the nature of representation: the cherokee right ... - Boston University

2005] THE NATURE OF REPRESENTATION 115
diminish the leadership rights of Ross and other chiefs, as did questioning whether
such leaders really were Cherokees. 129 During the summer before the negotiations,
The Federal Union wrote that Cherokee leaders “have a large proportion of white
blood in their veins.” 130 The U.S. government was not alone in such racial
questioning. The rival Cherokee leader John Ridge expressed as much when he
defended the New Echota Treaty by writing:
[A] few men, at the head of whom is John Ross, who is nearly a white man in
color and feelings, have affected to be the “constituted authority” in the
nation, by holding councils in the frontier of our nation in the form of a
committee and council of his friends, who have used up all the Cherokee
annuities, and exhausted the credit of the nation, under the pretence of
defending and saving the Cherokee lands. 131
The similarity between Ross and U.S. agents in terms of manner, physical features,
and perhaps corruption was used to support the democratic idea. These criticisms
are ironic, however, considering that the tribal government was based upon the
U.S. model and their leadership was comfortable navigating the U.S. capital.
4. Cherokee Resistance to Removal
The Cherokee resistance to removal goes a long way toward explaining the
charges against the Cherokee leaders and the calls for a democratic treaty
negotiation and ratification. According to President Jackson, the rejection of
removal treaties by Cherokees “has been owing more to the ascendancy acquired by
individuals who are unwilling to go, than to the deliberate opinion of a majority of
the Cherokee people.” 132 A viewpoint similar to Jackson’s can be found in
Schermerhorn’s journal: “The people generally were very anxious to have their
difficulties settled, although they were deterred from attending on account of the
influence and fear of some of their chiefs.” 133 Schermerhorn later accused Cherokee
129
See e.g., John Bell (Whig-Rep. of Tennessee to U.S. House of Representatives),
House Debate on the Removal of the Cherokees, (Feb. 14, 21, 1831), in 2 THE
AMERICAN INDIAN AND THE UNITED STATES, supra note 29, at 1187 (“It was not the red
men who were benefited under the present system, but some twenty or thirty whites who
had insinuated themselves into the confidence of the Indians, and who, together with
the half-breeds, controlled the whole tribe, and acquired wealth at the expense of those
for whose welfare so many philanthropic wishes were expressed in the House.”).
130
THE FEDERAL UNION,July23,1834,at3. 131
Letter from John Ridge and S. Watie to John F. Schermerhorn, U.S. Commissioner
(Feb. 26, 1836), in TREATY WITH THE CHEROKEE INDIANS, 24th Cong., 1st Sess., 46-49 at
46.
132
Presidential Message on the Treaty with the Cherokee Indians, S. Exec. Doc. No.
7, 23rd Cong., 1st Sess., 1-2 at 1.
133
A journal of the proceedings of the Council held at New Echota, Georgia Dec. 21-
30, 1835, with the Cherokee people by John F. Schermerhorn, Commissioner on the part
of the United States to treat with the Cherokees east, in TREATY WITH THE CHEROKEE