John Ridge, The Cherokee Phoenix, and Testing Sovereignty
John Ridge was born into a prominent Cherokee family in 1802 on the Cherokee ancestral lands in Georgia. He had a significant more stable childhood, with both of his parents throughout his life.[1] Ridge attended Foreign Mission School, a mission school in Cornwall, Connecticut, where he received a comprehensive education. Records suggest that he attended this school from a young age until he was around 17-20 years old. Upon returning to New Echota, a Cherokee town in Georgia with his new wife, Sarah Bird Northup, in 1825, Ridge was appointed to be a member of the Cherokee National Council, the leading body of the tribe. In 1828, Ridge published several vehemently anti-removal editorials in the Cherokee Phoenix, the Cherokee language newspaper. He expressed strong opposition to the rumblings about potential Indigenous removal, arguing that Cherokee land could not be bought for any amount equal to the value of their ancestral lands.[2] Despite this opposition, by 1830-1831, Ridge had formed a coalition of pro-treaty Cherokees. They sought to shift their sovereignty westward to Indian Country, where they could be free of the violence that the Georgia militia and guard inflicted upon their people. So, in 1835, against the wishes of tribal leadership, including Chief John Ross, Ridge and his Treaty Party signed the Treaty of New Echota, effectively exchanging the Cherokee homelands in Georgia for the western lands of Indian Country. Ridge and the Treaty Party could not have foreseen the deadly, poor-planned journey from Georgia to Indian Country, known as the Trail of Tears, but they had condemned their tribe to it. After arriving in Indian Territory in 1839, Ridge and other Treaty Party members were assassinated for their acts of treason.[3]
Publishing articles in newspapers was one of the most expedient means of mass communication for both Ridge and Apess; but in the case of Ridge, they are the only surviving published materials dictating his views as the public would have understood them.[4] In the second issue of The Cherokee Phoenix, Ridge published an editorial entitled, “Communications,” discussing the ‘Report of the Joint Committee on the State of the Republic’ from the Georgia State Legislature. Ridge’s editorial criticizes this report, asserting that it ignores federal laws and compacts, in favor of a land grab. The article wreaks of smugness at the prospect of Georgia dispossessing the Cherokee. In particular, Ridge explains that “Georgia asserted a claim to a vast extent of country, of itself and Empire, if its extent is considered, then owned and in the possession of formidable and warlike Indians, whose southern frontier bordered on the Spanish provinces.”[5] Ridge is essentially posturing in this statement: He is applying Georgia’s claims to the most extreme possibility. Ridge likely hyperbolizes the claims to highlight how the Cherokee could do the same thing and reclaim Georgia, which in turn, presents a sort of challenge to Georgia’s authority. More importantly, Ridge speaks to Cherokee sovereignty in this statement. Georgia’s state laws and federal policy treated Indigenous persons as dependents with the same rights as children.[6] But, Ridge reclaims Cherokee sovereignty to state that the Cherokee could take over Georgia if they wanted to, but their respect for the federal compacts prevented them from doing so.
Ridge returns to the language of the compact to analyze its limitations: “Language explicit and clear would have been used in the compact, that, if the Cherokees refused to yield their country for compensation, they should be ‘ousted’ of possessions, at the point of bayonet. But Philosophers and Statesmen were parties to the contract and could not commit themselves into obligations of inhumanity. The Cherokees were their allies, such as they were, by the solemnities [sic] and formalities of the treaties sanctioned [&] ratified by Sages [&] Patriots of America.”[7]
Ridge effectively explains that the United States government could have made the compact stricter by adding a provision that would mandate the use of force if the Cherokee refused to cede their land to the United States. But, as Ridge argues, the “Philosophers and Statemen” present during the compact negotiations found this concept inhumane. The United States recognized the strength of the Cherokees and allied itself with them, which, in turn, explains the favorability of the compact for both parties. Ridge defends this claim by asserting that the compact was ratified by both Sages and Patriots. The mention of both groups is significant. Considering the 19th century context of Sage as an actor, Ridge uses this term to refer to practically wise men, who gained prudent or judicious knowledge by experience. Sages would be the type of person that knew better than to shortchange the Cherokee, and instead, enforce agreeable terms. Second, the use of Patriot is particularly interesting. The politicization of term, Patriot, came about at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, which occurred about fifty years prior to the publication of the editorial, to describe the colonists fighting for freedom from their British colonizers. Many Indigenous tribes allied with the Patriots, but the Cherokees had allied with the British. By standards of the time, that alliance alone would label the Cherokees as traitors to what became the United States. The fact that Patriots would agree to the terms of the compact suggests that they recognized and/ or respected the Cherokees enough that they did not include a violent enforcement of dispossession in the compact.
The second half of Ridge’s editorial was published two weeks later on March 13. This segment of his editorial includes the conclusion and a lengthy discussion on the application of Vattel’s The Law of Nations onto the United States. Ridge explains that the Joint Committee utilized Vattel’s conceptualization of “domain and empire”[8] to justify their claim over Cherokee land. But, considering he has access to the same source material, Ridge proposes the following questions with the correct answers following each question:
1st. You have satisfactorily explained the meaning of domain and empire, tell us in what situation and when can a nation assert these rights to any country?
