After the death of John Ross in October 1866, the Cherokee national council selected William Potter Ross to finish his uncle’s term. As chief, he served on delegations that traveled to Washington, D.C., to represent the tribe and fielded the first challenges to the tribe’s continued existence in Indian Territory. First as chief and then as a tribal senator and delegate, Ross was centrally involved in the struggle to maintain the autonomy of the Indian nations in the West. Throughout the 1870s and 1880s he remained an outspoken tribal leader while he edited two local newspapers and served on the tribe’s board of education.6 Ross witnessed the first land rush that brought non-Indian landowners into Indian Territory in 1889, but his death in 1891 saved him from being present either at the division of the Cherokee Nation into individual landholdings later that decade or at the dissolution of Indian Territory when Oklahoma became a state in 1907.
While many in Ross’s Vinita audience lived to see Indian Territory erased from the nation’s maps, the campaign the Cherokees and neighboring tribes waged against U.S. intrusion into their territory made clear that the new political culture an earlier generation of leaders had nurtured during the removal crisis survived to the end of the nineteenth century. William Potter Ross applied the political ideas that had sprouted first in the Southeast in the 1820s to new events unfolding in the West. In the process he elaborated and promoted an ideology of Indian autonomy and Native nationalism that could fuel other struggles in other regions across North America.
As they founded new governments in the West, the leaders of removed tribes held firmly to the positions they had articulated in their battle against Andrew Jackson. To avoid any future misunderstandings, they insisted that all removal treaties and all subsequent tribal charters and letters of understanding stipulate the Indians’ perpetual right to their new homelands. The Choctaw removal treaty, for example, declared that the United States was “obliged to secure to the said Choctaw Nation of Red People the jurisdiction and government of all the persons and property that may be within their limits west, so that no Territory or state shall ever have a right to pass laws for the government of the Choctaw Nation . . . and . . . no part of the land granted them shall ever be embraced in any Territory or State.”7 The implication of these assurances was clear: there would be no repetition of the disputes between Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama and the Choctaws, Cherokees, Chickasaws, and Creeks. Eager to secure the Indians’ removal as peacefully and quickly as possible, federal officials agreed to these demands, assuring the leaders of removed tribes that they would be undisturbed in their new homes.8
The legal guarantees embedded in their removal agreements defined the relocated tribes’ unique status. The Cherokees, Choctaws, and other removed groups had no prior claim to their new homelands. As a consequence, in American eyes their sovereign authority in the West depended solely on the formal commitments made to them by the United States; it did not derive from long occupation or ancient tradition. Removal thus created an archipelago of Indian political entities scattered beyond the settled borders of the United States and led by literate, sophisticated politicians like Ross. In the second half of the nineteenth century the status of Indian Territory’s removed tribes would rest on the legal guarantees promised them at the time of their relocation, while those in other parts of the country that continued to occupy their traditional homelands would trace their titles to the diplomatic recognition contained in treaties of friendship and alliance. This latter group included Navajos who had recently been living in a Mexican province west of the Rio Grande, Lakotas migrating into the Yellowstone Valley, Catholic Flatheads trading with Hudson Bay men in the northern Rockies, and Paiute bands adjusting to the ecological disruptions caused by Americans crossing the Great Basin to California. Despite these different circumstances, however, every tribe eventually became convinced that its future security depended on the explicit legal guarantees it had extracted from the United States in its treaties. William Potter Ross, an official of a tribe whose status rested on those guarantees alone, spent his career urging both his tribe and others to negotiate the best agreements possible and to hold the United States accountable for the promises it had made in those documents.
As he stood up to American politicians and white settlers who coveted his tribe’s land, Ross argued that the Cherokee cause was the cause of all Native people. His interest in intertribal unity, for example, began as a political tactic (his tribe would be more likely to be heard if it had vocal support from neighboring groups), but by century’s end the idea that all Native people shared common interests and that tribal governments together could represent Indian “civilization” had begun to resonate with a number of tribal leaders. Similarly, his rejection of the charge that “Indian” governments were inherently backward found echoes in the resistance of other tribes to U.S. intrusion into their affairs. At the time of Ross’s death in 1891 the Cherokee leaders’ prescriptions forged in the political turmoil of Indian Territory would be picked up and repeated by Native activists elsewhere. Building on the heritage of those who had endured removal early in the nineteenth century, Ross and his Indian Territory counterparts established a set of foundational ideas that other tribes began to adopt at the end of the century.
It is ironic that William Potter Ross, a member of a prominent Cherokee slaveowning family and a veteran of service in the Confederate cause, was a champion of indigenous nationalism and an enemy of white supremacy. His steady opposition to the American takeover of Indian Territory and his careful delineation of tribal rights, tribal citizenship, and native forms of modernity were framed in opposition to the government’s desire to cancel its moral and legal commitments to Native people and to incorporate their homelands into a modern American nation-state. Cherokees like William Potter Ross rejected the ideal of a racially pure “white” nation because they were advocates of their tribes, not because they believed in racial equality. They advocated a political pluralism that could accommodate both tribes and binding treaties. Racial equality was less important to them than tribal autonomy.
