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 mention 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 beyond 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. Haake sible danger of collision between the authorities of the General and State Gov- ernments on account of the Indians.” Beyond this, the president promised that removal would help Native Americans “to cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community.” Many members of the U.S. Congress, both opponents and supporters of the removal policy, also drew on this discourse of civilization, though they frequently did not even mention the West, the destination of Native American removal. The apparent dominance of the discourse on progress towards civilization was probably the reason that the Cherokees and Senecas in their letters to the federal government focused so much on the idea of civilization and removal’s ability to make them more civilized (Haake, “Appeals” 100-28). In their efforts to do so, they often used their depictions of the West to make their cases to their corre- spondents within the federal government. However, the letter-writing practices of Cherokees and Senecas differed at times considerably. For the most part, Cher- okee written communications opposing removal were penned by the western- educated leadership of the tribe, with seemingly little input by the traditionalist majority whom educated leaders like John Ross sought to defend (see Perdue, Cherokee Editor 33, Denson 15, Boulware 181, Perdue and Green, Nation and Trail xiv). This only changed in the mid-1830s, when increasing pressure to remove and a worsening general situation through mounting intrusions and abuse by the State of Georgia as well as individual citizens led to a more consultative approach. At this time, there were more memorials discussed in council and signed by large numbers of Cherokees, as opposed to a few chiefs or delegates only. Simi- larly, among the Cherokee proponents of removal, a group of educated men appears to have been instrumental in authoring messages to the federal government, even though theirs were not the only signatures affixed to many of these correspondences (McLoughlin 8; Perdue and Green, Nation and Trail xiv). Among the Senecas, however, the process of composing letters to the federal government among both opponents and proponents was a much more inclusive one, and many communications appear to have originated in meetings, councils, or committees (Haake, “In the same”; “Iroquis Use”). While the actual process of writing was usually conducted by one of the several highly educated men among the Senecas, those without a formal white education, through their participation in councils or letter writing committees, also influenced the content and form of the letters, memorials and petitions sent to the federal government. Cherokees and Senecas faced the prospect of removal at more or less the same time. For both, the removal crisis caused by the passage of the 1830 Indian Re- moval Act was not the first time they were confronted with the threat of removal, and both nations had seen their land holdings vastly reduced (Perdue and Green, Nation and Trail 32). Both tribes had also already seen some of their people suc- cumb to removal pressure and accept Western lands (Perdue and Green, Nation and Trail 51-53; Hauptman and McLester, Tiro). Similarly, both Cherokees and Senecas were internally split over their responses to the policy at the time of their final removal crisis, and proponents and opponents outlined their positions in written communications to the federal government in which they often referred to the West as either a place of eternal savagery or as one ultimately promising Civilization or Savagery in the West? 55 civilization. The Indians’ rhetorical approach differed not markedly from the one adopted by the federal government, who also depicted the West vaguely and to suit their own objectives.

The West in Pro-Removal Letters

Among the Cherokees, the proponents of removal were led by what came to be known as the Treaty Party, a group of men surrounding Major Ridge, his educated son John Ridge, and his nephew Elias Boudinot, editor of the Cherokee Phoenix newspaper. The two younger men were both married to white women they had met while at school and had experienced first-hand the strong, hostile feelings that such unions aroused among many white people; and from these and other negative experiences, they eventually deduced that they would never be accepted by whites (Perdue, Cherokees and Removal 69-71). After this difficult re- alization, “Neither Ridge nor Boudinot entertained any further notions about the entry of ‘civilized’ Cherokees into American society,” Perdue and Green have noted (Nation and Trail 47). The Treaty Party leadership “agreed that the Chero- kee Nation must endure intact, Cherokee ‘civilization’ must enfold in a national context, and the future happiness of the Cherokee people depended on the preservation of their separate and distinct identity” (Nation and Trail 47). While they had not always supported removal, the Ridge Party, at least some of whom had largely internalized white perceptions about what constituted civilization, gradually came to perceive removal as the best option available to the Cherokees under the prevailing circumstances (Perdue, Editor 11-13). They were willing to part with their land to preserve their nationality (Perdue, Editor ix, 3, 11; Schneider 154). However, as Perdue convincingly shows, they may also have viewed removal as the best way to advance their personal fortunes, including political ambitions and financial aspirations Cherokees( and Removal 69-70; Perdue and Green, Na- tion