This is the Second Chapter of Michael E. Weaver's Master Thesis
While this Thesis Addresses the cherokee, the United States called the Chickamauga "cherokee" out of expediency
Michael E. Weaver
Genocide of Native Americans: Did the United States and Canadian Governments Commit Cultural Genocide?
Master’s thesis written under the supervision of Mr. Jeff Benvenuto, Gratz College 2016
CHAPTER II
Framing the Problem: American Indian Policy, Forced Removal, and Assimilation – The Cherokee Indians 1780 to 1851
The question of genocide in North America following the arrival of Europeans is an ongoing debate among scholars. On the one hand, from a broad conception of genocide, the near annihilation of indigenous people in the United States can be perceived as the unintended consequences of colonialism and the subsequent physical and cultural violence. On the other hand, a narrower conception might not consider the destructive consequences of the U.S. government’s dispossession of Indian lands as genocide.
Before addressing these questions, it is important to first establish how the opinion of European-Americans changed over time towards the Native Americans and how that viewpoint influenced policymakers that would eventually oust the Cherokee people from their homelands in the Southeastern United States. Accordingly, the beginning of this chapter will identify the changing attitudes of European-American’s about Native American culture, and how or whether or not the Indians should be transformed into a ‘civilized’ people. After these preliminary remarks, this chapter provides a case study of the Cherokee people from the Treaty of Hopewell in 1785, through the Indian Appropriations Act of 1851, by examining how the changing opinion of Indians changed over time influenced the United States policy towards American Indians. The chapter concludes with a description of the Trail of Tears – the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River- and establishment of residential schools.
I. Framing the Problem
European colonizers’ first impressions of Indigenous peoples wavered between the image of the “noble savage” on the one hand, and the “merciless savage” on the other hand. For example, after making contact with the Taino people in the Caribbean, Columbus wrote to the king and queen in Spain, of a people that had “no iron or steel weapons, nor are they fitted to use them,” and that they “never say no” to those who ask for anything.[1]Unfortunately for Native Americans, the favorable view Columbus wrote of did not last. On the other hand, less than 150 years later, Mayflower passenger Robert Cushman described the Indians in terms that are more negative. “They are not industrious, neither have they art, science, skill or faculty to use either the land or the commodities of it.”[2] Although these different first impressions shared the same Eurocentric hubris, they did lead to the development of different policy options for dealing with the so-called “Indian problem.”
After the independence of the United States in the late 18th century, the ‘Indian problem’ was how to deal with the alternative sociocultural polities of Indigenous peoples. As discussed below, the first Indian policy of the American federal government focused on “civilization” program. Despite pleas from settlers for more land, removal was not a priority. American politicians also felt compelled to submit legislation that would eliminate the Indians ‘supposed cultural and “civilization” gap between white people. Between 1790 and 1834,the US government passed several Intercourse and Trade Acts to restrain the illegal acts of unscrupulous white settlers, while providing a means for Indians to bring their complaints to the court. While the Indians obtained justice for intrusions on them and their property, the US gained “desired order and tranquility” to maintain “the orderly advance of the frontier.”[3] The Intercourse and Trade Act also assigned federal agents to work with the indigenous population. According to Prucha, federal agents working with the Cherokees were particularly eager to “introduce the art of spinning and weaving and among the men a taste for raising of stock and agriculture.”[4] Never mind that the roles were a significant departure from Cherokee culture. In 1818, The House Committee on Indians Affairs urged Congress to “Put into the hands of their children the primer and hoe...their minds will become enlightened and expand, the Bible will be their book.” Doing so the committee insisted would cause the Indians to leave behind their uncivilized ways and become productive members of society.[5]
The state of the ‘civilized Indian’ was a concern to the Executive Branch as well. In 1818,Secretary of War John Calhoun funded an expedition to “ascertain the actual condition of various tribes” and “devise the most suitable plan to advance their civilization and happiness.”[6] Again, removal was not a priority for the government despite settler’s cries to move Indians off desirable land. Congress hoped that the ‘civilization process’ would halt the “‘further decline and final extinction of Indian tribes, which, in the prevailing opinion of the time, the inexorable advance of settlement rendered inevitable without government intervention.”[7] Early government Indian policy clearly focused on maintaining peace on the expanding frontier by leaving Indians where they lived if possible.
