A Century of Dishonor: A Sketch of the United States Government's Dealings with Some of the Indian Tribes

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1881

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-3

Part 1, Chapters 4-7

Part 1, Chapters 8-10

Part 2

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Part 1, Chapters 8-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: A Century of Dishonor

Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary: “The Cherokees”

The Cherokees live in the southeastern mountainous region of present-day US states of Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, and North Carolina. In the 1730s, the Cherokees find a genuine friend in James Oglethorpe, founder of the Georgia colony. Later in the 18th century, however, Cherokee relations with the colonies grow strained, and the Cherokee fight on the British side during the American Revolution. A series of treaties in the 1780s and 1790s establish boundaries between the United States and the Cherokee Nation. The most important treaty agreement occurs in 1817, when the Cherokee cede additional lands in exchange for a promise of 640 acres to every head of family. This signals the Cherokees’ willingness to settle on smaller tracts of land and become farmers—the pathway to assimilation. Over the next 12 years, the Cherokees move quickly to adopt the institutions and habits of their white neighbors, including creating their own legislature and system of jurisprudence, and language and printing presses.

In 1829, the Georgia legislature shockingly declares all Cherokee laws null and void—despite not having the constitutional right to do so. Jackson quotes Thomas Jefferson and George Washington to show that the Founders established a system under which the states had no authority over tribes living inside their borders. The Cherokee make repeated appeals to Congress, and also receive a great deal of support from white US citizens who recognize Georgia’s flagrant injustice. However, the US government does nothing—it is the Era of Removal, when Congress and the president are determined to relocate all tribes, by force or otherwise, to new homes west of the Mississippi River.

A group of Cherokee chiefs agree to removal in 1835, but the majority of Cherokees resist. Finally, in May 1838, General Winfield Scott arrives with troops to remove the Cherokees by force. The Secretary of War and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs document the proceedings with “self-congratulations” that “has an element in it of the ludicrous, spite of the tragedy and shame” (284). The record is filled with references to the US government’s supposed liberality and humanity.

For several decades, the Cherokees make the best of their situation in Indian Territory and even replicate many of the institutions of their ancestral home. The US Civil War, however, places a terrible strain on the Cherokees. Confederate forces overrun weak federal positions in the territory, and Cherokees are compelled to either unwillingly join the Confederate Army or flee to Kansas. After the war, however, the US government treats all Cherokees as if they had participated in the rebellion. Railroads effectively steal a portion of Cherokee lands. At the time of the book’s publication, it was an open question whether the US government would constrict the Cherokees’ reservation even further.

Part 1, Chapter 9 Summary: “Massacres of Indians by Whites”

Chapter 9 describes in detail three massacres of peaceful and defenseless men, women, and children from different tribes, carried out by dozens of white men.

The first massacre begins on December 14, 1763, when a band of frontier vigilantes, known to history as the Paxton Boys, slaughters three men, two women, and one boy near the village of Conestoga, Pennsylvania. One of the victims, a very elderly man named Shebaes, had “assisted with the second treaty held” with Pennsylvania founder William Penn in 1701 and “ever since continued a faithful friend to the English” (303). Horrified by news of the massacre, officials in the nearby town of Lancaster attempt to protect 16 surviving members of the Conestoga band (originally Senecas and Shawanese), but two weeks later, the Paxton Boys find and murder the survivors. Meanwhile, a group of Moravians, or Indigenous Christians, arrive in Philadelphia for protection. The Paxton Boys march on Philadelphia, threatening to wipe out the Moravians, but Governor John Penn protects them; some of the city’s pacifist Quakers actually take up arms in their defense. When the threat finally subsides in the aftermath of the French and Indian War (1754-1763), the Moravians move west.

The second massacre occurs near the end of the American Revolutionary War. Moravians living in towns in present-day eastern Ohio, including some who had been harassed by the Paxton Boys in 1763, find themselves caught between two hostile forces: the English and their allies, and the Americans. English officials, fearing that the Moravians might be secretly aligned with the colonial rebels, order the Moravians to move north. As approximately 100 Moravians gather food for the entire band before going northward in early March 1782, a “party of between one and two hundred whites” (320) who are Pennsylvania militiamen appears at the Moravian town of Gnadenhutten with murderous intentions. They attack the unsuspecting Moravians and confine them to two cabins, ready to execute them the following morning. A handful of militiamen protest and refuse to participate in the ensuing massacre, but the bloodthirsty majority prevails. On the morning of March 8, 1782, Pennsylvania militiamen slaughter 96 peaceful and unarmed Moravian men, women, and children. Two boys escape, hide, and make their way back to their families on the Sandusky River.

The third massacre occurs in Arizona Territory on April 30, 1871. For details of this atrocity, Jackson relies on a letter written by a US Cavalry officer, Lieutenant Royal E. Whitman, who has been housing Aravapa Apaches in a camp half a mile from Camp Grant. News of Whitman’s kindness spreads, and the numbers in his makeshift Apache camp swell to more than 500, all seeking peace and a home. On April 30, Whitman receives a dispatch alerting him “that a large party had left Tucson on the 28th with the avowed purpose of killing all the Indians at this post” (329). He tries to bring the Apaches inside Camp Grant, but by the time he can do so, all that’s left of the camp is “dead and mutilated women and children” (329).

Part 1, Chapter 10 Summary: “Conclusion”

By 1881, the year of the book’s publication, there are approximately 300,000 Indigenous Americans living in the United States and its territories. Of these, Jackson estimates that nearly half support themselves on reservations, receiving little or nothing from the US government, while only ten percent depend entirely on the government for support. All have suffered, to one degree or another, from US government duplicity. There is nothing now to be done about the government’s “sickening record of murder, outrage, robbery, and wrongs” (339). All that can be done is to put an end to the lying and the thievery and give Indigenous Americans the legal protections they deserve.

Part 1, Chapters 8-10 Analysis

The Cherokees’ experience reveals the depths of US government lies. For decades, Indigenous Americans were told that assimilation would bring them prosperity, peace, and a permanent home among their European-American neighbors. No tribe assimilated more successfully than did the Cherokee, but assimilation did not save them. This betrayal and ensuing forced removal underscore the emptiness of assimilation rhetoric. To underscore this, Chapter 9 recounts several incidents of horrific violence against peaceful Indigenous Americans. Jackson describes at length these three massacres and includes a brief mention of another against the Apaches in the 1840s to prove “that the Indian has not always been the aggressor, and that treachery and cruelty are by no means exclusively Indian traits” (335).

The book’s systematic approach exposes the particular responsibility that President Andrew Jackson has in the mistreatment of Indigenous peoples. Although no one individual gets all the blame an enormous tragedy that unfolded over a lengthy period of time, this president had the power to alter the fate of Indigenous Americans and refused to do so. A Century of Dishonor does not mention President Jackson by name, but his presence looms over Chapter 8. His failure to act on behalf of the Cherokee in a manner consistent even with his own public character encapsulates a century of betrayal. Instead, President Jackson signed the Removal Act of 1830, endorsing Georgia’s unconstitutional and vicious action against the Cherokees, and then delivering a speech to Congress filled with the kind of self-congratulatory claptrap that the book’s author bemoans.

The Cherokee’s experience in Indian Territory includes an oft-overlooked element. Slaveholding among the Cherokees was similar to that among Southern whites—a fact that reveals, among other things, the degree of success the Cherokees achieved in their assimilation efforts. During the Civil War, some Cherokees chose to fight for the Confederacy, but most did not. However the Cherokees’ neutrality in the Civil War did not save them from the taint of assumed guilt by racial association.