and Trail 97). Removal proponents among the Cherokees, in an 1834 memorial, outlined the process by which they came to support the policy, albeit only as the lesser of two evils, as a “hard case of choosing an alternative” (“Memorial of Cherokee Indi- ans,” November 28). To them the choice was between “remaining in a state of vassalage to the states, or […] emigrating to the Western Country.” The authors of this memorial, with Major Ridge foremost among the signatories, portrayed the West as a place where they could “enjoy the blessings of liberty, as a free and inde- pendent Nation.” In this memorial, the West emerged primarily as a place where the Cherokee Nation would be able to regain the sovereignty they had had “from time immemorial.” Once in the West, the authors implied, they would once again be able to be “governed of right by no other laws, usages, and customs, but such as they themselves thought proper to ordain and appoint,” as they formerly had been. “Scarcely would a Cherokee be found willing to emigrate to the West if his rights of soil and liberty were protected,” they suggested, “but it is a mistaken idea that a majority would prefer to remain here, at the hazard of State subjection”. Correspondingly, Major Ridge and his fellow writers argued that the Cherokees 56 Claudia B. Haake who reamined reluctant to remove would change their minds “if they were con- vinced that they could not be restored to their rights of self government” in their homelands. “Without law in the States,” they informed the Senate and the House of Representatives, “we are not more favoured than the poor African, who tils out his life under the lashes of his master.” As Georgia had, “laws expressly made to discredit [them] as men, with no legal rights to the soil, and all the unrelenting prejudices against [their] language and color in full force,” they concluded that the alternative to removal, “the scheme of amalgamation with [their] oppressors [to be] too horrid for a serious contemplation,” thus rejecting incorporation as state citizens in tribal lands. Law and sovereignty thus emerged as key points in Ridge’s decision-making process and a crucial factor persuading them to reject state citi- zenship as an alternative to removal, which Principal Chief John Ross and others were open to considering (“John Ridge et al to Major Currey,” November 1834). Concernd with the welfare of their tribe and a desire to remain sovereign under their own laws, the Treaty Party members took decisive steps towards removal. However, the Ridges and their Cherokee allies were not ready to simply accept all governmental propositions for their removal. Instead, they attempted to shape the form their removal would take, asking for lands in addition to those already held by the Western Cherokees whom they were supposed to join in the West. They requested liberal terms and made suggestions regarding the conditions of removal and outlined their needs with regards of land, annuities, compensation and other arrangements. The memorial closed with its authors pleading “for a country and a secure political existence upon it” (“Memorial of Cherokee Indians at Running Waters,” November 28, 1834). The West in this memorial emerged as a sanctuary for future generations and a place where the Cherokees could keep up their separate existence as a politically sovereign nation governed by their own laws. This is something they also made clear in their correspondences with the federal government, stating that their “chiefest [sic] aim and ambition are to preserve the Cherokees as a distinct Government in the Western Country” (“John Ridge et al to Major Currey,” No- vember 1834). The pro-removal party of Buffalo Creek Senecas expressed similar sentiments in their letters, petitions, and memorials to the federal government concerning the application of removal policies. Like their Cherokee counterparts, they did not arrive at the decision to remove lightly, but saw it as the best option available to them under the circumstances. The Senecas also portrayed the West as a location where they and future generations would be able to thrive independently and be governed by their own laws. On behalf of the “old chiefs,” who had been deposed over their support of removal, Thomson S. Harris, who identified himself as an “educated Indian” (“To Carey A. Harris”), wrote of their wish to “ask of this government a large country west of the Mississippi river which should accommo- date and enable the Posterity of Iroquois of the North to maintain and support their Government in the Western Territory or State” (“To Lewis Cass,”). Like the Cherokee Treaty Party, Thomson and the “old chiefs,” including Christians Cap- tain Pollard, Young King, White Seneca, as well as the former League chief Little Johnson, also attempted to shape the policy in a number of ways (Mt. Pleasant Civilization or Savagery in the West? 57

