Marrant's "captivity narrative" became one of the most popular of its genre in the post-Revolutionary period, and provided a critical reflection on race and religion in colonial America. The story of his life among the Cherokee became one of the enduring stories of colonial history and a critical text in African American literature.24 His missionary work among the Cherokee and his successes among them, as opposed to the "less savingly wrought upon" Indians farther in the interior, promoted the idea that the Cherokee provided a special opportunity and challenge to the European colonist. The popularity of Marrant's "captivity narrative" in the post-Revolutionary era made the Cherokee accessible, and showed the possibilities that such a people might be brought to the forefront of civilization. The Cherokee were thus singled out for "civilization" and "salvation" in a manner unlike any other indigenous people in the Americas; the costs of such a special place in the Americans' hearts were to be quite dear for the Cherokee Nation.
When several of the Southeastern nations aligned themselves with the British during the Revolutionary War, it provided an even further rationale an assault upon the culture of the Southern indigenous nations. Though there was often conflict with the Cherokee before the war, the effects of the frontier warfare upon the isolated settlers and settlements were chilling. As Ramsey put it in his History of South Carolina, "An Indian war commenced, and was carried on with its usual barbarity. The massacres caused a general alarm. It was known that the Indians were excited by royal agents and aided by some of the Tories."25 The result of the Cherokee's siding with the British was that they were invaded and crushed by the colonists in a devastating manner: "the results of the war were to break the power of a major Southern tribe."26
Following the Revolutionary War, and with the settlement of hostilities with the Cherokee Nation at the end of the eighteenth century, the newly established federal government inaugurated its "program to promote civilization among the friendly Indian tribes."27 In a letter to fellow freemason George Washington, Secretary of War Henry Knox put forward a plan for "civilization" of the American Indians, "That the civilization of the Indians would be an operation of complicated difficulty; that it would require the highest knowledge of the human character, and a steady perseverance in a wise system for a series of years, cannot be doubted....Were it possible to introduce among the Indian tribes a love for exclusive property, it would be a happy commencement of the business." 28
In order for the Cherokee to be "reduced to civilization,"29 the "old ways" must die. A critical element in the "civilization" program would be the shift from the community-based low-intensity agricultural collective that had been at the center of Cherokee society to the European model of an individually owned labor-intensive farm. It was the government's belief that if the Indians adopted the concept of private property, it would be a great advance towards "civilization." In addition, it would also free up millions of acres of property previously held collectively by the Southeastern Indians.
As mentioned earlier, Cherokee society at the time of European contact was dramatically different from that of the European. Like the Iroquoian society further north with respect to agricultural practices and gender-based roles within the society, the world was divided into the complimentary roles of forest and clearing. The former became the domain of men as hunters and warriors; the latter was the domain of women as providers and clan matrons.30 Cherokee society was matrilineal and matrilocal; women held the property, including the dwelling and the garden, and maintained the economic system rooted in the well being of the collective. There were communal fields and clan gardens that were worked with a hoe and dibble stick; surplus grain and vegetables were stored in a communal reserve from which all could draw when needed and in private granaries. The Cherokee forsook the plow until the nineteenth century because they believed that it would lead to a technological unemployment and starvation for those unable to compete in a market economy.31
However, the eighteenth century provided dramatic changes in Cherokee culture and society. Beginning with the deer trade and evolving into the slave trade, commerce had become an increasingly important element in Cherokee society. As men were responsible for hunting and warfare, the trade in pelts and slaves became a dominant element and consumer items produced by Europeans became a critical factor in the Cherokee economy. When conflict with the Europeans escalated, warfare and diplomacy became increasingly more important and Europeans granted status upon those "leaders" whom they thought to be the "chiefs" of the Cherokee. Increasingly, the Cherokee "leadership" moved away from the "old ways" and began to adopt European patterns of governmental and legal systems.32 European leaders were men who only valued the social roles of other men; thus, they equated the hunter-gatherer culture of the men as indicative of savagery. 33 Of this "savagery," the Cherokee must be redeemed.