However, Calhoun’s ostensibly good intentions to protect the Indians during the inevitable advance of the frontier did not overshadow his support for removal as an alternative policy. During this time white, settler colonialist fears of a joint insurrection of black slaves, Indians, and the British, continued to foster the idea that Indians in the eastern half of the continent should be transferred west of the Mississippi. The election of 1828 would change the priority of civilization to removal.
After the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828, who kept Calhoun as Vice President, removal became federal policy. In a July 1830, letter regarding policy and removal to Secretary of War J.H. Eaton, U.S. Indian Agent Colonel H. Montgomery on July29, 1830, expressed an adverse opinion about Indians remaining on their land and the differences between American and Indian culture. “... the idea is in the extreme, it might as well be supposed that science and ignorance, liberty and slavery, could dwell together.” “The leopard cannot change its spots more than an Ethiopian its skin, the policy of education may improve, but cannot change, for the imperishable seal is there.” Montgomery continued, “law is a restraint in civil society from crime and to constrain him to the necessity of moral and virtuous action. How can we look for and expect it in a community of savage and illiterate people?”[8]
Montgomery’s attitude was remarkably different from Washington and Knox. In a relatively short thirty years, the desire to assimilate American Indians through education and Christianity, Indian removal became the country’s focus. Eliminating contact between Native Americans and settlers was better for all parties involved. This change over time, from the “civilization” program of the 1790sto the “removal” policy of the 1830s, necessities explanation.
II. American Indian Policy
The basis for Native American Indian policy began during the early years of the United States. Influenced by previous treaties between the British and Native Americans, the early republic of the U.S. developed an Indian policy to acquire native lands, regulate trade, and manage the three-way relationship between the federal government, individual states, and Indians.[9] As successors to the British Empire, the United States inherited treaties such as the 1730 Treaty of Whitehall, which established articles of trade and friendship between the British and Cherokee Indians to avoid conflict and create goodwill.
"it is just and reasonable, and essential to our Interest, and the Security of our Colonies, that several Nations or Tribes of Indians whom We are connected, and who live under our Protection, should not be molested or disturbed in the Possession of such Parts of our Dominions and Territories as, not having them, or any of them, as their Hunting Grounds."[10]
When the U.S. defeated the British during the Revolutionary War, the responsibility of Indian policy fell to a new and fledgling government. The Continental Congress, realizing that individual commissioners sent by the colonies to deal with the Indians could not adequately handle the problem, tried to regulate Indian affairs by establishing three regionally assigned committees. However, the Articles of Confederation gave broad powers to individual states and limited the function of the central government. The Constitutional Convention that gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 sought, among many other things, to change the role of the U.S. government in dealing with Native Americans, in particular by giving the federal government greater power than the states to regulate Indian affairs.[11]
In 1789, President Washington directed Secretary of War, Henry Knox, to assess and report on the nature of Indian affairs in the country. In Knox’s detailed and lengthy report, he underscored that Indians had rights to their land and that any attempt to remove them would likely lead to a long and costly war that the U.S. would be ill prepared to prosecute. Instead, Knox proposed the “federal government help the tribes transition from hunting to an agricultural life-style.” The tribes, once assimilated to a new method of subsistence, would willingly cede excess lands no longer needed to sustain themselves to the government. The situation was a win-win for the U.S. government. The U.S. gained land necessary for settlers to expand westward to the Mississippi River and the U.S. avoided war with Native Americans while the Indians could begin a path to becoming more civilized.
Following Knox’s report, President Washington proposed to Congress to continue a policy of negotiating with Indians, guaranteeing protection against white settlers within agreed boundaries and to establish trade. Having already settled the authority of the central government to negotiate with Indians, later to be reaffirmed by the United States Supreme Court in Worcester v Georgia, Congress enacted new laws to protect Native Americans from encroachment by white settlers, and to foster trade.[12] In 1790, Congress passed legislation that struck down private acquisition of Indian lands by nullifying previous purchases, federally licensed traders, established punishments for those that traded illegally, and committed crimes on Indian property. To further strengthen federal authority over trade, Congress passed the Trade and Intercourse Acts to “promote civilization among friendly Indian tribes and secure the continuance of friendship, it shall be lawful for the President of the United States to furnish them with useful domestic animals and implements of husbandry, and with goods or money, as he shall judge proper... .” [13] The numerous policies demonstrate the federal government clung to the hope that peace among the Indians would lead to an orderly expansion of the frontier and continued the government’s intent to treat the Indian justly. Despite such assurances from the federal government for protection, however, Indians continued to suffer from encroachment of white settlers and the action of state governments.
