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Copyright © 2011 by Daniel Blake Smith

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Smith, Daniel Blake.

American betrayal: Cherokee patriots and the Trail of Tears / Daniel
Blake Smith.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN: 978- 0-8050-8955- 4 (hardcover)
1. Cherokee Indians—History. 2. Cherokee Indians—Relocation.
3. Trail of Tears, 1838–1839. I. Title.
E99.C5S632 2011
975.004'97557—dc22 2010052594

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1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
 1
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Becoming “Civilized”

The Cherokees’ tragic saga commenced ironically on a note of

progress. The new national government in 1789 that George
Washington presided over was determined to reframe the nation’s
relationship with native peoples. The federal government, Wash-
ington insisted, would no longer treat Indians as conquered ene-
mies without any legal rights to their ancestral lands. Washington’s
secretary of war, Henry Knox, could not have been clearer: “The
Indians being the prior occupants, possess the right to soil. It
cannot be taken from them unless by their free consent. . . . To
dispossess them . . . would be a gross violation of the fundamen-
tal laws of nature, and of that . . . justice which is the glory of a
nation.”1 Having just concluded a difficult and costly war for
independence, Washington and Knox believed that the nation
could ill afford a belligerent approach to the Native Americans
on its frontiers. The Revolutionary War had also dislocated many
Indian nations. The Cherokees were left reeling from the dev-
astations of war, with more than fifty towns destroyed, fields
Cherokee country prior to removal
Map by Rebecca L. Wrenn
14 a n a m er i c a n b etrayal

decimated, livestock slaughtered, and population loss due to

exposure and starvation from military incursions. The war had
depleted more than twenty thousand square miles of valuable
hunting grounds for their deerskin trade.2
Empowered by the newly ratified Constitution, the United
States government determined to redefine its relationship with its
Indian neighbors. Guided by federal policy, Indian tribes were to
be viewed as sovereign, independent nations entitled to respect-
ful treatment by the new American government. Aggressive
encroachment upon Indian lands that had often sparked bloody
frontier warfare was to end because the national government
promised protection against troublesome white intruders— or so
the nation’s first president expected. Not only did Washington
foster peace with Indians; his federal government would protect
Native Americans from extinction, though most thought it inev-
itable, when “uncivilized” people confronted “civilized” ones.3
There was a catch: upon taking office, President George Wash-
ington made it clear that Americans wanted peace with their
Indian neighbors once they were remade as “red citizens” of a
white republic. The first condition was that hunting and trading
in furs—the principal livelihood of most tribes, especially those
in the Southeast—would be replaced by the more “civilized”
occupation of raising crops and livestock. Abandonment of
huge Indian hunting grounds for small farming plots guaran-
teed whites the strategic advantage of freeing up enormous
tracts of Indian land—land that whites (from President Wash-
ington down to the smallest subsistent farmers on the frontier)
coveted. Washington and Knox drew on the prevailing Enlight-
enment notion that all people can learn and have the ability to
reason. They and other Americans also subscribed to the white
belief that ultimately Indians would have to surrender their
 b eco m i n g “c i vi li ze d” 15

lands to the expanding white population. For reasons never

articulated, the founding fathers expected this could happen
without conflict or harm to the Indian population. After all,
Washington and Knox contended, Indians led “uncivilized”
lives not because of some inherent inferiority but because they
had not yet been able to imagine a better future for themselves
and their children. Ignorance, not race, then, had made them
“uncivilized” heathens. But with the right education and proper
training they could become respectable citizens, in a fully assi-
miliated (excluding black slaves) American society. Thus one of
the early treaties of the Washington administration with the
Cherokees, the 1791 Treaty of Holston, called for precisely this
sort of give and take between the “civilized” and the “uncivi-
lized”: “That the Cherokee Nation may be led to a greater degree
of civilization, and to become herdsmen and cultivators, instead
of remaining in a state of hunters, the United States will, from
time to time, furnish gratuitously the said nation with useful
implements of husbandry.” Americans would trade draft animals,
plows, and spinning wheels for Indian willingness to abandon
the hunt and chase after white civility.4
To carry out the new national Indian policy, federal agents
were sent out as middlemen between the chiefs and the policy
makers in the federal government. The agents were deployed to
protect Indian boundaries and set up trading posts where Indi-
ans would exchange their furs and skins for seed and hoes,
horses and plows.
Just as significantly, missionaries in the late 1790s began
arriving as well, armed with the religious values and domes-
tic tools for remaking Native Americans. Beginning in 1799,
evangelical Protestants—Moravians, Baptists, Methodists, and
Presbyterians—fanned out into Indian country, setting up schools
16 a n a m er i c a n b etrayal