In the latter half of the eighteenth century, most Americans believed that the conquered nations of the Southeast had little choice but to give up the vast tracts of lands they claimed to possess and settle for the security of small farms and a an agrarian lifestyle. The federal government under Henry Knox initiated a policy designed to make farmers of the former "woodsmen" and assimilate them into white society.34 The Treaty of Holston, signed July 2, 1791, stated, "That the Cherokee nation may be led to a greater degree of civilization, and to become herdsman and cultivators, instead of remaining in a state of hunters, the United States will, from time to time, furnish gratuitously the said nation with the implements of husbandry."35 However, this dramatic shift in the culture of the peoples of the Southeast could not be accommodated without first altering the social, political, and religious structures of traditional societies. Toward this end, the missionaries of the Christian churches would prove quite effective. 36
From the very beginning of United States' policy toward the Indians, missionaries (often acting as government agents) were to play a critical role in the civilization/christianization of the Southeastern Indian nations and especially the Cherokee. The Indian policy of George Washington stated "missionaries of excellent moral character should be appointed to reside in their nation who should be well supplied with all the implements of husbandry and the necessary stock for a farm." 37 It went further: "It is particularly important that something of this nature should be attempted with the Southern nations of Indians, whose confined situation might render them proper subjects for the experiment."38 Thomas Jefferson increased the investment of the federal government in Indian acculturation, believing that farmers could become good Christians, while hunters were "unfavorable to the regular exercise of some duties essential to the Christian character."39 Jefferson believed that the Cherokee could be made to "enter on a regular life of agriculture, familiarize them with the practice and value of the arts, attach them to property, lead them, of necessity, and without delay, to the establishment of laws and government, and thus make a great and important advance towards assimilating their condition to ours."40
The missionaries and government agents, believing that a stable plantation society promoted both a self-sustaining church and orderly civil government, introduced European agricultural practices to the Indians by giving plows, livestock, and gristmills to the men and cloth and spinning tools to the women. For some of the Cherokee who had been slaves on colonial plantations and introduced to European agricultural methods through this practice, the transition was not difficult.41 The missionaries also provided agricultural instruction to the men and homemaking skills to the women; the children were encouraged and educated by the missionaries to assume gender roles complementary to white society.42
In addition, Cherokee society was being dramatically altered through intermarriage. Many Cherokee men were taking white wives and the matrilineal nature of Cherokee society began to be undermined. Missionaries and government agents asserted that a dominant part of the civilization program should be a shift from the "old ways" that centered upon ties of kinship. In 1808, the Cherokee National Council passed a law that gave "protection to children as heirs of the father's property."43 By 1825, the Cherokee passed another law that granted rights "as equal" to the children of white mothers as that of Cherokee mothers.44 It is important to note that by this time, Cherokee of mixed blood had risen to prominence in Cherokee affairs. One by one, the "old ways" were being supplanted.
With the establishment of the first model farms and missions among the Five Nations of the Southeastern United States, a key tool used in this civilization process was the implementation of African slaves as laborers in the building and operation of the model farms and missions.45 The missionaries, at this point, took no position on the issue of the use of African slaves. They saw the issue of slavery as a political question and not one to which they were bound to respond religiously. Besides, as the missionaries were quick to point out, it was not their fault, "Some have supposed that it had its origin among the Cherokees no farther back than the Revolutionary War; when a large number of Tories, holding slaves, fled from the Southern States, and took refuge among this people...And it is not unlikely that the evil began with white men, who settled in the nation, and married Cherokee women.46
With the founding of the American Board for Foreign and Christian Missions in 1810, Henry Knox's vision from a generation earlier attained the instrument to achieve its goals under the auspices of James Madison's "Civilization Fund." In 1817, the American Board sent Cyrus Kingsbury to begin a system of missions among the Cherokee. With the encouragement of a young Cherokee named John Ross, and a Tennessee friend of the Cherokee, General Andrew Jackson,47 he was able to establish secure permission from the Cherokee Council and built the Brainerd Mission in Tennessee and the Eliot Mission in Georgia.
