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Chapter Five: Refusing Fragmentation
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89 FIVE Refusing Fragmentation Not a year after removal, the emigrating Seneca again found themselves in council with Indian agents. President Jackson, it seems, was concerned about the continued use of ancient forms of social and political organization among the newly removed peoples. The majority of the peoples removed from Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois continued to function according to the council system, mostly influenced by a significant commitment to traditional religions, unlike the Six Nations, who all had some form of centralized government coexistent with ancient forms of social organization and some forms of syncretism with Christianity. Indian Territory was becoming increasingly messy, with conflicts between communities as well as divisiveness over annuity distribution and land boundaries.1 To address these problems, President Jackson and Congress appointed , in July of 1832, former North Carolina congressman and governor Montfort Stokes to head a three-person commission. In 1833 Stokes, Henry L. Ellsworth of Connecticut, and John F. Schermerhorn of New York established their headquarters at Fort Gibson in present-day Muskogee County, Oklahoma. They brought with them three companies of mounted rangers, who were to provide pacification for hostile Western tribes. The Osage, Comanche, Kiowa, and Wichita were increasingly hostile to both settlers and new removed peoples. Stokes was charged with containing violence as well as persuading these communities to agree to terms under treaties. Additionally, Stokes was authorized to consolidate communities with shared geographic and cultural origins into single social and political units.2 Ronald Satz has interpreted the desire to reunite emigrated peoples according to their familial, political, and cultural relations as an attempt to create tribal monoliths in Indian Territory for the ease of negotia- 90 A Longhouse Fragmented tions and political engagement. Out of these political and geographic consolidations of peoples with shared “consanguinity and manners,” we see groups in Indian Territory merging the political structure of multiple autonomous towns as well as absorbing smaller communities into more broadly defined regional administrative units and emerging national governments . Creating more condensed social units would also provide more land for future nonnative settlement or for new Indian removals.3 No doubt the multiple divisions of societies into clans, towns, and factions, which were merged into a racial and national homogeneity in the mind of the settler state, caused problems for centralization. As Cass stated, “The tribes should not be broken into fragments, but that portions of each should be brought together.” The intersocietal fragments represented by clans, moieties, ceremonial grounds, longhouses, and the like were the fundamental social institutions of the removed peoples, particularly the communities that maintained a commitment to cultural conservatism. As I have argued throughout, the maintenance of Great Law principles supported Seneca councils and ceremonial organization, which provided the fundamental cultural apparatus for community maintenance . It also contained an inherent autonomy challenging the hegemony of colonial administration—an autonomy seen throughout Seneca interactions with the settler state. Decision-making through the council system, which most people removed from the Midwest continued to use until the mid-twentieth century, maintained a sociopolitical cohesion and a level of autonomy amid the pressure to consolidate and civilize. Even during times of intracommunity conflict and external pressures, a deliberate approach inspired by the logic of the Longhouse prevailed and prevented a complete transition to settlement—something not unnoticed by colonial administrators. Cass, in his report to the president on the activities of 1832, posits political and geographic centralization as a process to further distinguish between settler-oriented natives and cultural conservative natives within the same communities. He tells the president and Congress, “A few individuals , almost always half breeds and their connexions [sic], engrossing the intelligence and means of each of these small communities, may become assimilated to our institutions and eventually planted among us with safety. But this should never be permitted at the sacrifice of more important interests, and to the utter disregard of the fate, which awaits the unfortunate mass of these tribes, persuaded, or almost compelled to remain where they must rapidly decline, and at length disappear. Their progress is onward; and, regret them, as we may and must, no human power can arrest their march, or avert their consequences.”5 [35.175.212.5] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 20:15 GMT) 91 Refusing Fragmentation Centralization also served to integrate societies based on settlerderived categories but also to disrupt kin-based commitments to community cultural logics. For Cass the “children of nature” who continue to adhere to traditional practices and sociopolitical organization should be...