Thomas Jefferson and the Beginning of Cherokee Nationalism, 1806 to 1809

Abstract

o many Georgians and other worried southern frontiersmen the thirteen thousand Cherokee people on their borders appeared by i827 to have established an imperium in imperio of such internal strength and stability as to pose threat that could be countered only by their forced removal. While ethnohistorians disagree about the nature and extent of nationalism, acculturation, and deculturation among the various Indian tribes of North America, they generally concur that in the early nineteenth century the Cherokees achieved the closest approximation to nationhood of any tribe east of the Mississippi.' One of the largest and wealthiest tribes, they adopted written constitution in i827 (modeled closely upon the United States Constitution), published newspaper in their own language (utilizing the unique Sequoyan syllabary), and developed such sophisticated legislative, judicial, and educational system that their social order was more advanced than that of many of the rude white settlements around them. Many Americans in the North, particularly in New England, thought the Cherokees deserved serious consideration as potential Indian state within the Union. Most accounts date the beginning of Cherokee nationhood from i8i7 when law of the council established a republic with national bicameral legislature.2 But in important respects the impulse toward