and missions where Indian boys were taught to become farm-

ers and artisans and Indian girls learned to sew, weave, and
cook. And most important, missionaries hoped to introduce
Christianity—the telltale mark, whites believed, of a “civilized”
people. The Federalists’ Indian policy under Washington and
Knox imagined a prosperous world where whites and enlight-
ened Indians would guide their people according to “civilized”
principles and eventually produce a nation that included assimi-
lated Indians as full citizens.5
If Washington and Knox believed they could transform
Native Americans with federal Indian agents and Protestant
missionaries, Thomas Jefferson, by the time he became presi-
dent in 1801, pointed to scientific grounds for the prospects of
such hopeful assimilation. Since a backward life in the forest
was responsible for the Indians’ ignorance, a more “civilized”
environment would significantly improve them. And once that
happened, Jefferson argued, “we shall probably find that they
are formed in mind as well as in body, on the same module with
the ‘Homo sapiens Europaeus.’ ”6
Jefferson viewed Africans as inferior to whites, but as early as
1785 he observed, “I believe the Indian . . . to be in body and
mind equal to the whiteman.”7 Indians’ “vivacity and activity”
of mind, he believed, was the equal of whites, and physically
Indians were brave, active, and affectionate—the full equal to
whites. The orations of Demosthenes and Cicero, he observed,
did not surpass the speech he quoted from Iroquois chief Logan.
Once they exchanged the hunter state for agriculture, once they
gave up the wandering life of the chase for the stable existence
rooted in industry and thrift, Indians, he argued, would make
fully acceptable American citizens. The steps were simple: “1st,
to raise cattle, etc., and thereby acquire a knowledge of the value
 b eco m i n g “c i vi li ze d” 17

of property; 2d, arithmetic, to calculate that value; 3d, writing,

to keep accounts, and here they begin to enclose farms, and the
men to labor, the women to spin and weave; 4th, to read ‘Aesop’s
Fables’ and ‘Robinson Crusoe’ are their first delight.”8
This more positive, “enlightened” approach to Indian-white
relations may have offered hope to Cherokees—but it was meant
to feel like their last hope. It could not have been lost on the
Cherokees— or any other tribe subject to the civilization
program—that becoming “civilized” was their only alternative to
destruction. Becoming “civilized” was not, of course, a two-way
street; for whites, “civilized” Indians were those willingly sub-
merged into white culture. Early on Jefferson made this point:
“Incorporating themselves with us as citizens of the United
States, this is what the natural progress of things will, of course,
bring on, and it will be better to promote than to retard it. Surely
it will be better for them to be identified with us, and preserved
in the occupation of their lands, than be exposed to the many
casualties which may endanger them while a separate people.”9
Thinly disguised behind Jefferson’s enlightened rhetoric
about the malleability of native peoples stood the bedrock deter-
mination to acquire their lands. As he noted in 1803 in a letter
to an Indian agent: “In keeping agents among the Indians, two
objects are principally in view: 1. The preservation of peace; 2.
The obtaining lands.” For Jefferson, like most white leaders,
civilizing the Indians became simply a means for gaining access
to their lands. Hence the emphasis he placed on converting
Indians from hunters to small-scale farmers. “The Indians,” Jef-
ferson wrote, “being once closed in between strong settled
countries on the Mississippi & Atlantic, will, for want of game,
be forced to agriculture, will find that small portions of land
well improved, will be worth more to them than extensive forests
18 a n a m er i c a n b etrayal