In 1818, Andrew Jackson having pondered the "Indian question," decided that one of two things must be done with the Indians, "either that those sons of the forest should be moralized or exterminated. Humanity would rejoice at the former, but shrink with horror from the latter."48 He decided that civilization was their only hope, the United "put into their children the primer and the hoe, and they will naturally, in time, take hold of the plow; and, as their minds become enlightened and expand, the Bible will be their book, and they will grow in habits of morality and industry, leave the chase to those whose minds are less cultivated, and become useful members of society."49
With the help of the churches, Jackson's plan would come slowly to fruition. By 1820, the missions among the Five Nations were among the most successful in the country. Conversions were numerous and the Cherokee Nation, itself, was considered to be a most fertile ground for civilization: "the Cherokees, we think, are fast advancing towards civilized life. They generally manifest an ardent desire for literary and religious instruction."50 Many members of prominent Cherokee families, such as the Ridges, the Boudinots, and the Waties, were educated in the missions. Some of the better scholars were sent to boarding school in Cornwall, Connecticut. 51
In the Five Nations, farms grew into plantations and buildings grew into towns. As the program of civilization pursued its goals, the institution of chattel slavery spread. Individuals who held positions of power and land began to grow wealthy and to buy black slaves to extend their fields and tend to their livestock.52 Intermarriage among the natives and the whites who served among them continued to increase. The marriages of John Ridge and Elias Boudinot to white women at the Cornwall mission created great controversy among whites and seriously affected the missionary effort.53 This intermarriage radically affected Cherokee matrilineality and communalism; it first introduced real economic inequality into Cherokee society.54
Progressive natives who spoke English began to adopt the social and cultural patterns of the missionaries and white farmers that surrounded them.55 Gradually, the Cherokee Nation developed a landed elite and a small group of large farm owners, shopkeepers, and entrepreneurs formed a bourgeois element that became dominant in national affairs. It was among this group of the rich and powerful, the assimilated peoples of the Five Nations, that slavery became most accepted.56 In a letter to the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1826, Cherokee John Ridge noted, "the Africans are mostly held by half breeds & full blooded Indians of [distinguished] talents. The valuable portion of property is retained in this class [and their farms are conducted in the same style with southern white farmers of equal ability in point of property]." 57
The missionaries did not, themselves, own slaves except "with a view towards emancipation" and only used slaves rented or borrowed from Native American slave owners. However, they were reticent to preach against the evil of slavery among their practitioners in the Five Nations for these were often considered their most successful converts.58 The missionaries were not averse to preaching to the African slaves who were among their most eager and willing converts, and often translated the gospel to the Cherokee.59 In order to accommodate slavery, the missionaries began to teach an interesting message concerning the origins of humanity that began to influence Cherokee mythology. A new creation myth arose among the Cherokee that spoke of a common origin but a specific curse upon the black race, which meant, "that the negro must work for the red and white man, and it has been so ever since."60
Most missionaries believed that the most important goal was to first convert the heathen, and then attempt to deal with the "sin" of slavery.61 Many of their most ardent supporters were slave owners, and they and the local government agents would oppose them should they choose to espouse the cause of abolition. In fact, some government agents attributed the progress made by the Five Civilized Tribes to the growth of the practice of slavery among them. George Butler, federal agent stated it quite clearly, "I am clearly of the opinion that the rapid advancement of the Cherokees is owing in part to the fact of their being slave holders."62
In addition, the missionaries' governing boards in the North did not want to jeopardize contributions from wealthy persons who disliked abolition.63 Selah B. Treat appealed to the board to understand the southern predicament in his report to the Commissioners of the American Board for Foreign and Christian Missions, "In defence of their policy in this respect, past and present, they make their appeal, first of all, to the Bible, as showing the only condition of church membership. This, they say, is evidence of a change of heart; and when such evidence is furnished, there is no law for excluding the candidate from the privileges of Christ's house. They also say, that the adoption of a different rule in regard to slaveholders would have been fatal to the prosperity of the mission."64 The missionaries, and especially those of the American Board, established a basic position of neutrality and, as the Bible did not explicitly condemn slavery, they accepted all to their communion who gave evidence on profession of faith.
