Cherokee Winter
(An American Nakba)
Guwisguwi. That was my Cherokee name. Mysterious Little White Bird. I am perhaps better known as John Ross, and I bear witness to the pains and suffering of my people. I bear witness to the forced exodus of my people from our lands, to make way for the white folks arriving from overseas. I bear witness to the misery inflicted on my people expelled from their lands so white men could plunder the gold underneath. I bear witness to our people dying of cold and starvation, of disease, of treachery. I bear witness to having been promised the moon, but delivered a small meteorite. Millions of acres of our prime land were taken from us, and in the New Territory we would be given rocky fields.
This forced removal from the land of one’s forefathers by better armed people has been a common practice in the history of the world. We use words like massacres or expulsions, but they should invent a new word or a new phrase to explain how one race of people leading its peaceful life in a land they had fashioned for themselves over centuries, could by the whim of another, armed with weapons not available to all, be rounded up and forced to go to another region, or die. Our people the Cherokees had our lands, prairies, lakes and forests for centuries, and we lived in relative harmony with nature, and with other nations, the Choctaw, the Crees, the Seminoles, minor disagreements settled by pow-wows. When more white people began arriving on our land, we were suspicious, but the good Lord knows how vast our country is, with room for everybody, but they thought it was easier to expel us, the people who had already tamed the land, and like the cuckoo steal its nest. And get rid of us, like we were dirt on their clothes and needed to be washed away. We avoided contact, but did nothing to harm them. As a child we all knew the saying, Beware of the white man when he brings in gifts of blankets.
A few years later when my fellow Cherokee Elias Boudinot created our paper The Cherokee Phoenix, he developed the habit of looking into old archives, and he found a letter from Sir Jeffrey Amherst, commander-in-chief of British forces in North America, to Colonel Henry Bouquet at Fort Pitt: “You will do well to try to inoculate the Indians with smallpox by means of blankets, as well as to try every other method, that can serve to extirpate this execrable race.” Execrable race! That’s us. Later I was appalled to discover that in the sixteenth century there were fifteen to twenty million Native Americans in North America_ people who doubt this, can count how many of the states from Arkansas to Wyoming have kept their ancient names_ but there are just over half a million of us left in this century.
When we, the Natives of this vast land, began to understand what the white man had in mind, we tried to bury our past differences and form a new alliance, but our way of life was not conducive to confronting an army, with guns and cannons, which could muster numbers far superior to ours. We knew nothing about modern warfare. Which is not saying that we were going to let them have their way. The more warlike Seminoles inflicted heavy damage on them before they too, were inevitably subdued.
Although my father was a Scotsman, and I had been brought up like a white boy, dressed in woollen suits wearing a tie, going to school with white kids, praying in Christian churches, I was taught Cherokee traditions by my mother, and my heart remained one hundred percent Cherokee. Many of those our people voted as leaders, were, like me, of mixed descent. Elias Boudinot, Major Ridge among others. I was properly elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, and was very happy to have Ridge and Boudinot as fellow chiefs. They were worthy people, but would later become party to President Jackson’s sinister Indian Removal Act, on the grounds that as the white man was too powerful to be defeated, that it was to our advantage to accept his terms. I know that this was something they genuinely believed, so I am not going to regurgitate accusations and innuendos about their taking the thirty silver pieces.
I was hardly an adult when, because of my familiarity with the English language I was made an Indian agent, and was appointed adjutant in a regiment under the command of General Andrew Jackson who would later become president of the United States. In this capacity I have often been called upon to negotiate with government authorities. I often talked to the future president. He was an ungainly and awkward-looking man. I have never seen a man with such a long head, it was as if it had been put in a press and squeezed upwards. This made his eyes look sunken and menacing, but he could put on an affable and winsome smile too. Although I had an excellent education and everybody considered me the equal of the highest in the land intellectually, when he spoke to me, the general formed his syllables slowly to make sure I understood, often taking the trouble to explain the meaning of a word he thought I might have difficulty understanding. Andrew Jackson loved to proclaim his great respect for our tribes, pointed out that he had adopted Cherokee orphans, but all the hardships and misfortunes visited on our people can be laid at his door. When our people say of the white man that he speaks with forked tongue, the devious Jackson comes to mind. The assiduous Boudinot found a letter he wrote to his wife in the archives, here is an extract:
“I detached General John Coffee with part of his Brigade of Cavalry and mounted men to destroy Creek Town … General Johnson wrote, that he had performed this slaughter in elegant style. More than 170 Native Americans were killed. Still, there was more killing to do. He was determined to march on to the heart of the creek nation.” One consolation was that whereas we commit massacres, our poor compatriots were dealt with in elegant style.