Thus, by the late1820s and early 30s, American Indian policy had shifted from Knox’s original vision of the “civilization” program to the Jacksonian policy of removal. Several important events precipitated this change, as exemplified in the ongoing conflict between the Cherokee Nation and the State of Georgia. In March of 1829, Andrew Jackson was elected President. During his eight years in office, the government’s American Indian policy would shift from assimilation to removal. Later, in December of 1829, the Georgia state legislature passed into law the appropriation of Cherokee land and nullified all laws of the Cherokee Nation. Additionally, the December law stipulated that no Cherokee could act as a witness in any courtroom in the state. The law essentially opened the door for non-Indians in Georgia to trespass on Indian land, steal their cattle and property, without legal ramifications. Cherokee Indian Suntadegi wrote to the Cherokee Nation delegates asking for help to retain his property. In his letter, Suntadegi explained that James MacGrey received Suntadegi’s property as a settlement with Ed Welsh. When questioned, Mr. Welsh denied owning the property and any debt to Mr. MacGrey. Additionally, Suntadegi wrote to the Cherokee that he had “ample proof the place” is his.[14]
The second important event was the discovery of gold on Cherokee land. The Governor of Georgia declared that all Cherokee lands and gold mines belonged to the state. He further warned that all persons engaged in the operation of the mines, including the Indians that rightfully owned them, must desist from doing so. In response, the federal government provided protection of the Indians against the State. The protection was short-lived, however. The federal government removed the protection and allowed Georgia to act freely.[15]
Angered by the State of Georgia’s legal action the Cherokee filed suit with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing the new laws in Georgia did not have jurisdiction over a sovereign country. Sympathetic to the Cherokees, Chief Justice John Marshall nevertheless ruled against their petition citing a lack of jurisdiction over the case. Undaunted by the setback, the Cherokee filed suit again claiming the Georgia laws were invalid because the Constitution relegated trade with the Indians exclusively to the federal government. This time, Marshall agreed and invalidated the Georgia laws citing the U.S. relationship with the Cherokee was “that of a ward to his guardian” and “a nation claiming and receiving protection of one more powerful, not of individuals abandoning their national character and submitting as subjects to the laws of the master.”[16]
Faced with continued encroachment by settlers and individual States enacting Indian policy that contradicted earlier federal law, Andrew Jackson faced the continuing issue – what to do with Native Americans. Bolstered by support from Secretary of War, Lewis Cass, and U.S. Senator Thomas Hart Benson to use the land “according to the intentions of the CREATOR”,[17] Jackson pressured Congress for authority to do so. The resulting legislation, the Indian Removal Bill, set aside land in present-day Oklahoma in exchange for Indian lands in the Southeast. The Cherokee soon challenged the push for removal in Worcester vs. Georgia, a US Supreme Court case which ruled that the Cherokee were protected by previous acts, as “distinct political communities, having territorial boundaries, within which their authority is exclusive...which is not only acknowledged but guaranteed by the United States.”[18] The Cherokee’s victory was short lived. Jackson disregarded the Supreme Court ruling challenging Marshall to protect the Indians himself.[19] Acknowledging the government’s failure to live up to treaty obligations Secretary of War Eaton wrote to Georgia Governor Gilmer
“that these people, now, when their expectations of an interference on the part of Congress has failed, will awaken to the sense of their condition and true interest, and to a knowledge that their utter and entire extinction as a people, must be the consequence of remaining in their present homes.”[20]
Others in the government advocated that relocation was the best option for the Cherokee. In May of 1832, Chief Justice John McClean wrote to Cherokee Nation Chief John Ross suggesting that exchange of lands in the East for lands west would be favorable for the Cherokee. “You might look forward to a time where you advance your people in civilization and numbers, might entitle you to admission in the Union as a sovereign State.”[21] McClean further suggested remaining in the East would lead to continued interaction with white people would “more or less disturb the harmony of your people and retard their improvement.”[22] The Cherokee, however, would not go willingly.