129). Foremost on the agenda of the Buffalo Creek chiefs was the desire to secure a clear title to their new homes, as “Many of [them] had long believed that the title by which [they] held [their] lands in the state of New York was not sufficiently defined” (“to Secretary of War Lewis Cass”). In many of their written communications, the removal advocates among the Senecas complained that, “white men take advantage of our ignorance,” conclud- ing that they faced only the prospect of continued suffering if they stayed (“Buf- falo Creek chiefs to unknown recipient,” September 29, 1837). In their letters, the Western lands became a potential sanctuary, mainly because they thought they would be able to hold these lands in fee simple, something they later on referred to as “perfect title,” and because they hoped that there they would be able to once again be governed by their own laws (“Memorial by George Fox”). Harris, identifying as a delegate, pointedly asked Secretary of War Lewis Cass, “When a sufficient number shall emigrate,” writes Thomson S. Harris in 1835, “may they form a Government of their own and have jurisdiction of their country?” (“To Secretary of War Lewis Cass”). Like the Ridges, the Seneca old chiefs and their allies sought to once again live under their own laws. Just as their Cherokee counterparts, the Seneca supporters of removal attempted to secure for themselves and their people land they considered acceptable in both quality and quantity. In an 1840 memorial to President Martin Van Buren, the authors reminded him of a treaty stipulation that they were to have sufficient timbered land “for all useful purposes for [themselves] and [their] children here- after” (“Memorial to President Martin Van Buren”). Tract size was also of great importance and thus something that Harris on behalf of the “old chiefs” empha- sized repeatedly. For instance, in 1835 he specifically asked Secretary of War Lewis Cass for “an ample allotment to [their] whole people” west of the Mississippi (“To Secretary of War Lewis Cass”). Yet the Senecas did not just want to determine the size and character of the lands they were to settle, but also specified material things they felt they needed in order to continue to progress towards civilization once they removed. In the same letter, they detailed the need for certain materials for their future civilization, and especially mentioned sawmills and blacksmith shops, which they wanted to be built in time for their arrival. These they deemed “to be absolutely necessary to the comfort and happiness while settling down in [their] new homes” (“Memorial to President Martin Van Buren”). They also asked for removal appropriations, in an effort to do whatever was possible in their power to make their removal to the unknown West a success (“Cattaraugus Seneca chiefs to House of Representatives”). Their continued progress towards civilization is something the pro-removal Senecas in their messages professed they thought they could only achieve in the West as in their current residences they were “surrounded […] from every quarter” and they were “wedged and entangled between contending white interests” (“Memorial to President Martin Van Buren”). They therefore concluded, “[E]xtinction awaits us where we are” (“Memorial to House of Representatives by Chiefs of New York Senecas”). Such considerations, they had already previously made clear, were what made them “anxious to get ready to remove from the lands and homes of [their] ancestors, to that of the unknown lands of the West” (“Memorial to President Martin Van Buren”). 58 Claudia B. Haake

The West, in many written communications by the removal advocates among the Senecas, as for their Cherokee counterparts, specifically through the absence of white influences, became a place of potential refuge and salvation, where they would regain a separate existence under their own laws and offer their children a better future.

The West in Anti-Removal Letters

Both Senecas and Cherokees were split over how best to achieve a better future. It appears that, regardless of what complex considerations may have moti- vated them, removal’s advocates among the Cherokees and Senecas were genuine in their support for the policy. However, with this they were in the minority among their people as most Cherokees and Senecas rejected removal, and at times violent- ly so. It split former allies, such as the Ridges and John Ross, but also families, as in the case of Ely S. Parker and his brother Spencer Cone of the Senecas, and John Blacksmith and his nephew White Seneca. These groups did not only differ in their assessment of their situation and the best way forward for their people with regard to removal, but also in the way they depicted the West in the letters, memorials, and petitions they directed to the federal government. While the removal advocates portrayed the West as a place where, if certain demands were to be met, they could continue their progress towards civilization while living under their own laws, the opponents of the policy among the two tribes rejected this scenario as an impos- sibility. Instead, in their own letters to the federal government they painted a picture of the West as a savage and primitive frontier where they would not be able to become more civilized but, quite to the contrary, would perish as they had already progressed so far that they could not survive in such frontier conditions anymore. A Cherokee delegation led by Principal Chief John Ross in an 1825 letter to President John Quincy Adams characterized the choice between removal and remaining as one between “Civilization and preservation, or dispersion and extinction” (“Cherokee delegation to President John Q. Adams”). The delegates pointed to their achievements in “the arts of civilized life” but made it clear that in their estimation the removal of the tribe would not lead to continued progress towards civilization but that “their dispersion and ultimate extinction would inev- itably follow.” They wrote that “if Indian civilization and preservation is sincerely desired and is considered worthy the serious attention of the United States” the president should “never urge the removal of those Tribes who are now success- fully embracing the habits of civilized man within their own limits” as it would only be counterproductive and would instead “forever seal their doome [sic].” For this latter assertion, they referred their correspondent to “those Tribes who have been removed from their lands, and are now wandering over the wild and extend- ed plains of the west,” whose fate they saw as incontrovertible evidence that one could not become more civilized on the Western frontier. In another letter, they specifically referred to “the unhappy situation into which our red brethren the Creeks and Chickasaws have placed themselves” by letting themselves be pressured into removal. Civilization or Savagery in the West? 59