The eighteen thirties was very unsettling for us Native Americans. In 1830, now president of the United States, Jackson instigated and signed the Indian Removal Act, whereby, 60,000 Native Americans would be forcibly but legally removed from our territory in south-eastern United States, thousands of miles to Oklahoma, then rough and undeveloped and called Indian Territory, in order to make way for white settlers, specially after gold was discovered on our lands. Our land was considered ideal for the plantation of cotton fields, promising high returns. This involved legalised expropriation of our homesteads; our people called this legalised thefts. Even I, the principal chief was not spared. A group of heavily armed people arrived at my homestead on the River Coosa one morning, and showed me documents purporting that the land and buildings which were mine by Cherokee custom, really belonged to them legally, ordering me to leave. It is true that we did not possess any titles to the land. It was not the custom of Cherokees (and the other tribes) to claim individual possession of the land. The land of our forefathers belonged to their tribe, and our traditional laws gave us the right to inhabit it and cultivate it. It was our belief that land, with the trees and beasts on it, water with the fish God put in it, and air with all its birds, like the sun, the moon and the sky, could not belong to individuals. This had never caused any problem that had not been solved by a powwow of our elders. Now we were being evicted from our traditional lands, which we had tamed, which gave us our livelihood and which we had always treated with respect and which we worshipped.
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Deprived of our land, what awaited us was a miserable interminable march to God knows where, death by hunger and cold_ a quarter of us would die on the way to the unknown waiting for us. Twenty-three million acres of our land were seized from with no compensation. There were promises, but white man promises much and delivers little. This epic injustice will be widely known as The Trail of Tears.
Jackson had the utmost contempt for all non-white races. He summed up his view of the Cherokees thus: “Established in the midst of a superior race, they must disappear.” Why were they a superior race? Was it because they invented guns and knew how to use them? Was it because they had learnt to speak with forked tongue?
He did make one attempt at ensuring that History would remember him kindly: After his soldiers committed a wholesale massacre of our people, one little toddler was unharmed, and Bleeding Heart laid claim to him, and adopted the child, giving him the name Lyncoya. One can guess how valued the child was by considering that he was apprenticed to a saddler and died of tuberculosis at 16.
Had the so-called five civilised tribes not been so widely dispersed, we might have been able to form a united front and resist the consequences of the Removal Act. We were labelled civilised tribes because we had heeded George Washington’s advice: Give up your primitive mode of life, he said, wear civilised clothes, build yourselves white-man style houses with rooms and windows, buy yourselves black slaves and make them work the land for you, accept the teachings of the bible, and you will find that you will become a happier people. You will become civilised, and we will give you the same rights and privileges. Five tribes took him at his word, and we were rewarded with the titles Civilised Tribe. The White Man had his own agenda, he wanted our land. Cleverly, he dealt with us one at a time, first the Choctaw people in 1831; we could do nothing to stop it. We knew that our turn was only round the corner. I warned our people about the catastrophe ahead if we listened to the white man. I urged resistance, warned that we might need to fight for our rights, but a chink appeared in our armour, in the shape of the reluctance of Major Ridge and Elias Boudinot, my co-chiefs to confront the impending threat. They ended up by agreeing to sign the infamous Treaty of Echota, against the wishes of the great majority of Cherokees. Disunited, we had but little power.
Once I was evicted from my homestead with my dear wife Quattie and our young ones, just as thousands of others, forced into heavily guarded stockades at gun point, there was little anybody could do; removal was inevitable. The President showed he meant business by designing an army of seven thousand soldiers to oversee the removal. In late autumn, a party of us numbering about a hundred and fifty were marched in the direction on Red Clay, where some began their trip on foot, in the direction of McMinnville, on a thousand mile trek, encompassing a huge trunk of Tennessee, before crossing the whole length of Arkansas from east to west until those who survived reached Fort Gibson. I was in a smaller party, and we were instructed to march to Guntersville, a hundred miles away.
