President Jackson’s policy of Indian removal led to sharp conflicts among Cherokee leaders. In 1835, a faction led by Elias Boudinot negotiated the Treaty of New Echota, which traded the Cherokees’ ancestral lands for a portion of Indian Territory. Most full-blood Cherokees never accepted this treaty’s legitimacy; when Boudinot settled in Indian Territory in 1839, members of the antitreaty faction stabbed him to death. In this selection, Boudinot addresses the arguments of John Ross, a leader of the antitreaty faction.

ELIAS BOUDINOT

“What is to be done?” was a natural inquiry, after we found that all our efforts to obtain redress from the General Government, on the land of our fathers, had been of no avail. … To a portion of the Cherokee people it early became evident that the interest of their countrymen and the happiness of their posterity depended upon an entire change of policy. … [However,] to advocate a treaty was to … come in contact with settled prejudices with the deep rooted attachment for the soil of our forefathers.

It is with sincere regret that I notice you [John Ross] say little or nothing about the moral condition of this people, as affected by present circumstances. … Look at the mass, look at the entire population as it now is, and say, can you see any indication of a progressing improvement, anything that can encourage a philanthropist? … I say their condition is wretched. Look, my dear sir, around you, and see the progress that vice and immorality have already made! See the spread of intemperance and the wretchedness and misery it has already occasioned! … You will find an argument in every tippling shop [saloon] in the country; you will find its cruel effects in the bloody tragedies that are frequently occurring in the frequent convictions and executions for murders, and in the tears and groans of the widows and fatherless, rendered homeless, naked, and hungry, by this vile curse of our race. … It is not to be denied that, as a people, we are making a rapid tendency to a general immorality and debasement. …

If the dark picture which I have here drawn is a true one, and no candid person will say it is an exaggerated one, can we see a brighter prospect ahead? In another country, and under other circumstances, there is a better prospect. Removal, then, is the only remedy, the only practicable remedy. … I would say to my countrymen, you among the rest, fly from the moral pestilence that will finally destroy our nation.

What is the prospect in reference to your plan of relief, if you are understood at all to have any plan? It is dark and gloomy beyond description. Subject the Cherokees to the laws of the States in their present condition? … Instead of remedying the evil you would only rivet the chains and fasten the manacles of their servitude and degradation. … May God preserve us from such a destiny.

SOURCE : Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green, eds., The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford Books, 2005), 153–159.