Instead of subscribing to governmental claims with regard to what removal would be able to achieve for them, opponents of the policy among the Cherokees argued that they could only continue their progress where they were and promised that if they were permitted to remain on their lands “the day would arrive, when a distinction between their race and the American family, would be imperceptible” (“Cherokee delegation to President John Q. Adams”). They concluded therefore that “for the sake of civilization and the preservation of existence,” their self-professed goals, “they [could not] consent to yield another foot of land.” From early on, the Cherokees made it clear in their messages that to “divest them of their liberty and country” would mean to “sink them in degradation, and put a check, if not a final stop, to their present progress in the arts of civilized life” (“Printed memorial to Congress”). They also professed to be worried about the quality and size of any lands they stood to receive, fearing they, “would not be adequate to afford [them] all comfortable residency,” and thus could not enable a civilized existence (“Cherokee delegation to Secretary of War Lewis Cass”). Consequently, they insisted repeatedly and in a number of written communications that “the great body of [their] people have refused and will never voluntarily consent to remove West [sic] of the Mississippi” (“John Ross and others to President Andrew Jackson”). The reasons for the refusal to remove given in Cherokee letters included not just criticisms of the policy’s ability to achieve its stated goal of civilization for the Indians, but also encompassed more complex considerations about Chero- kee nationhood and tribal welfare. As the federal government and others often portrayed removal as a way of saving the Indian from extinction, the Cherokee leadership challenged this idea, stating that “the true causes of their extinction are to be found in the […] wrongs which have been heaped upon their ignorance and credulity, by […] the whiteman” (“John Ross and others to President Andrew Jackson”). Removal, they argued, was no remedy against this problem and they thus believed it to be “impossible […] that by a removal to the country west of the Mississippi, all [their] difficulties would be terminated, and the prosperity of [their] people fixed upon a permanent basis” (“John Ross and others to President Andrew Jackson”). Instead, they feared that it would be “injurious either in its immediate or remote consequences.” They also specifically dreaded denational- ization and potential problems with their land tenure in the West. Apart from the wish to preserve their nationhood and live as free people under their own rule while continuing their progress towards civilization, Cherokee removal opponents repeatedly spoke about their attachment to their homeland, invoking grave sites and birth places, something their opponents did not do nearly as often (“Memorial of Cherokee Indians at Running Waters” and “Memorial to House of Representatives by chiefs of New York Senecas”). Cherokee removal opponents repeatedly spoke about their attachment to their homeland, which they referred to as “the land of [their] nativity” and the place “where now lie the bones of their fathers” (“Memorial to the Senate and House of Representatives”). While they acknowledged that in the West they had been offered good lands with a “mild climate, a fertile soil, [in] an inviting and extensive country” as well as “a government of our own, adequate protection against other tribes” and even against U.S. citizens, these Western lands, they explained repeatedly in their mes- 60 Claudia B. Haake sages, lacked the cultural and sentimental components that bound them to their Eastern homeland, however diminished and surrounded (“John Ross and others to President Andrew Jackson”). The West in their letters appeared mostly very vague, like the absence of any such attachment. However, on at least one occasion when they contrasted it with “the country, which we dearly love,” they referred to it as “the western wilds,” confirming their indirect assertions that the West was an uncivilized wilderness, unfit for an (almost) civilized people (“Printed memorial to Congress without signatures”). The Senecas in their opposition to removal resorted to making a number of similar arguments as their Cherokee counterparts with regard to the West. In their correspondence with the federal government, they too criticized removal’s ability to foster their progress towards civilization and argued instead that they could only continue their progress in their homelands, while also painting an un- flattering picture of the West as a savage frontier where no one could possibly become or even remain civilized. Seneca letter writers in opposition to removal often listed the rapid advances they had already made in civilization, such as in morality and religion (“Chiefs and Sachems to President Martin Van Buren”). Whenever possible, they pointed to tangible proof of civilization, such as the own- ership of barns and wagons and the construction of schools, council houses, and churches (“Buffalo Creek Seneca chiefs to unnamed President” October 2, 1837). In spite of these advances, authors including Iroquois League Chief Blacksmith