24 See Henry Louis Gates, "Writing Race and the Difference it Makes" Critical Inquiry, V 12, n1, 1985; Henry Louis Gates, "The Blackness of Blackness - A Critique of the Sign and the Signifying Monkey," Critical Inquiry, v. 9, n4, 1983; Rafia Zafar, "Capturing the Captivity: African Americans among the Puritans" The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (Vol. 17 no. 2, 1991-1992 Summer): 19-35; Benilde Montgomery, "Recapturing John Marrant" in Frank Shuffleton, ed., A Mixed Race: Ethnicity in Early America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 105-15. 25 David Ramsey, The History Of South Carolina: From Its First Settlement In 1670, To The Year 1808 (Newberry, S.C.: W. J. Duffie, 1858), 159. 26 James O Donnell, Southern Indians in the Revolutionary War (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 19730, 62. 27 "Trade and Intercourse Act, March 30, 1802" in Francis Paul Prucha, Documents of United States Indian Policy Second Edition (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1990), 19. 28 Henry Knox to George Washington, July 7, 1789 in American State Papers: Indian Affairs, Vols. I and II, Documents, Legislative and Executive of the Congress of the United States, Walter Lowrie, Walter S. Franklin, and Matthew St. Clair Clarke, eds., (Washington, D.C.: Gales and Seaton, 1832,1834), Vol. I, 53. 29 In a letter from George Washington to fellow Freemason Richard Henry Lee, he discussed the Countess of Huntingdon's plans for spreading Christianity among the Indians. He firmly believed that before the Indians could be brought to Christianity; in order to do so, they would have to be first "reduced to civilization." [George Washington, Letter to Richard Henry Lee, Feb. 8, 1785, Aamerican Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA]. 30 Joy Bilharz, "The Changing Status of Seneca Women" in Laura Klein and Lillian Ackerman, Women and Power in Native America (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), 103; Richard Satler, "Muskogee and Cherokee Women's Status" in Klein and Ackerman, 223. 31 R. Douglas Hunt, Indian Agriculture in America (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1987), 33. 32 Rennard Strickland, "From Clan To Court: Development Of Cherokee Law, "Tennessee Historical Quarterly 1972 31(4): 316-327; Michelle Daniel, "From Blood Feud To Jury System: The Metamorphosis Of Cherokee Law From 1750 To 1840," American Indian Quarterly 1987 11(2): 97-125. 33 Wilma Dunaway, The First American Frontier: Transition and Capitalism in Southern Appalachia, 1700-1860 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 49-50. 34 Hunt, 96. 35 2d Congress. No. 19. [1st Session. Cherokees, Six Nations, And Creeks. Communicated To The Senate, October 26, 1791], American State Papers: Indian Affairs, Vols. I and II, Documents, Legislative and Executive of the Congress of the United States, Walter Lowrie, Walter S. Franklin, and Matthew St. Clair Clarke, eds., (Washington, D.C.: Gales and Seaton, 1832,1834), Vol. I, 125. 36 1st Congress. No. 9. [2nd Session. Southern Tribes. Communicated To Congress January 12, 1790], American State Papers: Indian Affairs, Vols. I and II, Documents, Legislative and Executive of the Congress of the United States, Walter Lowrie, Walter S. Franklin, and Matthew St. Clair Clarke, eds., (Washington, D.C.: Gales and Seaton, 1832,1834), Vol. I, 65. 37 1st Congress. No. 1. [1st Session. The Six Nations, The Wyandots, And Others.Communicated To The Senate May 25, 1789] American State Papers: Indian Affairs, Vols. I and II, Documents, Legislative and Executive of the Congress of the United States, Walter Lowrie, Walter S. Franklin, and Matthew St. Clair Clarke, eds., (Washington, D.C.: Gales and Seaton, 1832,1834), Vol. I, 53-54. 38 As noted above, both Henry Knox and George Washington were Freemasons. An interesting element in the "civilization" program was the introduction of Freemasonry among the Native Americans as a part and parcel of that process. As early as 1776, Native Americans were being made Freemasons and the trend would continue well into the nineteenth century. Freemasonry may be among one of European culture's more pervasive influences. 