The Cherokee Nation refused to submit to removal. In early 1833, John Ross led a delegation to Washington, D.C. There the delegation confronted the Secretary of War, telling him they would never consent to move to the West and appealed to him honor their rights promised in previous treaties. The Secretary told the delegation the President was concerned. However, their welfare would never be realized apart from removal. The Cherokee appealed to Congress and the President on several more occasions to no avail, telling the Cherokee Council in March of 1835,
"I have no motive, my friends, to deceive you. I am sincerely desirous to promote your welfare. Listen to me therefore while I tell you cannot remain where you now are. Circumstances that cannot be controlled and which are beyond the reach of human laws render it impossible that you can flourish in the midst of civilized community." [23]
John Mason, Jr., U.S. Special Agent to the Cherokee Nation also encouraged Ross to relocate the Cherokee for their good. In an 1837letter, he writes, “The President sees you as a father to children. He sees you exposed to fatal influences, which is working your destruction, and he earnestly desires to place you beyond their reach. Once there you can establish your own laws (the Cherokee already had their own laws in Georgia) and will be protected by intrusion of territorial and US governments.[24] A final attempt to reach an agreement between the US and the Cherokee failed in the autumn of 1835. In December, Jackson directed the Cherokee to appear at New Echota, capital of the Cherokee Nation. There, Indian Commissioner and John F. Schermerhorn, and General William Carrol on behalf of President Jackson concluded a treaty with the Cherokee delegation for lands east of the Mississippi. The agreement outlined several important agreements. 1) called for the Cherokee nation to cede relinquish and convey to the United States all the lands owned claimed or possessed by them east of the Mississippi River for a sum of five million dollars, 2) all lands west of the Mississippi previously identified in an 1833treaty will belong to the Cherokee, 3) the United States protect the Cherokee against all intrusions by its citizens that settle on Indian land illegally, 4)the US will make a just and fair evaluation of Indian property and pay any amounts of money due through the Cherokee agency west of the Mississippi.[25]
The Cherokee Indians now faced inevitable removal to Indian Territory. Ironically, the Cherokee had achieved what Washington and Knox hoped for; they assimilated to anew method of political economy and had ceded lands. Through treaty agreements and influence through Indian agents, the federal government convinced the Cherokee that transforming their cultural and social structures would benefit them. Women and girls would abandon their traditional role of agriculture in exchange for household duties; allowing men and boys to run the farm instead of hunting. By 1830, the Cherokee developed schools, a Constitution, a thriving agriculture-based economy, and a written language.[26] Cherokee Nation Chief John Ross wrote in the Niles Weekly Register
"The people have become civilized, and adopted the Christian religion. Their pursuits are pastoral and agricultural and, in some degree, mechanical. Their stocks of cattle, however, have become greatly reduced in numbers...owing to unfortunate policy, which has thrown upon this territory a class of white and irresponsible settlers... actuated more from the sordid impulses of avarice, than by any principal of moral obligation or of justice, have by fraud and force made Cherokee property their own."[27]
By abdicating their responsibility to protect the Cherokee, the federal government emboldened thousands of settlers to descend on Cherokee property. Indian policy had long shifted from assimilation to removal. Indian policy was about land, the Cherokee lived on it, the United States wanted it; it was time for the Cherokee to leave.
III. The Removal Begins
Despite requirements outlined in the Treaty of New Echota, only about 2,000 Cherokee had relocated by late spring 1838. The remaining 15,000, faced enforced removal. On May 17, 1838, General Winfield Scott, issued General Order 237 at his Headquarters in New Echota. The order called for the “least possible distress to the Indians.” Scott realized any indiscretion on the part of his troops would strengthen resistance to removal. Consequently, he ordered his officers to punish any soldier to the fullest extent of the law that “should be found capable of inflicting a wanton injury on any Cherokee man, woman, or child.”[28] Scott’s directive, seemingly sympathetic to the Cherokee’s plight, was aimed instead at enticing Indians to seek food and shelter from the Army thereby avoiding the necessity for the Army to hunt down Indians. The tone of General Order 237 called for compassion. The execution of the order was far different.