unemployed, and will be continually parting with portions of

them, for money to buy stock, utensils & necessities for their
farms & families.” Hunting, Jefferson believed, had already
become inadequate for the Indians’ self-sufficiency. So he was
intent on promoting agriculture and household manufacturing
among the Indians—and he was “disposed to aid and encour-
age it liberally.” As Indians learned “to do better on less land,”
Jefferson predicted, the expanding population of white settlers
all around them would soon take over Indian lands.10
And Jefferson made good on his plan: during his presidency,
he obtained some two hundred thousand square miles of Indian
territory in nine states—mostly in Indiana, Illinois, Tennes-
see, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and
Missouri—an acquisition of territory that far exceeded the needs
of white settlers or interest of Indians willing to surrender hunt-
ing grounds as a step toward becoming “civilized.” Jefferson’s
policy was in part a military strategy aimed at clearing out Indi-
ans from the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys, compressing
them into an ever-shrinking region between the Appalachian
Mountains and the Mississippi River.
At its heart, Jefferson’s Indian policy viewed as hopeless all
Indians who clung to their “savage” ways as nomadic hunters:
their game was becoming extinct, and their peoples were demor-
alized and depopulated by war, liquor, and disease. Their only
hope, he insisted, came from selling their lands, accepting white
values, intermarrying with whites, and becoming respectable
yeoman farmers and U.S. citizens.11
White political leaders from Washington to Jefferson may
have had hope for the civilization program, but out West it was
a different matter. Most frontiersmen thought Indians could
never become the equal of whites. In fact, some westerners
 b eco m i n g “c i vi li ze d” 19

feared that once Indians became farmers they would never get
rid of them. To most frontier settlers, Indians were simple, back-
ward, ignorant, and lazy, prone to lying, begging, and stealing.
The two races were never meant to live together. And some Cher-
okees felt the same way. As one federal agent to the Cherokees,
Return J. Meigs, observed, “Many of the Cherokees think that
they are not derived from the same stock as whites, that they are
favorites of the Great Spirit, and that he never intended they
should live the laborious lives of whites.”12
Those who implemented the civilization program out West
often spoke just as bluntly about the challenge they were fac-
ing. Lewis Cass, who lived with the Indians on the Northwest
frontier as governor of the Michigan Territory, 1813–31, looked
on Indians as primitive savages driven by passions, self-interests,
and fears. They lacked all proper sense of enterprise, industry,
and thrift that had informed Cass’s Puritan background. “Like
the bear, and deer, and buffalo of his own forests,” Cass wrote
in 1827, “an Indian lives as his father lived, and dies as his
father died. He never attempts to imitate the arts of his civi-
lized neighbors. His life passes away in a succession of listless
indolence, and of vigorous exertion to provide for his animal
wants, or to gratify his baleful passions. He never looks around
him, with a spirit of emulation, to compare his situation and
that of others, and to resolve on improving it.”13 And the only
hope for the “improvement” of Indians, Cass believed, lay
with their youth. The adults and tribal elders simply could not
change enough to meet white needs. But perhaps the mission-
ary effort, he speculated, would bear fruit with the rising gen-
eration.

-
20 a n a m er i c a n b etrayal

Whereas the federal agents who fanned out into Indian country
in the 1790s brought Indians a new political and economic mes-
sage of how they could best assimilate into the new republic, the
missionaries following them into the Southeast offered natives
nothing less than a cultural transformation. That transformation,
of course, was to be conducted strictly in the image of white,
“civilized” Protestants. But their attempt, both heroic and arro-
gant, served notice on the Cherokees that they were facing a very
new world, one that offered them ever-shrinking choices about
what it meant to be a patriotic Cherokee or an American.
The earliest missionaries arriving in the Southeast were
Moravians from Salem, North Carolina, who entered the Cher-
okee Nation and established a mission at Springplace in 1801.
Presbyterian ministers came into eastern Tennessee in 1804; after
the War of 1812, Methodists and Baptists moved into Cherokee
country. The most organized missionary effort, though, came
courtesy of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign
Missions (ABCFM), who moved into Cherokee country in the
1810s. Headquartered in Boston, the American Board was an
interdenominational organization, composed mainly of Con-
gregationalists and Presbyterians, that gained strength from the
revival fires sweeping the country in the early nineteenth cen-
tury. Funded by wealthy merchants and textile manufacturers
in New England, the board sought to “elevate the aborigines” in
the South, starting with the Cherokees. The American Board
set up ten mission schools among the Cherokees, while the Bap-
tists established three schools, and the Moravians and Presbyte-
rians two each. Methodists funded six to nine circuit riders per
year and ran a handful of “itinerating” schools.14
AN AMERICAN BETRAYAL

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