Early Indigenous LiteraturesMain MenuThe Child Who Would be Sovereign: Settler Colonial Frustrations and the Figure of the Child in Gertrude Simmons Bonnin's American Indian StoriesBy: Kai ChaseIllicit Relations: The Challenges and Possibilities of Black and Indigenous Relationssoumya rachel shailendraLegibility and Ambivalence in 19th Century Indigenous Women's WritingAn exhibit on E. Pauline Johnson and Sarah Winnemucca by Emma CohenLyric Histories: An Investigation of Early Black (and) Native America through Poetic Vignettesby Kira TuckerMarriage and Empire in 19th Century Native American Women's Literatureby Angad SinghNot-not blood quantum: the Dawes Act and ambivalent Indigeneityby Yasmin YoonReading Indigenous Authorial Presence in 18th- and 19th-century ParatextsTitle Page for Isabel Griffith-Gorgati's ExhibitResistance on and off the Page: A Collaborative Conversation between Black and Indigenous Literary ContributorsFeaturing James Printer, Katherine Garret, Phillis Wheatley, and John Marrant (17th-18th Century Early Print Culture Participants)- By Lauren JohnsonSpiritual Armies, Resurrected Bones, and “Boundless” Continents: How Indigenous Activists in Early New England Reconfigured Puritan Millennialist NarrativesFeaturing texts of Samson Occom, William Apess, and the Wampanoag Bible. By Surya MilnerSovereignty or Removal: The Conflicting Indigenous Policies of 1835 in the Continental United StatesJulia GilmanWhat Does Water Do For Indigenous Peoples of the Great Lakes Region?Featuring Heid E. Erdrich, Simon Pokagon, Black Hawk, and Simon Kofe by Sarah Nisenson(Re)introducing Black Hawk and The Life (1833)BHR 1-IntroYasmin Yoonf7f231e474bf43796f973cd0ee560919050f7427Lydia Abedeen321b94302eca10e499769fd0179e64cd33bc4cd5Kira Tuckeracf97d948460e98cd439646cc2db7ae17c5ebd9dsarah nisenson7cb5d2c1682fbd145e76716f3924f03bf25c616aKai Chased7cab5968a3a916efd1a14a48cc4832d5d5514aeSoumya Shailendra86c246fcc4aea83787381bffd2b839885bef5096Bennett Herson-Roeserc8289125445a56c819045a0091daf0402b3e0875Surya Milner077f837f3d662fd5ef9055f8258e5c47bb11f714Julia Gilmanb860a8277eea484f91a1a9e0423cab4b52bae522Lauren Johnson98dac03e7c9c1ad41e1c0a8583704e55802f98baAngad Singhd2b8d1d68ec374981c9e99b7cb400803bc678231Emma Cohen146e757b9fc3b3b416edecbf79592e8d743d4ba1Charlotte Goddu2d4c020870148128c7824ece179e04cffe180d95Isabel Griffith-Gorgati985a05928a67a856791fffac3dbba8acc85f6f37
Reversing Manifest Destiny
1media/reverse manifest destiny indian land tenure foundation_thumb.jpeg2022-12-11T10:52:03-08:00Julia Gilmanb860a8277eea484f91a1a9e0423cab4b52bae522416961Via Indian Land Tenure Foundationplain2022-12-11T10:52:03-08:00Julia Gilmanb860a8277eea484f91a1a9e0423cab4b52bae522
This page is referenced by:
12022-12-11T10:36:44-08:00Conclusion: Geography of Sovereignty3JGplain2022-12-11T10:54:11-08:00 While Apess and Ridge faced questions of sovereignty and dispossession on opposite ends of the country, Apess kept the Cherokee removal in conversation with the Mashpee. Apess’s access to information about Removal can be attributed to the expediency of the movement of newspapers, where newspapers from Georgia could reach Massachusetts in less than a week. In fact, in his Indian Nullification, Apess includes a letter to the Harvard College corporation that remarks “Perhaps you have heard of the oppression of the Cherokees and lamented over them much, and thought the Georgians were hard and cruel creatures; but did you ever hear of the poor, oppressed and degraded Marshpee Indians in Massachusetts, and lament over them? If not, you hear now, and we have made choice of the Rev. Wm. Apes to relieve us, and we hope that you will assist him. And if the above complaints and reasons, and the following resolutions, will be satisfactory, we shall be glad, and rejoice that you comply with our request.”[1] The Mashpees have clearly either received correspondence or newspapers that detail the laws and reports that the Georgia State Legislature tried to enact to dispossess the Cherokees. The authors of the letter warn Harvard against acting in any sort of similar manner. Beyond explicit acknowledgements, “Apess and the Mashpee saw the issues of the Cherokee in Georgia and the South Carolina nullification crisis as interrelated and used both sides of the nullification discourse to call out the state of Massachusetts on the contradictions of its federally leaning politics in order to gain greater political autonomy for Mashpee.”[2] While on the surface it appears that Apess and Ridge sought and achieved opposing goals: Apess assisted Mashpee leaders to persuade the Massachusetts General Assembly to grant the Mashpee tribe sovereign status without the oversight of overseers and Harvard; and Ridge and the Treaty Party signed the Treaty of New Echota, leading to the settlement of the Cherokee in Indian Territory.
But an important commonality lies between these men: They both worked to dismantle the benevolent paternalism that controlled their tribes and reclaim their sovereignty. While Ridge’s actions did cause the deaths of hundreds along the Trail of Tears, along with that of his own and his allies, he acted in the only way he saw possible to allow the Cherokee to remain a sovereign, independent people.
[2] Neil Meyer, “‘To Preserve This Remnant:’ William Apess, the Mashpee Indians, and the Politics of Nullification,” The European Journal of American Studies 13, no. 2 (Summer 2018): https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.12635.