Jacksonland: A Great American Land Grab (34 page)

Before he invented the telegraph, Samuel F. B. Morse was a painter who in 1822 depicted the House of Representatives in session. The Marquis de Lafayette spoke here in 1824; in 1830 it was the scene of a close vote on the Indian Removal Act.

Cherokee legislators met in a more modest wooden council house, which has been reconstructed at the site of the former Cherokee capital at New Echota.

Major Ridge, a Cherokee friend of Andrew Jackson and a vital ally of John Ross at the beginning.

Henry Clay, Jackson’s rival, who opposed Indian removal even though he said the extinction of Indians would be “no great loss to the world.”

John Ross’s signature on an 1834 note requesting a meeting with President Jackson.

Andrew Jackson’s postscript on an 1838 letter demanding “Why is it that the Scamp Ross is not banished from the notice of the administration [?]”

Catharine Beecher, a Connecticut teacher who became author of the “Ladies’ Circular,” which opposed Indian removal: “It may be that female petitioners can lawfully be heard, even by the highest rulers of our land.”

Cherokees were cleared from their farms at the head of the Coosa River, which included the home of Major Ridge and also one of the homes of John Ross. The settlement was renamed Rome, Georgia, and remains today a prosperous manufacturing center. The stores and restaurants on the main street include the Old Havana Cigar Co., established in 2003 and decorated with a wooden Indian.

The Cherokee settlement called Ross’s Landing grew into the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee. In the late nineteenth century, the Walnut Street Bridge was built near the site of Ross’s Landing to connect the city’s downtown to the north side of the Tennessee River.

This cluster of signs suggests the layering of cultures in the modern-day city of Cherokee, North Carolina. The street signs are in both English and Cherokee. Paul’s Family Restaurant offers “Indian tacos,” while a local Catholic church offers a weekly service in Spanish, reflecting yet another migration to this part of North America.

Writing this book required me to join a centuries-old argument. Martin Van Buren was right: he predicted that while other controversies that “agitated the public mind in their day” would fade, the emotions aroused by Indian removal would probably “
endure . . . as long as the government itself.” Each generation of Americans has interpreted Indian removal differently—arguing at different times that it was inevitable, tragic, genocidal, better left unexamined, or, in the words of an early Jackson biographer, “
wise and humane.”

Division and Reunion
, a
popular history of the United States published in 1893, declared that
white men “very naturally” would not tolerate red men setting up a government in their midst. The book all but excused subverting the law to remove them. The author was Woodrow Wilson, and his history was still in print after he was elected president in 1912. A Georgia school textbook in 1913 said slave owners “
were as religious, moral, high-minded a race of men who ever lived,” and described the removal of Creeks and Cherokees as an obvious practical response to the problem that their land was needed for white settlement. But there were always dissenting opinions, and gradually the acts Wilson called “natural” became controversial. Historians in the 1930s highlighted the cruelties of Indian removal, while those who admired
Jackson found it necessary to emphasize other parts of his career. In 1945 Arthur Schlesinger won a Pulitzer Prize for
The Age of Jackson,
which made a case for Jackson as a hero of democracy, and mentioned Indian removal in a single passing phrase.

In later years, Howard Zinn’s best-selling
A People’s History of the United States
went to the opposite extreme, taking a wild swing at Jackson, while the ethnographer Ronald Takaki labeled him “the Metaphysician of Indian-Hating,” playing off a phrase penned by Herman Melville. Even the visitor center at the Hermitage, Jackson’s home in Tennessee, began playing a documentary on Jackson’s life that acknowledged
many Indians viewed him as “the devil.” In 2009, Congress passed and President Barack Obama quietly signed a
formal apology for the Trail of Tears. But Congress also specified that Native Americans could not use the apology to reclaim land, and the historical pendulum was already swinging back. Recent Jackson biographers, such as Jon Meacham and H. W. Brands, candidly described the human cost of Jackson’s policy while keeping it in the perspective of his broader career. Sean Wilentz, in
The Rise of American Democracy
, observed that while Jackson was a “
paternalist,” telling Indians what was best for them, that was not the same as genocide.

One especially intriguing treatment of America’s engagement with native nations is a project that was never finished. Starting in 1888, Theodore Roosevelt devoted some of his phenomenal energy to writing
The Winning of the West,
which chronicled western settlement from colonial times onward. In his role as a historian, Roosevelt documented brutal violence: settlers and Indians disregarded the rules of war, and even noncombatants were “
harried without ruth.” As an ardent nationalist, however, Roosevelt insisted that this ruthlessness was redeemed by the result. The spread of civilization was a noble task, America had its destiny to fulfill, and critics of the ugly methods were overlooking
the “race-importance” of the work. Roosevelt’s four volumes continued the story up to the start of the nineteenth century. He never finished two additional books in which he intended to bring forward the story
into the 1830s. The later volumes necessarily would have covered many of the events of
Jacksonland
.

