David Treuer: Andrew Jackson turned on Cherokee Nation allies

Surely everyone knows, or should know, about the Cherokee Trail of Tears — an ordeal imposed upon thousands of Cherokees who, after fighting and winning a judgment in the Supreme Court against their removal from the Eastern Seaboard, were nonetheless dispossessed of their tribal lands and marched to Indian Territory in the early 1830s. The scale of the removal was staggering. Not only the Cherokee but also the Muskogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and many of their African American slaves were removed in one of the largest and most brutal acts of aggression ever committed by the United States. But not till now, with the coming of NPR journalist Steve Inskeep’s magnificent book, focusing as it does on the two key players — President Andrew Jackson and Cherokee Principal Chief John Ross — has this episode in American history been rendered in such personal detail and with such a human touch.

Inskeep begins his tale of dispossession in earnest at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814. By that time Jackson was already famous for his modest origins, his politics and his victory over the British at the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812. It was at Horseshoe Bend, in what is now Alabama, that what could be called the “war of settlement” truly began, when the U.S. military and its Indian allies attacked and demolished the Creek “Red Stick” separatists. And it was at Horseshoe Bend that John Ross — a young Cherokee statesman and fighter — fought for and became acquainted with Jackson. The two men’s destinies became linked during the battle, and they remained linked through their long struggle for control of the American Southeast. What Inskeep shows us — through letters, first-rate historical research and able prose — is how the Cherokee (dispossessors and colonists of other neighboring tribes such as the Creek, Catawba and Tuscarora) fought for the United States and then, after their destinies were intertwined, ended up fighting against the government, in court and through lobbyists and by any other means except outright warfare. What emerges from the story of the two men is a bigger portrait of power and conflict in early America, which wasn’t simply a matter of white transgression and Indian resistance. Rather, Indians and whites were sometimes allies, sometimes not, sometimes united in cause, sometimes not. And the map of power wasn’t simply federal-vs.-tribal. There was a complex web of relationships among Indian tribes, the federal government and states (like Georgia) that wanted to dictate state sovereignty on their own terms.