and Handsome Lake follower Jemmy Johnson concluded that they needed civilized surroundings in order to continue thriving, and this, they implied, they could only have if they remained in the East (“John Blacksmith to Commissioner of Indian Affairs Orlando Brown”). They explained that they could not yet farm like white men and that they depended on shops and other hallmarks of civilization. While they admitted that they were surrounded by whites, they argued that they could “continue at home and be at peace with our neighbors” and that their “comforts here are better than the Western territory can offer [them]” (“Buffalo Creek Seneca chiefs to unnamed President”). Their progress towards civilization, however, was not the only reason the Sen- eca opposition to removal gave in their letters, petitions, and memorials to the federal government arguing against their displacement to the West. While the arguments around civilization were at least to an extent Seneca interpretations of governmental and other white discourses, the Seneca letter writers, like their Cherokee counterparts, also spoke about their sentimental attachments to the land the government wanted them to give up, often invoking ancestral bones or burial places. For instance, they insisted that they did “not want to go west, [they] want to lay [their] bones with [their] fathers here on [their] small reservation with which [they] are contented” (“Governor Blacksnake and others to President Wil- liam Henry Harrison”). While the Senecas in their written communications in opposition to removal portrayed their homelands as a place to which they were attached and where they could continue to progress towards civilization, the picture they drew of the West was less flattering. They criticized the quality of the lands offered them there, referring to the proposed lands for emigration as an “unhealthy country, almost Civilization or Savagery in the West? 61 destitute of timber” (“William Devereux to Commissioner of Indian Affairs”). They spoke about the misery of white people who had gone there, implying that where whites failed to thrive it would be impossible for the Indians to do so (“Wil- liam Devereux to Commissioner of Indian Affairs Hartley Crawford”). In their letters, the West emerged as a primitive and hostile place, suitable only for uncivilized people. They themselves, they made clear, were too far advanced to be able to live there as they were “not […] wanderers beyond the pale of civilization” (“Israel Jimeson and others to Robert H. Shankland”). They concluded, “[Our] only hope of preservation lies in remaining in this land. The west would swallow us up. It would have been to us only the land of graves. We dread the thought of going there, as we dread the funeral of our nation” (“Buffalo Creek chiefs to President Martin Van Buren”). Both literally and nationally/politically, they an- ticipated that removal would signal their demise.

Post-Removal Discourses

The discourse about the West in Cherokee and Seneca written communications to the federal government was mainly something onto which all letter writers among the Cherokees and Senecas, regardless of whether they embraced or opposed the removal policy and its application to them, could project their de- sires. This explains why their discourses scarcely changed even as they slowly learned more about the Western lands proposed for their future residences or even went there to inspect the country. However, the discourse was a very differ- ent one for some of the authors once they had actually experienced removal. For some it turned into a tale of obstacles overcome, while for others it was one of ambition thwarted and hopes quashed. The Old Settler Cherokees, who had removed early and had later accepted the Treaty Party members in their midst, in their letters, petitions, and memorials to the federal government referred to the West as a savage wilderness which they had civilized through their efforts (“Spring Frog, The Witch and others to unnamed Secretary of War”). In an 1843 memorial, they talked about removal as a chal- lenge they had mastered. “The Western Cherokees,” they wrote to the Senate and House of Representatives, “by their energy and perseverance, obtained this last resting place for their Nation” (“Memorial to the Senate and the House of Rep- resentatives by Western Cherokees”). They explained to their correspondent that they had been “the first pioneers who first tilled the ground on [the United States’] extreme Western border” (“Memorial to the Senate and the House of Represen- tatives by Western Cherokees”). They were also clear about the obstacles they had to overcome and about how uncivilized their new homes had been when they first arrived, stating that they had been “[p]laced in the vicinity of […] wild and savage tribes of this frontier, and subjected to their long continued depredations,” alleging that “the first years […] were consumed in protecting themselves and their property against the incursions of their lawless neighbors” (“Memorial to the Senate and the House of Representatives by Western Cherokees”). In a sub- sequent correspondence, the Old Settlers, represented by a delegation, reported 62 Claudia B. Haake that they had been “improving and cultivating their lands, advancing in civilization” and living in “peace with all around them” (“Memorial to the Senate and the House of Representatives by Cherokee delegation West”). They stated that their new homes in the West had been “reared by their patient labour in the wilderness.” This discourse of achievement and challenges is one many Cherokees under Principal Chief John Ross adpoted after their own forced removal. In 1841, they referred to