Scott ordered his men to erect stockades to hold Indians before their eventual relocation west of the Mississippi, and seize all remaining Indians wherever they might be found.
"Families at dinner were startled by the sudden gleam of bayonets in the doorway and rose up to be driven by blows and oaths along the weary miles of trail that led to the stockade. In many cases, on turning for one last look as they crossed the ridge, they saw their homes in flames, fired by the lawless rabble that followed on the heels of the soldiers to loot and pillage."[29]
The broken promise of protection from settlers continued the shameful history of failure of the U.S to honor treaty obligations. The Cherokee would soon learn the U.S would fall woefully short of providing necessary food, clothing, and transportation for the move west. The Trail of Tears was about to begin.
From 1838 to 1839, over 17,000 Cherokees traveled by foot and boat to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi.[30]The removal was organized around Army companies assigned to transport detachments of Cherokees in groups that numbered from several hundred to more than a thousand. One such detachment left Ross’ Landing on June 6, 1838, under the command of Lieutenant Edward Deas during the height of a drought. Several months later Deas arrived at Fort Coffee, Indian Territory. He issued tents to protect them from “their destitute conditions.” Elijah Hicks would leave Georgia on October 1, 1838, many died along the way. Mrs. Rebecca Neugin, a three-year-old half-Cherokee during the march, recalled her mother’s story of insufficient food, the lack of cooking utensils to boil water and prepare food and death along the way. “There was much sickness among the emigrants and a great many little children died of whooping cough.” [31] Hick’s led another detachment on November 4, 1838. During the trip west a traveler described seeing eleven hundred Indians camped in the forest, without canvas for a shield against the cold driving rain, many of the old suffering from fatigue. Several days later, he passed another detachment of two-thousand Indians.
"The sick and feeble were carried in wagons – a great many ride on horseback and multitudes go on foot – even aged females, apparently nearly ready to drop into the grave, were traveling with heavy burdens attached to their back – on the sometimes frozen ground and sometimes muddy streets, with no covering for the feet except what mother nature had given them. We learned from the inhabitants on the road where the Indians passed, that they buried fourteen or fifteen at every stopping place."[32]
John Ross left Georgia in October 1838 with his family. Six months later, his detachment reached Indian Territory; thirty-four people, including his wife, died along the way.[33]
IV. Post-Removal Assimilation
During the four years following the Treaty of New Echota, Cherokee Indians suffered loss of life and property. Despite assurances of protection from white settlers, Cherokee families repeatedly faced encroachment on their property and little redress because of Georgia law that prohibited them from acting as a witness in court. Despite assurances from the administration, and General Scott, Cherokee property was not secured nor assessed because of looting and pillaging. Consequently, Indians did not receive promised fair and just compensation. For some, the loss exceeded $10,000, the equivalent of over a quarter-million dollars in 2016. The government also failed to provide sufficient food and shelter during the march. Daily rations included one pound of beef or pork, one pound of good wheat bread, biscuit, or cornmeal, and two quarts of salt – per 100 people! Each family received one Mackinaw blanket. During the arduous 800-mile journey, over4,000 would perish due to squalor, lack of food, and the weather.[34]
Education had long been important tool for civilizing Native Americans. By 1845, the education system included apprenticeships for mechanics and by 1851, The Cherokee Female Seminary was opened.[35] Assimilation through education was so ingrained in the Seminary that full- blooded Cherokee lashed out against the teaching of white values. According to Cherokee historian Devon Mihesuah, “The teachers...relentlessly reinforced the importance of learning and retaining the values of white society. At the same time, they repressed Cherokee values.”
Andrew Woolford in The Benevolent Experiment provides an excellent précis of the role of education in assimilation.
"it is through education that various forms of state messaging, and the social construction of the state itself, occur. This includes the transmission of the qualities of the ideal citizen to the children. But when it is imposed on the children of the subjugated group, the transformative power of citizenship education can be harnessed to objectives of cultural destruction,...education that ignores the culture from which the student is drawn threatens to disrupt that student’s ability to understand himself or herself as part of, and finding meaning within, his or her cultural group."[36]
What began as an insidious seizure of land from uncivilized ‘savages’ to expand the frontier for economic gain led to the removal of indigenous people. For the Cherokee people, lawless settlers, broken treaties that failed to provide protection against white settlers within agreed boundaries, unconstitutional federal and state legislation, led to the forcible removal from their ancestral homelands to unfamiliar and dissimilar lands in current-day Oklahoma. All of this despite the Cherokee’s efforts to achieve President Washington’s desire for assimilation. By the mid-1800s portions of the Cherokee Nation had abandoned their cultural history.
