Cliches connote something overused or overspoken. Some would say the broken treaty is a cliche when talking about the Native American experience. This could not be further from the truth. The broken treaty is something core to almost every tribe and person’s experience during the expelling of indigenous people from their homes. Like someone talking about drinking water, eating food, or sleeping– it is impossible to talk too much about a broken treaty when discussing the indigenous experience in America.
It would be overly simplistic to blame one person in charge of treaties, to play off the act as a natural event when one is conquered, to cast aside indigenous groups as mere victims of the inevitable destiny of the American republic. But one person is not to blame, an entire societal and cultural structure is. The act is uniquely wrong when one considers what America was founded for and when one considers that America is supposed to be a land of law. And each indigenous person in history had hopes, dreams and wishes. Each person on the Trail of Tears was a victim of a tragedy. The collective whole cannot be talked about if one seeks the nuance of the protracted sufferings of the indigenous people in the face of the forming empire of America. These facts are all difficult to swallow. It would be easier to discuss Andrew Jackson as the sole attacker of the indigenous tribes. It would be far easier to see the acts as inevitable and political, rather than cruel and human. But uneasy is the person that wears the title of ‘historian.’
The treaty, as one could assume with likely correctness, is a treaty between Andrew Jackson, acting by his own command. It removes the people of New Echota,⧫ an indigenous safe haven– and would come to be a part of the treaties that would make up the Trail of Tears. These treaties would be broken after the Civil War, as people moved West of the Mississippi in large swaths. The treaty itself both violate previous treaties from after the War of 1812 as well as the ruling of the Supreme Court.
History is a stupid word. It implies only the record of things that happened, told through text. However, civilization predates writing by around five thousand years, and some civilizations had little need for organized systems of writing. Indigenous groups, often isolated from the empires of Eurasia and Northern Africa, often have very little systems of writing that are preserved. Because of this the fascinating and equally important societies of the Americas, Oceania, and Sub-Saharan Africa often go unreported. People confuse a lack of need for writing for a lack of things worth writing about. This leads to indigenous history in the United States to merely be told through interaction with the European settlers that tore down trees and put up McDonalds⧭.
History as I use it, namely the things that happened to people in the past, is in danger. Not only because of a stupid adherence to written word, but also because it is being destroyed. Political reasons often cause this. Not that long ago European colonizers of Africa refused to believe Africans could make great structures and so they tore them down and denied their existence. Today, Islamic nations tear down pre-Islamic history. This is a global action, dating back a very long time. Indigenous groups are one of the greatest victim of this cultural genocide. Long after Hernan Cortez destroyed Aztec books, Andrew Jackson was busy building over Indigenous burial grounds and burning Indigenous forts. Jackson, and many others, did not want the long and interesting history of Indigenous groups to be told. A large wrench would be thrown in the idea of predestined glory to civilize a wild land if the land was shown to not be that wild.
Because of these two concepts, finding information about the Indigenous American experience is hard. Treaties are burnt to avoid accountability for ignoring previous treaties when new ones are written. Digitization is a slow and tedious process. Many museums are run by geriatric folk with low funding and time. The quest for the preservation of history is rotting with the erosion of stone and decay of paper. This means that digitization is an essential process– but it doesn’t mean I have to like it.
I hate digital primary sources. I cannot hold in my hand what once was held by those who wrote it. I cannot get the impact of the actual color of the page, the actual smell of the ink, the actual place it resides. Working with a digital source was not difficult, but unrewarding.
In addition to the process itself, defining an Indigenous experience with a treaty is a bit iffy. The treaty is written by Jackson (or more likely one of his subordinates) and therefore tells a story of European conquering– not indigenous resistance or acceptance to such standards. The language used can tell a lot about the political social order of Jacksonian era America– not so much about the Indigenous experience itself.
Jackson saw America as a white-man’s republic, a plebeian democracy built by and for the workers. The founding father generation saw America generally as an aristocratic planter class nation for people of all regions (but mostly Europe). Jackson’s policy saw the transition of ‘Indian Wars’ from pragmatic removals for the sake of expansion, to deeply racial structures aimed at the dominance of the white way of doing things, as defined by Jackson’s faux historical understanding of empires. Jefferson⧪, the father of Indian removal, himself thought of Native Americans as the enemy of America in any way other than they held land he wanted. Jackson both wanted the land and to either ‘civilize’ or exterminate Indigenous groups. He made clear in his Message To Congress On Indian Removal that the republic was “the white man’s.”⭆
The treaty shows the cruelty of Jacksonian ‘Indian Policy.’ It does not show the intricacies of the Indigenous experience. Perhaps, though, no four views of something will show the indigenous experience. This class has shown time and time again how much more there is to learn– and how little the public knows. Perhaps four views can give a look into a concept but we must be apt to do more work, to find more stories, and avoid a single view of a complex people and their place in a complex world.
Bibliography
⧫Department of Natural Resources. (n.d.). The Treaty of New Echota and the Trail of Tears. NC DNCR. https://www.dncr.nc.gov/blog/2016/12/29/treaty-new-echota-and-trail-tears
⧭Barclay, S. H. (2021, February). Rethinking Protection For Indigenous Sacred Sites. Harvard Law Review. https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-134/rethinking-protections-for-indigenous-sacred-sites/
⧪Hirsch, M. (2009). Thomas Jefferson: Founding Father of Indian Removal. https://www.mccc.edu/pdf/cmn214/Class%2010/Thomas%20Jefferson%20Founding%20father%20of%20Indian%20removal.pdf
⭆Jackson, A. (2021, May 10). President Andrew Jackson’s message to Congress “on Indian removal” (1830). National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/jacksons-message-to-congress-on-indian-removal