Answer. 'When a nation takes possession of a country that never yet belonged to any other, it is considered as possessing the empire or sovereignty, at the same time with the domain.'
2d. Georgia claims the right of empire and domain over the whole of its chartered limits, and over lands in the possession of the Cherokees;-tell us how far a nation have right to arrest their domain and empire, or have they the right to assert to as much space as they please?
Answer. 'The whole space over which a Nation extend its Government, is the seat of its Jurisdiction, ' called its Territory.'
3d. The Cherokee Nation is composed of a number of free families, spread over a district of country which has been held by them from time immemorial; are they in legal possession of it, and how far does their right of command extend?
Answer. 'If any free families over an independent country come to unite in order to form a nation, or state, they altogether possess the empire over the whole country they inhabit. For they already possess each for himself the domain; and since they are willing to form together a political society, and establish a public authority, which each should be bound to obey, it is very manifest that their intention is to attribute to that public authority, the right of command over the whole country.'
4th. Is there any difference in the portion of rights possessed by different Nations to land in a state of nature?
Answer. 'All mankind have an equal right to the things that have not yet fallen into the possession of any one; and these things belong to the first possessor.'
4th and last. When therefore can a nation take lawful possession of a country?
Answer. 'When a Nation finds a country uninhabited and without a master, it may lawfully take possession of it, and after it has sufficiently made known its will in this respect it cannot be deprived of it by another.'[9]
This thought exercise establishes Ridge’s knowledge of European intellectual thought and theory, which is a testament to Ridge’s education. More importantly, Ridge argues that if Georgia has the right to establish a sovereign state and the United States a sovereign nation, then the Cherokee should have the same rights. Ridge continues to explain how the Cherokee differ from other tribes, from their fixed habitations to the organization of the nation into districts. By focusing on the facets of Cherokee nationhood, in conversation with Georgia’s early history, Ridge effectively delegitimizes any White claim to Cherokee land (much how Apess did with the Indian Declaration of Independence).
Ridge’s strong anti-removal perspective reversed by 1833 when The Cherokee Phoenix published a letter written by Ridge with a preface, warning the readers of the contents in the letter. The editor, Elijah Hicks, explain that “the following communications of Mr. Ridge [&] Co., to the Secretary of War and the editor of this paper, are reluctantly given to our readers, for the reason of having no evidence that the former is a true copy of the original…The secret motives which induced Mr. Ridge [&] Co. to open a correspondence with Mr. Cass, can only be fully developed by themselves; but so far as they have been elicited to me, they are visible as the sun’s face, and wholly incompatible with his most solemn obligations to the Nation.”[10] While most published critical commentary tended to be passive- aggressive during this time period, Hicks blatantly holds Ridge accountable for his pro-Removal leanings. This is wholly unusual and thus, indicates that Ridge’s letter is of particular significance to the Treaty Party. Ridge’s letter responds to a verbal “appeal made to the Executive, for the restoration to our people of those rights which the exercise of State authority within our limits have deprived them.”[11] Ridge, then, requests the removal of all White people who have settled on Cherokee land with the support of military forces. This call to a violent removal of Whites was quite extreme and it likely rose concerns of repercussions amongst the Cherokees. Ridge ends his letter by stating: “If we doubt the extent of this protection, it is only by taking in connection this, with the letters from your Department to which we have already made reference. A meeting of our General Council will take place on the 13th of May to deliberate on the affairs of the Nation; and we trust that the information sought for, will not be thought unworthy of the immediate attention of the Department.”[12] This statement comes across as a threat to the federal government, where if the United States government does not send forces to remove the Whites from Cherokee land, then something bad will happen. The other end of that threat would likely be that the Cherokees would remove the Whites themselves, which would, consequently, result in the massacres of White settlements. At this point, Ridge has become quite extreme in his demands for the removal of White people from Cherokee homelands. This extremity is not necessarily realistic; thus, Ridge is setting himself up to be unhappy with the Cherokee lands and sovereignty, which then justifies his actions in signing the Treaty of New Echota.
[1] Tiya Miles, Ties that Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
[2] John Ridge, “Communications,” The Cherokee Phoenix, v. 1, no. 2, New Echota: 28 February 1828, pp. 2.
[3] Theda Perdue, “The Conflict Within: The Cherokee Power Structure and Removal,” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 73, no. 3 (1989): 467-91.
[4] N.B., John Ridge did write countless letters that have survived to the modern era, but these were not publicly circulated until years after his death.
[5] Ridge, “Communication,” 2.
[6] David E. Wilkins and K. Tsianina Lomawaima, Uneven Ground: American Indian Sovereignty and Federal Law, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001, ch. 3.
[7] Ridge, “Communications,” 2.
[8] John Ridge, “Strictures,” The Cherokee Phoenix, v. 1, no. 4, New Echota: 13 March 1828, pp. 2.
[9] Ridge, “Strictures,” 2.
[10] Josiah Hicks, “Untitled,” The Cherokee Phoenix, v. 5, no. 27, New Echota: 17 August 1833, pp. 3.
[11] John Ridge, “For the Cherokee Phoenix,” The Cherokee Phoenix, v. 5, no. 27, New Echota: 17 August 1833, pp. 3.
[12] Ridge, “For the Cherokee Phoenix,” pp. 3.