[1] Alex Alvarez, Native America and the Question of Genocide (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 21.
[2] Madley,"Reexamining the American Genocide Debate: Meaning, Historiography, and New Methods." 99.
[3] Paul Francis Prucha. American Indian Policy in the Formative Years (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1962), 2-3.
[4] Ibid. 214-215.
[5] Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928, 6.
[6] L. Daniel Hawk and Richard L. Twist, “From Good: The Only Good Indian is a Dead Indian To Better: Kill The Indian and Save The Man To Best: Old Things Pass Away and All Things Become White! An American Hermeneutic of Colonization”, in Evangelical Postcolonial Conversations: Global Awakenings in Theology and Praxis, ed. Kay Higuera Smith and Jayachitra Lalitha (Downers Grove, IL: Inter Varsity, 2014), 47.
[7] Ibid. 47-48.
[8] See the John Ross papers, folder40, item 4026.77, p 1-9, The Helmerich Center for American Research at the Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma.
[9] Prucha, American Indian Policy in the Formative Years, 1.
[10] Ibid. 1.
[11] Ibid. 37-42.
[12] See Sharon O'Brien, American Indian Tribal Governments,(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 49-51; and Prucha, American Indian Policy in the Formative Years, 44-45.
[13] O'Brien, American Indian Tribal Governments, 52. Prucha, American Indian Policy in the Formative Years. 44-45.
[14] See the John Ross papers, folder 97, item 4026.129, The Helmerich Center for American Research at the Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma.
[15] Grant Foreman, Indian Removal: The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians (2. Ed.) (Norman, Oklahoma, 1972),229-30.
[16] See O’Brien, American Indian Tribal Governments,57-59, Prucha, American Indian Policy, 243-45.
[17] Prucha, American Indian Policy, 240-41.
[18] Ibid. 244-245.
[19] Ibid. 245.
[20] Ibid. 245.
[21] See the John Ross papers, item 4026.187a&b, The Helmerich Center for American Research at the Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Prucha, American Indian Policy, 240-41.
[24] Italics are mine. John Ross papers, item 4026.456 1-3, The Helmerich Center for American Research at the Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma.
[25] Treaties July 1, 1835 to November 23, 1837. (National Archives Microfilm Publication 668, reel8); National Archives, National Archives and Record Service, Government Service Administration, Washington, D.C., 1967.
[26] Mary Young. "The Cherokee Nation: Mirror of the Republic,” American Quarterly 33, no. 5 (1981): 502-505.
[27] Penelope Johnson Allen. "History of the Cherokee Indians”." 1935. MS E99.C5A454 1935a, Museum of the Cherokee Indian. 251-252. Three ring binder containing a photocopy of the manuscript, ”History of the Cherokee Indians”, written by Penelope Johnson Allen in 1935. It documents the history of the Cherokee Indians in the Southeastern United States and their dealings with white settlers from the 1770s until their removal to Indian Territory in the late 1830s.
[28] Letters Reviewed by Office of Indian Affairs 1824-1881 (National Archives Microfilm Publication M234, roll 115); National Archives Building, Kansas City, Kansas
[29] Foreman, Indian Removal: The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians, 287. Foreman draws considerably on James Mooney’s, History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokee. Mooney, an ethnographer, lived among the Cherokee for several years during the years in the late 1800s.
[30] Alvarez, Native America and the Question of Genocide, 139.
[31] Foreman, Indian Removal: The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians, 302.
[32] Ibid, 305-306.
[33] Ibid, 311.
[34] See Young, "The Cherokee Nation: Mirror of the Republic”, 516,517, and House resolution 747 February 19, 1835. John Ross Papers, folder 138, item 3726.3a-2, The Helmerich Center for American Research at the Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Alvarez, Native America and the Question of Genocide,139.
[35] Ibid, 55.
[36] Woolford, This Benevolent Experiment: Indigenous Boarding Schools, Genocide, and Redress in Canada and the United States, 49.