This must have made the sting of their losses in court -- and their losses despite winning in court -- even more bitter. They had learned and played by the new rules even though that system was unfair to begin with (in all fairness, the Americans should have used the Cherokee legal system to try and get what they wanted), but the system refused to give them fair access. This is more evidence that the American and Georgian governments really did not want to see the Cherokee as equal or deserving the same protections and rights under their own laws as they themselves were, and that they were willing to do whatever it took to get the land that the Cherokees had lived on for generations. The advancement of Cherokee language and culture would have been an indicator to any eye, even a heavily racist and otherwise biased one, that these people were not mere "savages" but had a way of life similar in complexity to that of European man. In fact, by our modern standards, they were actually far more advanced in some ways. Their efforts at conservation were very sophisticated; the authors describe how they would pass three ginseng plants when herb collecting before picking the fourth, this ensuring that there were always more plants to be found. They lived with nature rather than seeing themselves as needing to control it and be protected from it, as the white man did. But just because they lived with nature doesn't mean there weren;t the signs of civilization that Western eyes would have looked for. As the authors say, "Awareness and conservation...do not...
This is just the kind of thing that the European settlers were doing, or trying to do, when they first arrived. Therefore there is no justification, not even the often used and morally repugnant excuse that the Native Americans were an inferior race or civilization, for taking their land and forcing them out of their way of life. Yet this is exactly what the Americans did, to the Cherokee and to many others, proving the author's point that this was all about greed, and nothing else.
The Trail of Tears, a U.S. Army-guided forcible removal of the native Americans from the southeast to west of the Mississippi, began in 1838, and thousands of Cherokee were displaced; thousands died along the way. The realities of these actions was a much different thing than the ideals of the United States. A nation that was built with tolerance and freedom as its precepts was not only forcibly expelling inhabitants
Although they reacted with sorrow, they also attempted to preserve their culture. For example, some even ground the bones of their ancestors and sewed them into their clothing (Watson 1999). A similar story of Native American's peaceful reactions that were exploited by force is the history of Chief Joseph. This early recruit to Christianity was the chief mediator of peace between whites and his tribe, the Nez Perce, but when
The Injustice of the Indian Removal Act 1830 Introduction The Indian Removal Act signed by Andrew Jackson in 1830 was meant to establish peace in the nation and to give the Native Americans their own territory where they could practice their own activities, traditions and culture without interference from the American government. However, the Act resulted in the forced migration of thousands of Native Americans from their traditional homelands to a region
I do not use a pattern to design these sacred baskets. My grandmother and my mother taught me the skills to construct them, how to doubleweave a flexible basket-within-a-basket with a single common rim, for example, but the actual design comes from listening to the cane itself. It speaks to me as it moves through my hands. It tells me what it wants to be, how it wants to be
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