their new land a wilderness that they eventually mastered through their suffering, at least to an extent (“John Ross and others to Secretary of War John Bell”). Those few Senecas who had chosen to remove in the mid-1840s adopted a similar discourse to the Cherokee post-removal one upon their return and when arguing for compensation and financial help. An 1850 petition by the Seneca re- turnees, penned by Zacharia Jimeson, stated that those who had not died “were brought back at great expense by a delegation of our friends” (“To Secretary of the Interior Alexander Stuart”). They were forced to return to their old homelands due to the failure of the “attempted settlement of our [their] home at the South West” and “the death of one third of our [their] party and sickness of the rest.” (“Seneca’s, Onondaga’s and Cayuga’s who survived”). They stated that many of those who emigrated “laid down their lives + all of [them] lost [their] health in proof of [their] earnestness” about their support of removal (“Memorial to House of Representatives by Chiefs of New York Senecas”). As a belated justification for their decision to embrace removal, they cited the inability of their educated members to vote and the reluctance to be accepted “on a footing with the sons of all other climes,” confirming their previously stated ambition to regain a separate existence under their own laws through removing west (“Seneca’s, Onondaga’s and Cayuga’s who survived”). They explained that for the lack of legal entitlements and other reasons “the land of [their] inheritance [was] not only robbed [sic] of the quality which upheld the voters privilege, but the laws of the States foreclosed all right in [them] to repurchase [their] ancient inheritance over the Reservation lines which did uphold it” (“Memorial to House of Representatives by Chiefs of New York Senecas”). They pointed to “[t]hese crushing discriminations, of races at [their] expense,” such as their lack of enfranchisement, which would also affect their children. They had attempted to escape this situation, but, as they wrote, “the land where a perfect title was offered—proved the grave of the most enter- prising and devoted.” They later identified the pre-emption title and the behavior of the states, “which denied us the highest fruits of self denial + civilization where we were born,” as the chief obstacles for them. Furthermore, they explained that they could have accepted these hinderances if they not already been civilized. While, in their post-removal discourse, their portrayal of the West changed to one of a savage wilderness certain to hold only doom for civilized peoples like themselves, in their correspondence, they nonetheless continued to identified the civilization levels they had already reached as a motivation for removal. Regardless of whether the letter writers had succeeded or failed in the West, their post-removal communications referred to it as a wilderness rather than the vague absence it had formerly been to them. Their experience had taught them some hard truths about the West. However, by then it was also in their best interest Civilization or Savagery in the West? 63 to mount an argument to the federal government about how many difficulties they had had to overcome through removal in order to maintain and even increase their levels of civilization as it permitted them to make more claims on the government. This analysis of the letters, petitions, and memorials by Cherokees and Sene- cas written to the federal government in support of or in opposition to their tribe’s removal shows significant similarities between the discourses adopted by the two tribes. The policy’s indigenous supporters wrote of their wish to be governed by their own laws once again and to regain their sovereignty. In their written communications, the West, the place where they were supposed to remove to, emerged as a vague space, characterised mostly by an absence of white influences, where all of these goals could be achieved and where they would be able to continue their progress towards civilization. In contrast to this, the policy’s opponents among the Cherokees and Senecas in their letters described the West as a place unfit for civilized peoples and somewhere they would be unable to survive specifically because they had made such advances towards civilization. They argued instead that only if they remained in their homelands could they continue to advance and create a better future. In their messages, they also characterized the West as lacking any sentimental value—it became an absence of attachment as well as an absence of civilization. Just as the federal government created a picture of the West to suit its needs in justifying Indian removal, with the dominant criterion being an absence of whites, removal’s advocates and opponents among the Cherokees and Senecas did the same, either in their attempts to shape their own removal or to ward it off. For all involved, the West was only a vacancy, a space which necessarily remained vague, and which they filled according to their needs and in response to their assessment of the situation, turning it either into a place of vague potential or into a double absence. These depictions of the West in communications written in response to the removal policy show that the Cherokees and Senecas neither outrighly rejected modernity in the form of what their white contemporaries regarded as “civilization,” nor embraced it without question. These writings reveal the insistence of both opponents and proponents of removal to make their own decisions instead of merely being on the receiving end of a policy such as removal.

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