects but, under the skin, are
still brothers. For one thing, they have Cherokee traditions in common, and no
amount of white blood can dilute the remembrance of what happened in centuries
past to the Cherokee people."
Grace Steele Woodward
Tribal government was headquartered in Tahlequah and
adhered to a constitution that divided responsibilities among an elected
principal chief, an elected legislature know as the National Council, and a
supreme court with lesser courts. Local districts with elected officials,
similar to counties, formed the basis of the nation. The Cherokees maintained a
bilingual school system, and missionaries from the American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions were active in the nation.
This autonomy remained reasonably strong until the Civil War, when a faction of
the Cherokees sided with the Confederacy. During Reconstruction they suffered a
loss of self-government and, more importantly, their land base. Government
annuities were reduced, and lands were sold to newly arrived tribes. Cessions of
land continued during the later 19th century, and the federal government emerged
as the major force for land cessions under the Dawes Act of 1887, which divided
up tribal lands. The establishment of the state of Oklahoma in 1907 increased
pressure for land cessions. Many people of questionable Cherokee ancestry
managed to get on the tribal rolls and participate in the allotment of these
lands to individuals. By the early 1970's the Western Cherokees had lost title
to over 19 million acres of land.
Difficult times continued because of the effects of the 1930's depression and
the government policy to relocate Indians from tribal areas to urban America.
Many Cherokees found themselves in urban slums with a lack of basic needs.
Differences also emerged between traditionalists and those who adapted to
mainstream society. During the 1970's and after, however, the Cherokees'
situation improved because of self rule and economic programs.
Throughout the years, the Cherokees have sought to maintain much of their
original cultural identity. To increase public awareness of their heritage, many
of them have advocated the designation of the Trail of Tears as a historic
trail.
"The Cherokee are probably the most tragic instance of what could have
succeeded in American Indian policy and didn't. All these things that Americans
would proudly see as the hallmarks of civilization are going to the West by
Indian people. They do everything they were asked except one thing. What the
Cherokees ultimately are, they may be Christian, they may be literate, they may
have a government like ours, but ultimately they are Indian. And in the end,
being Indian is what kills them."
Richard White, Historian
(taken from the Trail of Tears National Historic
Trail, Comprehensive Management and Use Plan, US Dept of Interior, National Park
Service)