A NEW POLITICAL CULTURE TAKES HOLD IN THE WEST
The removal era was a time of multiple promises and intense suffering. The expulsion of the Choctaws, Cherokees, Creeks, Chickasaws, and Seminoles from the Southeast produced countless scenes of hardship and dislocation: frozen bodies buried alongside the gruesome Trail of Tears, confused families herded onto steamboats bound for unknown lands, terrified men and women hunted down by soldiers across the Appalachians and the swamps of Florida. Mixed with these horrors were repeated assurances from federal authorities that once their relocation was complete, Native people could look forward to a life of peace and quiet. Andrew Jackson himself had declared in his first inaugural address that the tribes agreeing to removal would live on lands “guaranteed” to them by federal power and that they would “be secured in the enjoyments of governments of their own choice, subject to no other control from the United States than such as may be necessary to preserve peace on the frontier.”9
In 1838 William Potter Ross wrote that he wished the creator “may curse this people with some calamity for their cruelty . . . which will lower their pride,” but as a Princeton undergraduate he did not witness any of the tragic events associated with the Cherokees’ departure from Georgia.10 He remained close to his uncle following graduation and, as editor of the tribe’s newspaper, followed closely John Ross’s negotiations with U.S. authorities over a new treaty to resolve the issues that had been left outstanding after removal. The Cherokees did not agree to a new treaty until the summer of 1846 when, pressured by President Polk, who was then preoccupied with the imminent war with Mexico. Chief Ross accepted an agreement that confirmed the legality of their hated removal treaty and authorized a five-million-dollar payment for their Georgia lands. Adding insult to injury, the costs incurred by the United States in its botched effort to transport the tribe to Oklahoma were deducted from this amount.
; The 1846 treaty forced the Cherokees to accept the removal treaty, a document Ross and his allies had long abhorred, and it offered them far less financial support than they needed. But the treaty also assured that a secure patent would be issued to the Cherokees for their new territory, thereby giving it the status of a privately owned estate. The 1846 agreement also committed the United States to “forever secure and guarantee” their country.11 On the surface, there was nothing directly objectionable in the terms of the 1846 agreement, but the delay in reaching it and the obvious enjoyment Indian Office personnel derived from undercutting and frustrating the powerful Cherokee leader made it clear to William Potter Ross that these federal promises could well prove as unreliable as the ones that had preceded them.
The Cherokees received another indication of federal intentions in 1846, when Chief Justice Roger Taney announced the Supreme Court’s decision in U.S. v. Rogers. The case involved a white man, William Rogers, who had sought to overturn his murder conviction in federal court by asserting that as a citizen of the Cherokee Nation since 1836 he was beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. Rogers seemed to have a solid argument. His victim, Jacob Nicholson, was also an adopted Cherokee. The Treaty of 1835 expressly recognized the tribe’s right “to make and carry into effect all such laws as they may deem necessary for the government and protection of the persons and property within their own country . . . or such persons as have connected themselves with them.”12 Taney rejected that treaty pledge out of hand, however, noting that “from the very moment the general government came into existence . . . it has exercised its power over this unfortunate race in the spirit of humanity and justice and has endeavored . . . to enlighten their minds and . . . save them if possible from the consequences of their own vices.” Because Indians were an “unfortunate” people defined by vice, Taney reasoned, all federal action was by definition both humanitarian and legal. Actions of the United States involving tribes were therefore not subject to judicial review. Taney’s decision invited other federal officials to ignore any inconvenient promises they may have made to the tribes in the past.
