Coates Course and Removal

The Coates course on Cherokee history was very intensive. In the short time span we have for the Cherokee Nation Study Abroad program, the course is the best way to learn about and get a handle on general Cherokee history from pre contact to the modern day. I feel as if I came out of the course with a solid understanding of where the Cherokee came from historically.

That being said, the part of the course that I think I internalized the most was the section on the removal and the Trail of Tears. It was amazing to me how in under an hour, Dr. Coates eliminated years of misconceptions about what the Trail of Tears actually was. Since middle school, I have consistently been taught, as Dr. Coates put it, the melodramatic version of the removal; the version with Cherokees in the middle of supper having their doors broken down by violent and bloodthirsty federal troops, forced to leave at bayonet point; the version where the removal came with no warning; the version in which federal troops marched the Cherokees all the way to Indian Territory and punted dying babies across the Mississippi. I believed it all. With the pre Civil Rights attitude of the federal government towards race, it is not something hard to believe. I was absolutely astounded to hear that the Cherokee knew for weeks the day on which they were to be removed, that some had time to collect that one prized possession, and especially that the Cherokees managed their own removal and there were basically no federal troops directing them to Indian Territory by force.

Having thought about the removal since that day, I have come up with a couple of conclusions. First of all, I realize that the Indian history I have been taught in previous years has an angle. It is a legitimate angle based in the fact that the United States government committed genocide against the American Indians. That is true and nobody who knows even a bit of American history can deny it. The whole purpose of making the whole story melodramatic is to incense us into not questioning that it was genocide and that the United States government was wrong. In some ways that is an admirable goal. But I think it accomplishes something more subtly sinister – labeling American Indians in the minds of American children as nothing more than victims, helpless in the face of the powerful American government. This undermines Indian populations across America and honestly doesn’t give the Cherokees the credit they deserve. It is true that teaching schoolchildren that the Cherokees managed their own removal (and were the only tribe to do so) would open the floodgates to arguments like “the U.S. government isn’t responsible for those deaths because they were results of bad management.” But it forces children to recognize that the Cherokees were not powerless and are not powerless. Once an entire group of people is ascribed the characteristic of victim, people learn to view individuals of that group that way. This leads to a pervasive patronizing and subtly racist view of American Indians. I wish I had been taught the reality of the situation before now.

Second of all, I was made to think of the complexity of ethnic cleansing and genocide as terms. When I thought that the federal government was marching the Cherokees eighty miles a day and impaling them with bayonets, there was no doubt in my mind that the removal was ethnic cleansing. And in my mind it was no different than the Rwandan genocide or Nazi Germany. I had the same basic definitions of genocide and ethnic cleansing, as I understood the terms, reinforced, and I was not made to question my views. Knowing what I know now, that the Cherokees managed their own removal, that they didn’t have to march eighty miles a day under the threat of death from soldiers, I have had to rethink my definitions of genocide and ethnic cleansing. There is still no doubt in my mind that the removal was ethnic cleansing and the deaths on the way were the result of genocide. My new definition of ethnic cleansing is what the Indian policy then was: removal. This covers it because removal can be done in many ways: most modern ethnic cleansing removes ethnic groups by killing their members. The Cherokee ethnic cleansing just happened to be something else – population displacement. Genocide is a little more tricky. It starts with ethnic cleansing, but the question is responsibility. The argument could be made that the Cherokee just didn’t manage the removal well, and that led to the deaths of 10% of the Cherokee population. Even if this were true, which it isn’t, the ultimate responsibility still lies with the U.S. government, because the U.S. government set off the displacement that led to those deaths. My new definition of genocide includes ethnic cleansing as a prerequisite and then who is responsible for the deaths.

Finally, I learned why history professors are so serious about citing sources.