American Indians and the Market Economy, 1775-1850

3. Identity in a Post-Removal Cherokee Household, 1838–50

3 / Identity in a Post-Removal Cherokee Household, 1838–50 Lance Greene Introduction By the spring of 1838 over seven thousand federal and state troops were stationed in the Cherokee Nation to prepare for the forced removal of the Cherokees to west of the Mississippi River.The Cherokee Nation in 1838 encompassed parts of Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina. The segment of the Cherokee population in the mountainous section of southwestern North Carolina was the home of the most traditional and, from the army’s perspective, dangerous community in the Cherokee Nation (see Figure 3.1; Finger 1984:20). Many of the federal soldiers in the region had just marched from Florida, where they had participated in America’s first guerrilla war, fighting the Seminole Indians who were resisting forced removal. Armed resistance was not contemplated by most Cherokees in the region. However, the vast majority of Cherokees rejected the Treaty of New Echota, the basis for their forced removal.The Cherokee population in North Carolina was composed largely of traditionalists who believed that Chief John Ross could negotiate for permission for them to remain in the state (McLoughlin 1990:152–170; Mooney 1982:129). Despite this belief, many Cherokee families who had decided to remain in the area made contingent plans on how to do so. Removal of the southern tribes was tied to other major, contemporary events. The most significant of these was the expansion of cotton agriculture and the concomitant growth of racial slavery. Land in the upper South, including that within the Cherokee Nation, was needed for raising crops and livestock to feed the rapidly expanding slave population, the foundation for wealth accumulation in the South (Inscoe 1996:25–58). Therefore, in addition to establishing forts and prisoner of war camps, the army fulfilled another significant function. They created the set- 54 Lance Greene ting for modernization of the old Cherokee Nation, by effectively mapping and gridding a relatively unknown block of land within the boundaries of the United States.The forced removal of the southern tribes was, ultimately, about modernization of the land and the people. Anderson (1991) discusses the qualitative changes in forms of governmental control during the shift to modernity during the early to mid 19th century. Foucault, in a similar vein, discusses a contemporaneous shift in powers wielded by the state that impact populations on a deeper, sociological level (Foucault 1978, 1979). Many of the events that occurred within the CherokeeNation during and after Removal correspond closely with the construction of modernity as posited by Anderson (1991), Calhoun (1994), and Foucault (1978, 1979). The devices used by the army (e.g., maps and censuses) prepared the ground for state control of the lands previously recognized as the Cherokee Nation. During military occupation (1836–38), army cartographers created detailed topographic maps of the area that show the locations of Cherokee farms as well as valuable natural resources: timber, iron, marble, water, and fertile soil. State control was attempted through the establishment of specific criteria: adequate infrastructure , gridded space (including both people, with the census, and land, with private property), collection of taxes and fees, and ideological constructions of the “other.” Thus the military occupation of the Cherokee Nation represented the initiation 3.1. Location of study area in southwestern North Carolina Identity in a Post-Removal Cherokee Household 55 of new forms of personal control and institutional domination at the “threshold of modernity” (Foucault 1978:143). Cherokee agent Benjamin Currey described the significance of a census of the Cherokees recorded in 1835: “To be fully possessed of a knowledge of their number , the number of each man’s houses, the number of his farms, with the quantity of land under cultivation, the proportion of tillable land, the mineral resources & water privileges of the country&c, the commissioners would be able to fix a true estimate upon the value of the country in case the whole tribe does not approve of the gross sum fixed upon already” (Currey 1835). Currey suggested a detailed list of resources was required in case the Cherokees questioned their federal reimbursement . However, these lists, along with the army survey notes, were invaluable in ranking the quality of tracts sold at the state auction in 1838 and 1839. Property boundaries were also established. Reuben Deaver, a civilian surveyor, was hired to survey the vacated Cherokee lands in North Carolina; he delineated salable tracts, ranging from...