39 Thomas Jefferson quoted in Joseph Parsons, "Civilizing the Indians of the Old Northwest, 1800-1810," Indiana Magazine of History 56 (Sept. 1960): 202. For the Cherokee response, see William G. McLoughlin, "Thomas Jefferson And The Beginning Of Cherokee Nationalism, 1806 To 1809," William and Mary Quarterly 1975 32(4): 547-580. 40 Thomas Jefferson, 10th Congress. No. 120. [1st Session. The Cherokees. Communicated To The Senate, March 10, 1808], American State Papers: Indian Affairs, Vols. I and II, Documents, Legislative and Executive of the Congress of the United States, Walter Lowrie, Walter S. Franklin, and Matthew St. Clair Clarke, eds., (Washington, D.C.: Gales and Seaton, 1832,1834), Vol. I, 752. 41 Michael Roethler, "Negro Slavery among the Cherokee Indians, 1540-1866" (Ph.D. diss., Fordham University, 1964), 32. 42 Robert Berkhofer, Salvation and the Savage: An Analysis of Protestant Missions and American Indian Response 1787-1862 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1965), 73-74; Henry Warner Bowden, American Indians and Christian Missions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981) 174-176; Hunt, 101. 43 Sarah Hill, Weaving New Worlds: Southeastern Cherokee Women and their Basketry (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 96. 44 ibid. 45 Rudi Halliburton, Red Over Black: Black Slavery Among the Cherokee Indians (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1977), 25. 46 Charles Whipple, Relation of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to Slavery (Boston: R.F. Wallcut, 1861), 88. 47 Ross and Jackson were both Freemasons from the State of Tennessee. 48 Andrew Jackson, 15th Congress. No. 151. [1st Session. Trade, Intercourse, And Schools. Communicated To The House of Representatives, January 22, 1818], American State Papers: Indian Affairs, Vols. I and II, Documents, Legislative and Executive of the Congress of the United States, Walter Lowrie, Walter S. Franklin, and Matthew St. Clair Clarke, eds., (Washington, D.C.: Gales and Seaton, 1832,1834), Vol. II, 151. 49 ibid. 50 17th Congress. No. 182. [1st Session. Condition Of The Several Indian Tribes. Communicated To The House Of Representatives, February 15, 1822], American State Papers: Indian Affairs, Vols. I and II, Documents, Legislative and Executive of the Congress of the United States, Walter Lowrie, Walter S. Franklin, and Matthew St. Clair Clarke, eds., (Washington, D.C.: Gales and Seaton, 1832,1834), Vol. II, 278. 51 William G. McLoughlin, Cherokees and Missionaries, 1789-1839 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 140. 52 Douglas C. Wilms, "Cherokee Acculturation And Changing Land Use Practices," Chronicles of Oklahoma 1978 56(3): 331-343. 53 Lillian Delly, "Episode At Cornwall" Chronicles of Oklahoma 1973/74 51(4): 444-450. 54 Theda Perdue, Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 81-84. 55 John Ridge, "John Ridge On Cherokee Civilization In 1826," Sturtevant, William C., ed., Journal of Cherokee Studies 1981 6(2): 80; Douglas C. Wilms, "Agrarian Progress In The Cherokee Nation Prior To Removal" West Georgia College Studies in the Social Sciences 1977 16: 1-15. 56 ibid. See also Theda Perdue, "The Conflict Within: The Cherokee Power Structure And Removal," Georgia Historical Quarterly 1989 73(3): 467-491. 57 Ridge, 81. 58 Charles Whipple, Relation of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to Slavery (Boston: R.F. Wallcut, 1861), 98; Robert T. Lewit, The Conflict of Evangelical and Humanitarian Ideals: A Case Study (MA Thesis, Harvard University, 1959), 35-53. 59 Robert Walker, Torchlight to the Cherokees (New York: The MacMillan Co, 1931), 86-87. 60 William G. McLoughlin, The Cherokee Ghost Dance: Essays on the Southeastern Indians (Atlanta: Mercer University Press, 1984), 257. 61 Lewit, 97. 62 Commisioner of Indian Affairs, Report, 1859, 172. 63 William McLoughlin, "Red, White, and Black in the Antebellum South" in American Quarterly 26 (1974): 372 64 Selah B. Treat, "Report to the Commissioners of the American Board for Foreign and Christian Missions, 1848" in Charles Whipple, Relation of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to Slavery (Boston: R.F. Wallcut, 1861), 97.