I came to think of
Jacksonland
as a modern substitute for one of Roosevelt’s missing volumes. While discarding his theories of “race-importance,” I found something valuable in his insistence upon the cold reality of events. Facts should be pursued “without ruth.” And that included facts about John Ross, who like Jackson has been portrayed differently at different times.
The Cherokees
by Grace Steele Woodward makes him a beloved hero, while
Trail of Tears
by John Ehle paints a stubborn egotist “determined to defeat removal and extol himself.” Some writers do not even describe Ross as an Indian;
Toward the Setting Sun
by Brian Hicks styles him “the first white man to champion the voiceless Native American cause.” It took me time to recognize that the complexity of Ross’s story is the point of it. His mixed culture and ancestry, not to mention his membership in the great tribe of politicians, make him a modern figure, and cast a different light on our past.

That this book was ever finished is a credit to my family. Carolee and our daughters put up with countless evenings and weekends spent researching and writing. It was especially challenging because Ana joined our family while the book was being written. Her older sister, Ava, asked to assist with the book, and occasionally took dictation. In several instances, when nobody was looking, she typed the word “Fart” in the manuscript. I may have caught them all.

Ann Godoff of the Penguin Press supported this project from the morning I proposed it over breakfast in 2012 and has kept faith with it ever since. It is impossible to imagine a wiser publisher or a more thoughtful editor. Nor can I imagine a more supportive agent than Gail Ross.

Many friends read chapters and offered constructive comments. I treasured the insights of Charla Bear and Andrew Exum. Joe DeMarie brought a screenwriter’s eye to the story. Anne Kornblut of the
Washington Post
and Nishant Dahiya of NPR critiqued chapters in their spare time, even though their day job is also editing. NPR colleagues such as Tracy Wahl and Selena Simmons-Duffin also offered insights. I am
especially grateful for the assistance of several subject matter experts. All, including Dr. Duane King of the Gilcrease Museum in Oklahoma and Dr. Susan Abram of Western Carolina University, offered invaluable advice. Kathryn Holland Braund of Auburn University critiqued portions of the manuscript. Florence, Alabama, historian Milly Wright not only read several chapters but conducted her own research to offer corrections. Barbara Duncan of the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, upon being sent several chapters, immediately asked to review all of it. Any errors, of course, are mine.

Many people supported this book in other ways. The death of my father, Roland, while this book was being written gave occasion to recall that he and my mother, Judith, bought the books that began my love affair with history. Renee Montagne and David Greene covered for me when I was away from NPR and writing. Ellen McDonnell and other executives at NPR graciously permitted me to take time off. Tom Gjelten and Martha Raddatz have sponsored and advised me for many years, thinking of me even when I didn’t realize they were. Madhulika Sikka created conditions for my work to thrive; Michele Norris inspired me to think more deeply about race and diversity. Steve Coll, David Ignatius, and Lawrence Wright affected my work simply because they wrote such good books, and because they let me ask them questions about writing. Mary Louise Kelly quit NPR to write thrillers, and knowing a thriller writer made me aspire to tug a reader into my story as strongly as I was drawn into the world of her novels.

A vital source of material was the Library of Congress. It is a magical place, where one may walk into a room and be presented with actual yellowed copies of the
Cherokee Phoenix
, or a book that has been out of print for more than a hundred years. One of the treasures of that library is its librarians. The staff was particularly helpful in guiding me through the correspondence of Jackson, including many original letters—such as a tender letter to Jackson’s wife in 1814, or the page from 1825 on which he accuses Henry Clay of receiving “thirty pieces of silver.” Items
not available at the Library of Congress were often available nearby at the National Archives.

The University of Tennessee is in the midst of publishing Jackson’s papers in book form; the volumes published so far probably shortened this project by years. The current editor, Daniel Feller, and his staff were infinitely patient and helpful when I made queries about papers not reproduced in the volumes. Feller also critiqued the resulting book. I will be forever grateful to Gary E. Moulton, a man I never met, who wrote a rigorous biography of Ross and edited Ross’s papers into an accessible two-volume set; original papers are collected at the Gilcrease Museum at the University of Tulsa. Another thick pair of volumes, known as the
Payne-Butrick Papers
, put many priceless source writings about Cherokees within convenient reach. Further documents were at the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, where Nelda Reid opened the archives on an off day so that I might study them. Images of John Coffee’s papers were accessible through the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library, an extraordinary local institution in Florence, Alabama. Ove Jensen, formerly of the National Park Service at Horseshoe Bend, is one of several people who directed me to documents that otherwise would have taken much more time to find. Marsha Mullin and other staff members at the Hermitage were greatly helpful, as were the keepers of the John Ross home in Georgia.

Several books to which I referred, such as James Parton’s 1860 biography of Jackson, I found in the crowded aisles of Parnassus Books in Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts. Used books I have bought from independent sellers all my life are worth many times more than I paid.

For a researcher, the greatest discoveries still lurk beyond the electronic cloud, but the Hathi Trust is helping the cloud to catch up. The trust has reproduced countless nineteenth-century newspapers and documents with great fidelity, such as the
Truth’s Advocate and Monthly Anti-Jackson Expositor
of 1828. The American State Papers, maintained online by the Library of Congress, offer an incredible trove of
documents on almost anything in the early nineteenth century that came to the attention of Congress. The library also has access to a fantastic collection of old newspapers in searchable form. Oklahoma State University shaved much time from this project by putting many Indian treaties in searchable form.

This book has been a joy to write, even though it tells a difficult story. It is about my country, which makes it a love story. Of the many ways to show one’s love, one of the best is to tell the truth.