The terrain was rough and although they did not complain it was clear that our youngest children Silas and George who were not yet ten were finding it difficult to cope. Quattie and I, already struggling with our burdensome possessions, had no choice but to carry these poor mites on our shoulders, although the three older ones insisted on doing their bit. We all reached Guntersville with sores and blisters. It was spelled out to us that contracts had been signed for the regular delivery of foodstuffs, but on the morning of the third day a wagon arrived with half of what we had been expecting, salted pork, turnips and pumpkins. We read that as a portent of things to come, hoping that if it was a slip-up, and that things would be put right in Guntersville, where we might at least be able to buy what we needed. However no food wagons turned up, and when I asked to venture into the town, the soldiers accompanying us stopped me. The town was out of bounds to us, on the grounds that we would contaminate the good white people with diseases which it must be said, they had brought to us from the old country. Fortunately a few young braves, including my older sons James and Williams, defying orders, set themselves to the task of providing for us, and as the forests and rivers were bountiful, we treated ourselves to feasts of roast venison or smoky fish. Our talented Cherokee fishermen even caught sturgeons. Obviously one could not guarantee regular supplies, as forests and rivers obey their own laws.
At Guntersville, our guards, probably satisfied that we were not planning to escape_ where would we have escaped to?_ consented to our continuing our trip on the river Tennessee , provided we paid for it. We arranged with some boatmen to put us all on board four flatboats, to Tucumbia. They were not prepared to take us further, but assured us that there were ample facilities there for our needs. I thought it was feasible, and I used my money to buy provisions. My father was a successful trader and had left us, my siblings and me well-provided for. The nights were getting colder, but otherwise nothing out of the ordinary happened. At Tucumbia I met a Mr Mortensen who operated a ferry service, and who possessed a number of boats and he intimated that if I offered him a good price, he might be persuaded to sell me one. Thus it was that the Victoria changed hands for over twice what a white man would have paid, but I had no choice.
We had hardly done a fifth of the route, and knew that what awaited us was a tedious and interminable slog, along the Tennessee, large stretches of lthe Ohio and Mississippi rivers, to finally link up with the Arkansas. The Victoria was a winsome and gorgeous schooner, which although quite old, was a spirited craft. Our Cherokee people with their gift for conjuring fish even from from a bath tub, kept up well-provided with catfish, bass, pikes and crappies, but one doesn’t live by fish alone. We had low rations of corn or oats, and many of us lost a lot of weight although we did not actually starve.
The Victoria depended on the wind, and our progress was slow. Often we had barely moved a hundred miles in a week. Often we were becalmed for weeks at a time. That year winter was particularly harsh, with lots of snow, and the temperatures dropping to minus 5 or 6 degrees. After three weeks, on average, we began losing an elderly friend a week. One child fell in the river and drowned before anybody could do anything. The biting winter winds made many catch chills, some seriously. The death toll began to rise, but the able-bodied women managed the situation with great devotion and care, foremost among them, I am happy to say was my Quattie who was on her feet eighteen hours a day attending to the weaker among us. Our Jane who was still a teenager shouldered the responsibilities of a mature woman, I was so proud of her willingness to put her shoulders to the wheel; I often had to order her to go to bed and rest.
The suffering of our people never abated. We had to contend with the cold, the wind, the hunger, the disease, the stench, the overcrowding, and above all the uncertainty awaiting us. Elijah Willip, a Georgian soldier who accompanied us on the stretch told me that he had fought in the civil war and had witnessed much suffering, but it had been nothing compared to what he was seeing on the Victoria.
Forced to leave our homes, none of us had had time and the resources to ensure that we had good enough clothing to put up with the low temperatures. Quattie, a totally selfless woman who always put others first gave her buffalo coat to a frail young girl who had turned blue in the biting wind, never giving a thought to herself. The poor girl died anyway, but my wife then passed on the coat to some other woman. What I was dreading happened and she caught a severe chill, and shortly before we branched off into the Arkansas, our medicine man made a grim face and said the word pneumonia. This is an unforgiving condition which worsened rapidly when no drugs are available. I prayed to God to spare her and take me instead, I didn’t want our children to lose such an admirable mother, but God paid no heed to my supplication and took her.
Only the responsibilities of my tribe and their welfare stopped me from sinking into the slough of despair. New problems kept cropping up but we dealt with them with God’s help. It took us five more weeks before we reached Fort Gibson, in the Indian Territory, meeting the many who had taken the land routes had already arrived, with many more trickling, in in the weeks to come. My people expressed horror at the bleakness they saw, and we, the elders, knowing that there was no alternative, did our best to cheer them up, trying our best to convince them that we were not exchanging our moon for a rocky asteroid. After a whole year, I still never met a single one of our Cherokees who did not stop dreaming of returning one day to our real homeland east of the Mississippi.
