Toward Cherokee Removal: Land, Violence, and the White Man's Chance by Adam J. Pratt

Abstract

Reviewed by: Toward Cherokee Removal: Land, Violence, and the White Man's Chance by Adam J. Pratt John P. Bowes (bio) Toward Cherokee Removal: Land, Violence, and the White Man's Chance. By Adam J. Pratt. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2020. Pp. xii, 221. $59.95 cloth) The foundation of Adam Pratt's new book on Cherokee removal is what nineteenth-century Georgians referred to as the "white man's chance." As the author notes in his introduction, this concept "signified a commitment made by the state government to its citizens in which the state would create economic opportunities for some of its citizens by taking away or limiting the prospects of others" (p. 3). In the events described in this book, it meant Georgia's treatment of the Cherokee Nation in the 1820s and 1830s was inextricably connected to the desire to provide opportunities for property and status to the state's white citizens. The history of Cherokee removal has typically been described as a power struggle between state, federal, and tribal authority. Pratt's book fills in many specific details of that history piece-by-piece, describing the people involved and the violence encompassing that struggle, particularly on the Georgian and non-Native side of the equation. Numerous familiar actors take part in this history told over the course of seven chapters, but it is Georgia's elected officials who drive this narrative. Overseeing the expansion of the state's jurisdiction, they seek to bring stability and prosperity to Georgians despite the obstacles presented by poor whites, the Cherokee Nation, and federal authorities. Poor whites did not behave in the orderly manner desired by state officials, the Cherokee Nation asserted its sovereignty and rejected state authority, and the federal government did not follow through on the promises of the Compact of 1802. Yet the state government still had the ability to shape events through what [End Page 75] it did and did not do. As Pratt notes, "the real threat to Cherokee stability and persistence was not the overwhelming power of the state but, rather, how that power encouraged thousands of individual white intruders to disregard Cherokee law, borders, and property" (p. 47). It is the way those white invasions were facilitated that comprises the foundation of Pratt's story and his contribution to the historiography. As can often happen with a familiar story, we can find ourselves assuming knowledge or falling back on generalizations and the experience of the Cherokee Nation is certainly one of the most examined histories when it comes to Indian removal. Yet those with knowledge of this history will find new material to broaden their understanding of this period and the people involved. In the pages of Toward Cherokee Removal the reader will find examinations of the Pony Club and the Slicks, two groups whose violent struggles reveal a more complicated battle over boundaries and lands in Georgia and the Cherokee Nation than most might recognize. The actions of the Georgia Guard in the early 1830s and the responses to them illuminate the differences among Georgia politicians at a time we might often view the state as a monolithic actor in its push to take Cherokee lands. Overall, Toward Cherokee Removal has some substantial contributions to offer its readers. For those with prior knowledge, the book does not shed new light on elements of the Cherokee side of the history, though it does highlight points of alliance between Cherokees and whites. The book's organization sometimes makes it difficult to gauge the timing of events discussed in different chapters, and there are moments when the ins and outs of Georgia state politics bog down the narrative. However, those are stylistic critiques that do not undermine the strengths of the book, namely providing a more detailed understanding of how race and state power shaped the implementation of Cherokee removal in nineteenth-century Georgia. [End Page 76] John P. Bowes JOHN P. BOWES is a professor of history at Eastern Kentucky University. He is the author of Land Too Good for Indians: Northern Indian Removal and Exiles and Pioneers: Eastern Indians in the Trans-Mississippi West. Copyright © 2021 Kentucky Historical Society