RULING OR BEING RULED? THE DEVELOPMENT OF CITIZENSHIP IN THE CHEROKEE NATION _______________________________________ A Dissertation presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri-Columbia _______________________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy _____________________________________________________ by AARON KUSHNER Dr. Justin Dyer, Dissertation Supervisor JULY 2019 DEDICATION …………………To Mary Ann and Robert Kushner. You saw in me something special. …………………To Ryan, Daniel, and Tommy. You are the best of friends. …………………To Nhi, G, Lea, Dale, and Christopher. I couldn’t ask for better family. …………………To Hannah. You are all beauty and color and light. …………………Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Professor Justin Dyer for his mentorship and guidance throughout this dissertation project. Without his wisdom, kindness, and encouragement, none of this would have been possible. I also want to acknowledge Professor Adam Seagrave, who mentored me at Northern Illinois University and again here at the University of Missouri. His insight and advice have been an invaluable part of my professional development. Thank you to Professor Sarah Beth Kitch, who gave generously of her time to help me improve the quality of my writing. Thank you as well to dissertation committee members Marvin Overby and Jay Dow for all of your time and ongoing support. Additional thanks are due to Professors Scot Schraufnagel, Brad Watson, Jason King, Laron Williams, and Jason Jividen, who mentored and supported me at various stages of my academic career. Thank you for believing in me. Special thanks to those other scholars who have had a great influence on my growth as a graduate student: Stephen Clouse, Luke Perez, Dongjin Kwak, Yuko Sato, and Katherine Becerra. I am grateful for your critical advice, conversation, and friendship. Thank you also to the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy, especially Allison Smythe, Thomas Kane, Jay Sexton, and Jeff Pasley. Without each of you putting in the effort to make the Kinder Institute an excellent place to study, learn, and be, none of this would have been possible. ii CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................ ii LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................. iv LIST OF FIGURES .............................................................................................................v ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................1 CHAPTER 2: CHEROKEE POLITICAL THOUGHT .....................................................27 CHAPTER 3: TOWARD THE SITTING SUN: AN ANALYSIS OF FEDERAL INDIAN POLICY ..............................................................................................................65 CHAPTER 4: AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS AND CHEROKEE POLITICAL THOUGHT ........................................................................................................................83 CHAPTER 5: WRITTEN IN BLOOD: TRIBAL CITIZENSHIP AND THE CHEROKEE FREEDMEN ..............................................................................................134 CHAPTER 6: RULING OR BEING RULED? ...............................................................171 WORKS CITED ..............................................................................................................181 VITA ................................................................................................................................191 iii LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 Shifts in Cherokee Citizenship, 1866-2018 ......................................................61 Table 3.1 Overview of Federal Indian Policy by Time Period .........................................69 Table 4.1 A Comparison of American and Cherokee Political Values, 1827-1865 .........95 Table 5.1 Comparing Freedmen’s Views of Citizenship in Two Periods .......................160 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 Theory of Cherokee Citizenship Development ...............................................19 Figure 2.1 A Pyramid of Cherokee Political Thought ......................................................40 Figure 2.2 Percentage of Total Cherokee Legislation on Citizenship, 1976-2018 ...........56 Figure 3.1. Federal Policy and Cherokee Citizenship Timeline, 1787-1827 ....................76 Figure 3.2 Federal Policy and Cherokee Citizenship Timeline, 1827-1866 .....................78 Figure 3.3 Federal Policy and Cherokee Citizenship Timeline, 1866-1934 .....................79 Figure 3.4 Federal Policy and Cherokee Citizenship Timeline, 1934-2019 .....................81 v ABSTRACT What does it mean to be a member of a tribal government in the United States? This dissertation answers that question with an analysis of Cherokee citizenship, both as a concept and as a legal condition. Previous work on the Cherokee has been historical, anthropological, or sociological in nature. Political scientists have not yet produced a study of Cherokee citizenship. I fill in this gap in the literature by approaching Cherokee citizenship from three different angles—from the perspective of the Cherokee, of United States officials, and from the descendants of freedmen who live in the Cherokee Nation. I argue that the prevailing explanations for the state of Cherokee citizenship, racial prejudice and acquisitiveness, do not paint a complete picture. Instead, these explanations need to be supplemented with an understanding of the ideological incongruence between Cherokee and American political thought. My ideological incongruence thesis posits that inherent differences between the Cherokee and the United States over how to understand and practice politics has led to struggles over Cherokee citizenship and has subsequently driven the development of Cherokee law. A holistic view of Cherokee citizenship admits three major factors at play—racial prejudice, material acquisitiveness, and ideological tension. This holistic view can help scholars parse through difficult dimensions of indigenous-US relations and lend clarity to debates over the status of tribal governments and their people. vi Chapter 1: Introduction Being Cherokee is “a question of commitment,” wrote Jason Tarrell to the Cherokee Observer in 1996, “it’s the way you live and the way your family has lived…you can’t suddenly become Cherokee. It’s not a club.”1 The Cherokee people, through a supreme effort of will and a resiliency of spirit, have remained an intact political community for the past two hundred and thirty-two years—this despite US government policy’s constant challenges to group identity and cohesion. Of course, the Cherokee, as they are today known, have been around much longer than 1787.2 The past two hundred and thirty-two years dealing with the United States, however, have forced the Cherokee to adapt their political community to retain critical elements of their belief systems about the sacred in an increasingly urbanizing world. One of their greatest challenges, as Tarrell’s comment implies, has been identifying and articulating what it means to be Cherokee. The creation of a Cherokee constitutional government, and the concept of legal tribal citizenship, in the 1820s made that challenge even more complicated. The goal of this dissertation is to understand Cherokee citizenship by analyzing the underlying ideas that have influenced its creation. An overview of the literature suggests that the Cherokee self-govern under the surveillance of US oversight committees and federal agencies, who have historically displayed confusion when it comes to Indian politics (Prucha 1976; Littlefield 1978; 1 Jason Tarrell, “Editorial from a Member,” Cherokee Observer, 4 no. 4, April 1996. 2 According to historian Robert Conley, some estimates claim that the ancestors of the Cherokee immigrated to America via the Bering Strait land-bridge some twelve thousand years ago and established the first communities (2005, 1). While some scholars begin their histories of the Cherokee people with first contact with Europeans in the 1690s (McLoughlin 1986, 3), the Cherokee existed as a vibrant community long before first contact with white civilization and certainly much earlier than the creation of the United States (Purdue 1998, 13). 1 French 2016). American politicians have historically tended toward belligerence against peoples that they do not understand (Kettner 1978; Limerick 1987). When scholars have attempted to analyze this American confusion over what to do with indigenous peoples, they have largely explained it by censuring racial prejudice or acquisitiveness or both (Fritz 1963; Green 1982; Sturm 2002; Castile 2006; Fletcher 2011; French 2016). These the Cherokee have endured, weathering the storm of persecution to find a light of their own making. Of course, the Cherokee themselves have not been immune from engaging in their own belligerence against other groups (Sturm 1998). Racial prejudice and material acquisitiveness are not foreign to the Cherokee either, as evidenced by some of their governmental actions toward their formerly enslaved peoples (Littlefield