Local origins of national Indian policy: Cherokee and Tennessean ideas about sovereignty and nationhood, 1790-1811

Journal of the Early Republic

Volumn 23, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 21-46

  Cumfer, Cynthia ^a,b  

^a REED COLLEGE   (United States)

^b LEWIS AND CLARK LAW SCHOOL   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 53849098206     PISSN: 02751275     EISSN: 15530620     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3124984     Document Type: Article

References (35)

1. Russell Lawrence Barsh and James Youngblood, The Road: Indian Tribes and Political Liberty (Berkeley, 1980), 33-34. An important acknowledgment of local ideas is the recent work by Tim Alan Garrison. Tim Alan Garrison, "Beyond Worcester: The Alabama Supreme Court and the Sovereignty of the Creek Nation," Journal of the Early Republic, 10 (Fall 1999), 423-40
2. Prucha, The Great Father, 1:31-32; Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (Cambridge, UK, 1991), chap. 11; Eric Hinderaker, Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673-1800 (Cambridge, UK, 1997), 189. Notable exceptions are Robert A. Williams Jr., Linking Anns Together: American Indian Treaty Visions of Law and Peace, 1600-1800 (New York, 1997), and David E. Wilkins, "'With the Greatest Respect and Fidelity': A Cherokee Vision of the 'Trust' Doctrine," Social Science Journal, 34 (1997), 495-510
3. For histories that depict relatively smooth adjustments to nationhood, see Malcolm J. Rohrbough, The Trans-Appalachian Frontier: People, Societies, and Institutions, 1775-1850 (New York, 1978)
4. R. Douglas Hurt, The Ohio Frontier: Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720-1830 (Bloomington, 1996)
5. and Stephen Aron, How the West Was Last: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel Boone to Henry Clay (Baltimore, 1996). For one scholar who describes a difficult adjustment to federal authority in Ohio, see Hinderaker, Elusive Empires, 187-270. For scholars studying internal political strife associated with nationhood, see Andrew R. L. Cayton, The Frontier Republic: Ideology and Politics in the Ohio Country. 1780-1825 (Kent, 1986)
6. and Lowell H. Harrison, Kentucky's Road to Statehood (Lexington, 1992). On regional tensions created by federal Indian relations
7. see Andrew R. L. Cayton, "'Separate Interests' and the Nation-State: The Washington Administration and the Origins of Regionalism in the Trans-Appalachian West," Journal of American History, 79 (June 1992), 39-67
8. John Phillip Reid, A Better Kind of Hatchet: Law, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Cherokee Nation During the Early Years of European Contact (University Park, PA, 1976), 16-17, 206-07, 213-15. 224-28
9. Samuel Cole Williams, Tennessee During the Revolutionary War (Knoxville, 1944), 199-201 (1781)
10. Williams, The Last State of Franklin, 205-12; talk from headmen and warriors, Nov. 20, 1788, American Stare Papers: Indian Affairs, 4:45-46
11. James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee (New York, 1995), 281-83,453
12. John Norton, The Journal of Major John Norton (Toronto, Ont., 1816, 1970), 114-15
13. George Welbank to Alexander McKee, Jan. 16, 1793, in Philip M. Hamer, "The British in Canada, and the Southern Indians, 1790-1794," East Tennessee Historical Publications, 2 (1930), 115-18
14. Sevier to Robertson, May 20, 1808, "Correspondence of General James Robertson," The American Hisrorical Magazine, 5 (July 1900), 255-56 (quotation). On female diplomats
15. Theda Perdue, Cherokee Women: Genderand culture change, 1700-1835 (Lincoln, 1998), 13
16. Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, 1992)
17. Norton, Journal, 59 (quotation). On bribery, see Dearborn to Meigs, Feb. 19, 1803, Records of Cherokee Agency, RG 75
18. Wilcomb E. Washburn, Red Man's Land/White Man's Law: The Past and Present Status of the American Indian (Norman, 1995), 57; Meigs to Roan, Jan. 30, 1802, Records of Cherokee Agency, RG 75
19. Gordon S. Wood, The creation of the Amen can Republic, 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill, 1969); and Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution; on Republicans, see Mary Young, "Review Essay: Indian Policy in the Age of Jefferson," Journal of the Early Republic, 20 (Summer 2000), 297-307
20. Chulio to Meigs, Mar. 23, 1808, National Council to Meigs, Sept. 27, 1809
21. and Blount to John Gray Blount, Oct. 22, 1793, in Alice Barnwell Keith, William H. Masterson, and David T. Morgan, eds., The John Gray Blount Papers (4 vols., Raleigh, 1952), 2:314-15
22. See Alan Taylor, Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760-1820 (Chapel Hill, 1990), 4-5, for a listing of many of these rebellions. None of these uprisings occurred west of the Appalachians. Tennessee historians have overlooked the significance of the insurrection in Tennessee
23. Knox to Blount, July 26, 1794, American State Papers: Indian Affairs, 4:634
24. see H. H. Brackenridge, "Thoughts on the present Indian War," Knoxville Gazette, May 5, 1792
25. Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the course of American Empire, 1767-1821 (New York, 1977), 94-98
26. and Cocke to Robertson, Feb. 18, 1797, "Correspondence of General James Robertson," 337-38
27. Sevier to Secretary of War; July 20, 1796, "Executive Journal of Governor John Sevier," East Tennessee Historical Publications, 1 (1929), 112 (quotation). On state's policy, see Tennessee agents to U. S. Commissioners at Tellico, July 19, 1798, "Correspondence of General James Robertson," 357-65
28. and Knoxville Register, Oct. 2, 1798; on standing army
29. Stephen Becker, trans., Diary of My Travels: Louis-Philippe, King of France, 1830-1848 (New York, 1976), May 3, 1797,98-99; Williams, Aug. 16, 1797
30. "Francis Baily's Tour," in Samuel Cole Williams, Early Travels in Tennessee Country, 1540-1800 (Johnson City, 1928), 428-30
31. McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence, 93-94; Sevier to Congressional representatives, Dec. 8, 1807, John Sevier Papers, McClung Library (quotation). On treaty
32. see Cumfer, "'The Idea of Mankind Is So Various,'" 220-21; on local control, see Sevier to Samuel Wear, May 5, 1796, "Executive Journal of Governor John Sevier," East Tennessee Historical Publications, 1(1929), 108; Governor Archibald Roane to Henry McKinney, Apr. 28, 1802, Cherokee Collection (Tennessee State Library); Citizens of Battle Creekto Meigs, Oct. 19, 1809, Meigs to Wear, Sept. 21, 1802, and Wear to Meigs, Sept. 27, 1802, Records of the Cherokee Agency, RG 75
33. Francis Stephen Ruddy, Inteniational Law in the Enlightenment: The Background of Eminerich de Vattel's Le Droit Des Gens (New York, 1975), 1-57, 281-85
34. See Cumfer, "'The Idea of Mankind Is So Various,'" 95-111, 162-79, for a more detailed treatment of this argument
35. Sevier to John Steele, May 8, 1798, "Executive Journal of Governor John Sevier," East Tennessee Historical Society's Publication, 4 (Jan. 1932), 149 (quotation); remonstrance, Messages of the Governors, 22-24. On Congress, see Treaty of Hopewell, Articles X and XI, Nov. 11, 1785, in Kappler, Indian Affairs, 10. Robert F. Berkhofer Jr. asserts that "tribe" did not replace "nation" until well into the nineteenth century, but this process began earlier in Tennessee. Robert F. Berkhofer Jr., The White Man's Indian: Images of the American Indian from columbus to the Present (New York, 1978), 15-16. On Tennessee