Boudinot's Change: Boudinot, Emerson, and Ross on Cherokee Removal

Abstract

This essay engages Cherokee editor Elias Boudinot's shift from resisting to supporting Cherokee Removal and his treasonous signing of the 1835 Treaty of New Echota. Reading Boudinot's change alongside Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1838 "Cherokee Letter," published in New England newspapers, and Cherokee Chief John Ross's insistence on the limited "freedom" of the Cherokee national press in his 1828 annual address, I turn away from readings of Boudinot as trapped between white and Cherokee identifications, reorienting the question from "why" to "where" did he do what he did. Boudinot's change of opinion had a long history of suppression and appearance in the Cherokee and United States national presses. I argue that that this publication history portrays not the polarization between but the increasing geographical, political, and legal overlap of the Cherokee Nation and the United States.