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

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98 PUBLIC INTEREST LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 15 was used by the Jackson administration to implement the measure.” 30 John Ross “fought by [Jackson’s] side,” yet would write in 1831 that Jackson’s “policy towards the aborigines, in my opinion, has been unrelenting and in effect ruinous to their best interests and happiness.” 31 While the Georgia Governor in support of removal argued that Jackson “not only is, but has long been, [the Indians’] true friend and benefactor,” Jackson’s primary motive was to ensure that the Cherokees moved west of the Mississippi, regardless of the consequences to the Cherokee people. 32 Jackson was firm in his position that the Indians must be removed, and consequently, “spent no sleepless nights over Indian Removal.” 33 Prior to becoming President and during his time teaching at Princeton, Woodrow Wilson wrote, “[Jackson’s] attitude towards the Indians was frankly that of a frontier soldier. They had no right, in his eyes, to stand in the way of the white man.” 34 is worth quoting at length a summary of Ronald Takaki’s take on Jackson: Ronald T. Takaki, a historian of race and culture in America, refers to President Jackson as “the nation’s confidence man,” who developed “a It metaphysics for genocide.” According to Takaki, Jackson “recognized the need to explain the nation’s conduct towards Indians, to give it a moral meaning. In his writings, messages to Congress, and personal letters, Jackson presented a philosophical justification for the extermination of native Americans.” Takaki, borrowing language from the English author and literary critic D. H. Lawrence, asks of Jackson, “What sort of a white man is he?” And, again using Lawrence’s words, he replies, “Why, he is a man with a gun. He is a killer, a slayer. Patient and gentle as he is, he is a slayer. Selfeffacing...stillheisakiller.” 35 Takaki’s stance finds support in Jackson’s disregard of the Supreme Court when the Court supported the Cherokees. John Marshall’s Worcester v. Georgia opinion bolstered the Cherokee position that Georgia had no right to take Cherokee land; 36 yet,“[w]henJacksonlearnedof[Worcester v. Georgia], he is reported to 30 REGINALD HORSMAN, RACE AND MANIFEST DESTINY: THE ORIGINS OF AMERICAN RACIAL ANGLO-SAXONISM 201 (1981). 31 Letter from John Ross to David Crockett (Jan. 13, 1831), in 1THE PAPERS OF CHIEF JOHN ROSS, supra note 14, at 211. 32 Wilson Lumpkin (Dem-Rep. of Georgia to U.S. House of Representatives), House Debate on the Indian Removal Question (May 15, 26, 1830) in 2THE AMERICAN INDIAN AND THE UNITED STATES, supra note 29, at 1083. 33 HORSMAN, supra note 30, at 202. 34 4WOODROW WILSON, supra note 19, at 16-17. 35 Ronald N. Satz, Rhetoric Versus Reality: The Indian Policy of Andrew Jackson, in CHEROKEE REMOVAL: BEFORE AND AFTER 31 (William L. Anderson ed., 1991) (quoting RONALD T. TAKAKI, IRON CAGES: RACE AND CULTURE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA 100, 103, 106, 107 (1979)). 36 31 U.S. (6 Pet.) 515 (1832).
2005] THE NATURE OF REPRESENTATION 99 have said, ‘John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!’” 37 1. Cherokees United Against Removal Initially, the Cherokee leadership was both publicly and privately united against the acceptance of land cessions and removal as the only option for the Cherokee. In 1827, Major Ridge, who would later become an important member of the faction that signed the Treaty of New Echota, along with John Ross “reiterated the old stand of the Cherokees that not one single foot of soil would ever be sold.” 38 The Blood Law of 1829, which made unauthorized land concession a capital crime, reinforced the Cherokees’ position against ceding land. The law stated, “if any citizen or citizens of this nation should treat and dispose of any lands belonging to this nation without special permission from the national authorities, he or they shall suffer death.” 39 The Cherokee position found expression through the Cherokee national newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix. The Phoenix had “a wide circulation in the Cherokee Nation, the United States, and even parts of Europe.” 40 The paper conveyed the Cherokee perspective and their plight at the hands of the U.S., which was failing “to honor its treaty obligations.” 41 According to Helen Hunt Jackson’s influential writing on removal, it was precisely the “firm stand that they would give up no more land” that inspired forced removal of Indians from Georgia. 42 The Cherokee Phoenix called attention to the Cherokee situation as the pressure for removal increased and, at least as was expressed to non-Cherokees, conveyed a united response not to engage in negotiations that would cede additional Cherokee land. 37 SCHLISINGER, supra note 3, at 26-27. 38 THURMAN WILKINS, CHEROKEE TRAGEDY: THE STORY OF THE RIDGE FAMILY AND THE DECIMATION OF A PEOPLE 196 (2nd ed., rev., 1986); see also, Letter from John Ross to John Lowrey (Oct. 22, 1830), in 1THE PAPERS OF CHIEF JOHN ROSS, supra note 14, at 204 (“The Cherokees have long since come to the conclusion never again to cede another foot of land.”); Letter fromJohn Ross, Major Ridge, George Lowrey, and Elijah Hicks to President James Monroe (Jan. 19, 1824), in 1THE PAPERS OF CHIEF JOHN ROSS, supra note 14, at 59 (“The Cherokee Nation have now come to a decisive and unalterable conclusion not to cedeaway any morelands . . . .”). 39 WILKINS, supra note 38, at 201 (quoting the bill, passed on Oct. 24, 1829 in its entirety). 40 JILL NORGREN, THE CHEROKEE CASES: THE CONFRONTATION OF LAW AND POLITICS 45 (1996). 41 Id. 42 Helen Hunt Jackson, Georgia’s Dishonor, in ACENTURY OF DISHONOR (1881) reprinted in THE REMOVAL OF THE CHEROKEE NATION: MANIFEST DESTINY OR NATIONAL DISHONOR? 99 (Louis Filler and Allen Guttmann eds., 1962).
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