The West in Native American Letters Written During the Removal Era

Civilization or Savagery in the West?—The West in Native American Letters Written during the Removal Era Claudia B. Haake ABSTRACT This article argues that, in their letters, memorials, and petitions to the federal government, both Cherokee and Seneca proponents and opponents of the removal policy, which sought to resettle all Native Americans to the West of the Mississippi, portrayed the West as a type of absence. Removal’s proponents among the two tribes claimed the West to be their salvation and a place where they would be able to become “civilized,” just as the policy promised. In these written communications, the West became a sanctuary through an absence of white influences. Cherokee and Seneca opponents of the policy argued that removal was counterproductive and would be unable to make them more civilized. To make their case, they portrayed the West, the place they were supposed to remove to, as an absence of civilization, a place fit only for savages. They also characterised it by contrasting it to their own lands, to which they felt an emotional attachment, and thus described it as the absence of such attachment. Proponents as well as opponents of removal defined the West to suit the argument they sought to make but always described it as an absence, an empty place onto which they projected their own hopes and fears in their letters. However, in doing so, removal’s tribal adversaries as well as its advocates among the two tribes insisted on making their own decisions and determining their own destinies, even in a time when they were often depicted as being mere pawns in a larger political play. Civilization or Savagery in the West?—The West in Native American Letters Written during the Removal Era1 The official premise of the policy of Indian removal, which was formally initi- ated through the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830, was that it would allow Native Americans who chose to remove to gradually become more civilized on new lands west of the Mississippi River. But many contemporaries, Eu- roamericans and Indians alike, doubted the ability of the policy to make Indians more civilized. Accordingly, many Native Americans opposed it in a number of ways, including by writing to the federal government. Among those threatened by removal, the Cherokees and the Senecas can be counted among the most active letter writers in response to the prospect of removal from their homelands scat- tered across the eastern states. These two tribes had been important forces in the colonial era and the early republic. The Cherokees, one of the most important tribes of the Southeast, and known in the nineteenth century as one of the ‘Five 1 I would like to thank Julie Reed for her insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper presented at the WHA 2014 in Newport Beach, and also the two anonymous readers for their insightful and generous comments. 52 Claudia B. Haake Civilized Tribes’ due to their progress in what Europeans generally called ‘civilization,’ were vocal critics of removal and challenged the treatment they received in United States courts, leading to two landmark cases in Native American law, Cherokee v. Georgia (1831) and Worcester v. Georgia (1832). The Senecas, a tribe of the Iroquois-Haudenosaunee Confederacy, were part of the dominant native power in the Northeast, often able to negotiate significant concessions from Eu- ropeans in diplomatic encounters. However, in spite of their (past) importance, these tribes nonetheless incurred heavy land losses. Native Americans, like white Americans, were split over the policy, and proponents as well as opponents articulated their respective positions in letters, petitions, and memorials they sent to the federal government. Often in these writings, the authors used their depictions of the West in order to either reject or embrace removal and to discuss its ability to make them more civilized, by white standards. Cherokee and Seneca opponents of the policy argued that removal was counterproductive and would be unable to advance them towards civilization. To make their case, they portrayed the West as a wild and uncivilized place, fit only for savages. Removal proponents, in contrast, claimed the West to be their salvation and a place where they would be able to become civilized (on their own terms), just as the policy promised. In their written communications, the West became a sanctuary. Both proponents and opponents of the policy among the Cherokees and Senecas in their letters defined the West according to the needs arising from the argument they sought to make. In all cases, however, they described the West as an empty place, a blank canvas onto which they projected their own hopes and fears. The writings analyzed here prove that the Cherokees and Senecas neither ex- plicitly rejected Eurocentric conceptions of modernity or civilization, nor did they embraced it unreservedly. Native American opponents and advocates of removal both insisted on making their own decisions and determining their own destinies, even in a time when they were frequently depicted as being mere pawns in a larger political play. Removal The idea of removal was put forward by Thomas Jefferson and others long before President Andrew Jackson proposed the removal bill which was passed in 1830 after long and heated discussions in both houses. Jackson and others justified the policy in large part by drawing on the long established discourse of progress towards civilization (Sweet 130, Perdue and Green, Cherokee Nation 52, Bowes). This discourse drew on an Enlightenment concept that became consolidated in the eighteenth century and was derived from the idea of progress (see the studies by Spadafora, Meek, Sheehan, Berkhofer, White Man’s Indian, Pearce, Williams, Jaenen, Dickason). Ronald Meek argues that, from ancient writers onward, there was an assumption of “normal” progress, which saw societies move from hunt- ing and gathering to pastoralism and agriculturalism to commerce, the ultimate stage of social development (2-3). Regardless of evidence to the contrary, public opinion long held that indigenous peoples had not yet reached the agricultural Civilization or Savagery in the West? 53 stage (Pearce 66). Besides the rather vague assumption that Native Americans should become small farmers, it was less clear what Indian civilization would look like exactly, and ideas about how to practically transition Native peoples into a more “civilized” state probably differed considerably (Berkhofer, Salvation 156). Indian civilization was often linked to the adoption of Christianity as one of the few consistent markers. In eighteenth-century England, as David Spada- fora has suggested, the spread of Christianity in itself was considered progress (97). Knowledge of Christ, it was often thought, would lift the curse of savagery that affected the descendants of Noah’s son Ham. Yet, as Christopher Tomlins has shown, as time went on, English argumentation focused less on the spread of Christianity and civilization became more of a secular enterprise (142). However, to most Americans, as Theda Perdue and Michael Green have explained, civilization rather vaguely “meant contemporary American culture” (Perdue and Green, Cherokee Removal 11). The Removal Act, contrary to what some scholars have asserted, did not men- tion civilization as a goal of the removal policy, even though the official and public discourses surrounding it, to a significant extent, focused on it (Sweet 126). In the tradition of this, by then, well-established discourse, President Jackson, in his First Annual Address, promised that his removal policy would enable Indians to “pursue happiness in their own way” while allowing them to gradually become civilized. Ostensibly, he promised Native Americans the choice “to emigrate be- yond the Mississippi or submit to the laws of those States” they resided in, but in practice, tribes were pressured relentlessly to accept removal treaties and to vacate their lands (Jackson). After all, only their departure would permit Jackson to make good of his promises of pecuniary advantages, the elimination of conflict between federal and state governments, and what he portrayed as better use of lands, a vision of a “dense and civilized population” that would displace “a few savage hunters” (Jackson). Jackson also promised to set “apart an ample district west of the Missis- sippi, […] to be guaranteed to the Indian tribes as long as they shall occupy it.” He continued to vow that Indians would be given, “a new and extensive territory,” in “a land where their existence may be prolonged and perhaps made perpetual.” On these western lands, Jackson had previously explained, Native Americans “may be secured in the enjoyment of governments of their own choice, subject to no other control from the United States than such as may be necessary to preserve peace on the frontier and between the several tribes.” He also suggested that in the West “the benevolent may endeavor to teach them [the Indians] the arts of civilization, and, by promoting union and harmony among them.” Far from offering any concrete plans for exactly how the Indians were to become civilized in the West and what they might need there in order to progress, Jackson and other white proponets of removal were more than vague in their de- liberations on the subject, hardly mentioning the topographical character of the Western lands, an area often referred to as the “Great American Desert.” Jackson did not seem to feel the need to explain the suitability of the West but was content to merely promise that “[t]he consequences of a speedy removal will be important to the United States, to individual States, and to the Indians themselves.” For the U.S., among other things, he indicated that it would put “an end to all pos- 54 Claudia B.

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