Taney recognized that the criminal statutes governing federal territories specifically exempted crimes committed “by one Indian against the person or property of another Indian.” Even so, the chief justice could not accept a political or constitutional definition of the Cherokee tribe. He insisted that the Cherokees were simply a racially distinct people. In his opinion “a white man who at mature age is adopted in an Indian tribe does not thereby become an Indian.” Despite Andrew Jackson’s pledge that tribes like the Cherokees would be “secure in the enjoyments of governments of their own choice,” Taney declared William Rogers was simply a white sojourner in a racially defined community who could not change his race by connecting himself with the Cherokee Nation: “Whatever obligations the prisoner may have taken upon himself by becoming Cherokee by adoption, his responsibility to the laws of the United States remained unchanged and undiminished. He was still a white man, of the white race, and therefore not within the exception in the act of Congress.”13
The shortcomings of the 1846 treaty and the explicit anti-Indian racism of Justice Taney’s ruling underscored for young Cherokees like William Potter Ross the continuing uncertainty of the tribe’s political status within the United States. Despite the promises that had been written into removal treaties across the East, federal officials rejected any challenges to their authority over Native communities. Tribal leaders responded to this harsh tone by redoubling their effort to become effective advocates for their cause. Aware that even powerful presidents like Andrew Jackson had powerful rivals and that representation in Washington could win them a sympathetic hearing before the American public, the removed tribes soon became a regular presence in the national capital. Delegations frequently appeared before congressional committees, tribal leaders routinely sought out the advice and support of Washington attorneys, and the Indian Territory tribes tried to make common cause with their Native neighbors.14
Leaders of the removed tribes were quick to promote the idea of multitribal “international councils” aimed at promoting peaceful relations among the tribes in Indian Territory and the surrounding region. These councils grew out of a tradition of peace conferences that U.S. officials had organized prior to removal to reduce tensions between western tribes (particularly the Osages, Pawnees, Kiowas, and Comanches) and the eastern Indians who had begun to migrate voluntarily to the West early in the century. Fort Gibson, erected in 1822 along the Arkansas River at a spot near the future site of the Cherokee capital of Tahlequah, had been the scene for several of these gatherings. One such meeting in 1834 involved more than a dozen tribes (including recently arrived Delawares and Senecas from the Midwest) that pledged friendship to one another and agreed to meet again to conclude a formal treaty. The 1835 Camp Holmes treaty, negotiated on the prairies west of Fort Gibson, fulfilled that goal. It established peaceful relations between the eastern tribes such as the Cherokees, Choctaws, and Creeks, and local groups such as the Wichitas and Osages. A second gathering the following year extended the Camp Holmes agreement to the Kiowas and Kiowa-Apaches.15
In the 1840s the Cherokee tribal government, along with the governments of neighboring groups, began hosting their own intertribal meetings. They took this step both because they were eager to maintain good relations with the powerful tribes that had previously occupied their new homelands—particularly the Osages, Kiowas, and Comanches—and because they were increasingly conscious of threats to their borders. To the south, the new Republic of Texas, dominated by slaveholders, seemed determined to remove its resident tribes and create a homogeneous, independent settler nation on the model of the United States. The Cherokees had little interest in antagonizing these aggressive neighbors, many of whom were recent arrivals from Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Tribal leaders in Tahlequah were also aware that Mexican officials to the west, still resentful of the Texans’ recent success in their war of independence, were eager to form alliances with Comanches and other groups who had traditionally raided agricultural communities along the Arkansas River. To the north, resettled tribes from the American Midwest—particularly Delawares, Shawnees, Potawatomis, and Wyandots—were making new homes on the Missouri frontier. The disruptions accompanying their arrival triggered yet another round of retaliation and resentment among indigenous groups.16
Large intertribal gatherings began in 1843. In June of that year more than three thousand representatives of twenty-two tribes gathered at Tahlequah in response to invitations sent out by John Ross and Roly McIntosh, the chief of the Creeks. For four weeks the delegates made camp across a two-mile-wide prairie and participated in round dances, ball games, and parades. William Potter Ross, barely a year removed from his Princeton graduation, was among them.
When the formal sessions began, Chief John Ross reminded the delegates of the serious work before them. “Brothers,” he cried, “it is for renewing in the West the ancient talk of our forefathers, and of perpetuating forever the old pipe of peace . . . and of adopting such international laws as may redress the wrongs done by the people of our respective tribes to each other that you have been invited to attend the present council.” In addition to securing pledges of peace from all who attended, Ross won approval for eight written resolutions that established rules of conduct and included the declaration “No nation party to this compact shall without the consent of all the other parties, cede or in any manner alienate to the United States any part of their present territory.”17
One white observer predicted that the 1843 gathering would “disperse without having done anything,” but the resolution regarding land cessions was a clear signal that the men who had been victims of removal had a serious purpose. They wanted to forge an alliance that could hold their enemies at bay.18 Often ignored by outsiders, these gatherings continued throughout the coming decade. The first extensive press coverage of an international council appe
ared in the spring of 1845 thanks to William Potter Ross, who traveled thirty-five miles southwest of Fort Gibson to a meeting site within the new Creek Nation. There he found more than seven hundred Creeks gathered to receive delegations from resettled southeastern tribes, including Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles, as well as other tribes that had been forced from the Midwest to Kansas, such as the Shawnees, Miamis, Delawares, Peorias, and Kickapoos, along with local groups, like the Osages, Caddos, and Quapaws. The Comanches, who had been specially invited in hopes of negotiating an end to their raids, refused to attend. Ross noted that it was “a source of great regret” that the Cherokees had not sent an official delegation but added that this was a consequence of a delay in notification and “by no means from any indifference on the part of this people to whatever relates to the peace and prosperity of the whole Indian population.”19
“During the council,” Ross reported, “the pipe of peace was smoked, the white paths cleared, the council fire lighted afresh and several speeches of interest delivered by the heads of the different representations present.” The editor reprinted several of those speeches in The Cherokee Advocate. He also noted that “the nights were enlivened by the ‘Terrapin Shell dance’ of the Muscogees and the songs, drums, reeds and salutations (jumping and leaping) of the Osages.” All the delegations confirmed the agreements made two years earlier at Tahlequah. The group even received a communication—and a pipe—from the Great Lakes. A group of “Winnebagoes, Chippeways, Tahwas and Menawallys [sic] sent a message expressing a desire to be “keep open the white path of peace that we may train up our children in it and teach them to be friendly with all men.”20
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