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Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. And me, William Durrenpool. And once again, I'm delighted to say we are joined by Kathleen Duval. I'm enjoying her company so much. Author of the recently published book, Native Nations, A Millennium in North America. And a fabulous, fabulous book it is too. It's given us so much to talk about both in the pod, but also outside the pod. William and I have been talking about things that
of thrown up full of surprises in every chapter it's one of those ones you read and you start sort of whatsapping each other did you read did you know did she had you heard and the answer mostly is no I hadn't I just wondered before we get into the next amazing story that you have to tell we should have a little spoiler alert that this is going to be well he loves spoiler it's a sad story I'm afraid go get your tissues and just be ready you've been dalrumpled
I was just going to ask though, how much do Americans acknowledge this kind of scholarship and this history? Because it's an uncomfortable history. Listen, how much pushback do you get for it? I think Americans are eager for this kind of understanding. I think that today non-Native Americans see Native Americans in movies and TV. There have been some really important US Supreme Court cases lately. Art museums are doing lots of contemporary Native art. And I think
Trying to square that really noticeable presence of Native Americans these days with history that most people were told of Native Americans sort of very quickly declining and not being particularly important after the early 19th century.
There's kind of a disconnect. I feel like there are audiences in the United States that are really eager for histories that help them understand that and sort of correct that old way they were taught history. Because for many, I've got lots of American friends, and one of them is describing to me is,
You learn a little bit and then it's as if they've all been taken away by the rapture. No one talks about it. What happened here? Where'd they go? Right. And then you're like, wait, why are they on TV shows now? What happened in between?
Do you still do land acknowledgements? And I've just come back just in a distant, distant memory now, but I was in Canada a few months ago and they start every big sporting event with a land acknowledgement. Likewise, in Australia, they will do a land acknowledgement. So, I mean, we should say for those who don't know what a land acknowledgement is, it is just taking a moment at the beginning before you do anything else saying this land used to belong to and we acknowledge. I mean, does that still happen in America? Yes, it does.
To some extent, there definitely has been a move even more recently to sort of add on the end of that a connection to the present day. Because I think what a lot of Native people don't like about land acknowledgements is they kind of replicate that same story that Native Americans are just in the past. This land used to belong to them, right? As true as that is.
For example, there are various land acknowledgements that we use here at the University of North Carolina, but they all connect to North Carolina tribes today and mention, OK, there are also still Native nations within North Carolina. When you fly in for our festival in Boulder, you arrive at the airport in Detroit. You go along as you arrive in through this long hall.
of photographs of Native American tribes. Beautiful 19th century photography of these people. And it's very striking. They're very present. Present, but not so much around Boulder, actually. That's because of the Creek Massacre, which I think we'll be talking about in our next issue, actually. So I always find the juxtaposition of that really odd. But, you know, sort of places where you go where there's a great deal of art and declaration of how important people were, and then you don't see...
Anyway, enough of that. Press pause on that. Right, have you got your tissue boxes? Are you ready? Why don't you kick off this rather extraordinary story, Willie? So yes, Kathleen, very, very striking moment in your book is set shortly after the Declaration of Independence. And we have this extraordinary figure who you paint a beautiful pen portrait of. And am I pronouncing his name right? Tecumseh, born in what, 1768? Tell us about him. Yeah, so he...
and his brother Tenskwatawa are born to a Shawnee family in the late, very late 18th century. And they're born during this long series of wars we mentioned in the last episode between the Shawnees and their allies, other native nations in the Ohio Valley and the United States, starting with the British colonies and then the United States.
And so they come of age during this era of war. By the time they're young men, their father's been killed in battles against the United States. Some of their older brothers are killed as well. Their mother has actually moved west with some other Shawnees as part of a group that has decided defending the Ohio Valley is no longer tenable and that it will be easier to live and to live as Shawnees if they leave their homeland and move west of the Mississippi.
But Tecumseh and his brother, Tenskwatawa, stay in the Ohio Valley with their older siblings. And they're very impressive. One Brit who comes across them writes, a more sagacious or more gallant warrior does not, I believe, exist. He was the admiration of everyone who conversed with him. Right. So you can hear in that he is a great warrior, but he's also a great speaker.
And Tenskwatawa, his brother, becomes a prophet. He has a vision of continuing this confederacy to fight the United States, but going even further. So his vision says God is angry that Europeans have basically messed everything up. Europeans...
came to a continent that wasn't intended for them. They stole people from Africa and brought them here too. And they are the offspring of the evil spirit. Right, right, right. God created Europeans, but he just meant them to stay in Europe. But yeah, people of the United States, they are the offspring of the evil spirit. So Tenskwatawa, Tecumseh's brother, says all
All Native Americans need to combine as one people. That's what God intended. And we have to kick Europeans off of this, of our continent. And this could be a game changing moment. That's right. That's right. And so Tecumseh becomes the greatest evangelist for this movement. He's a great speaker, as we said. He travels around. He travels to the Muscogees and the Cherokees in the southwest. He travels west of the Mississippi and speaks to the Osage and other people west of the Mississippi.
And really, they have in mind something much bigger than the confederacies of the past, but a real united native identity, not just a military alliance. I mean, these two brothers, it's nominative determinism in many ways, because isn't it right? Tecumseh means shooting star, and he's the one who wants people to follow him, and they do follow him. And then Tenskatawa means the noisemaker, and he is the prophet who's denouncing the evil spawn of the colonizers.
And he's the one who is making all the noise in many ways. Right, right. And then he changes his name to the open door. So God speaks through him to the people. Yeah. So they also believe you can change your names along the way. Can I just break into the story at this point, Kathleen, just to have an idea of what the conception of God that we're talking about here. Ken Squitower refers to him and he uses a male pronoun as the master of life. And so I think that kind of language is,
You know, you would have said it in Shawnee too, you'd have to translate it back into Shawnee. That language, it sort of bridges long traditional religious beliefs of Shawnees with Christianity. With monotheism, yeah. Yeah, the Shawnees have lived alongside Christianity for many generations by this point.
And I think one of the important things to know about Native religions is that they are inclusivist, which means that they aren't all or nothing religions the way Christianity and Islam and Judaism all are, at least in theory, that you are that religion or you aren't that religion. Native religions, for the most part, believe that if you come across a belief practice that makes sense, you can incorporate it alongside your religion.
more like Hinduism in that sense. That's right. Exactly. Right. Right. You don't have to give up your old beliefs and practices to embrace new ones. And so Christianity has become
part of the theology of Shawnees, of many Shawnees, at least by this point. So you definitely see parallels in how Tenskwatawa talks, even though at the very same time, it's a completely nativistic religion, which wants to expel all European influences and sort of get at the difficulties he's going to have, because he's not going to be able to expel generations of contact with Europeans.
There's the rub, as many may say, Luke. So you talk the talk, but they also walk the walk. They establish a town, Prophet's Town, in modern day Indiana. What would that have been like when Tecumseh founded it with his brother? So the idea is to make all native people one. So one of the things they have to do is to get Shawnees and Delawares
Potawatomi's and everybody else to leave their tribal communities and move in together. And one of the purposes is to get them away from their town leaders, from their national leaders. Tecumseh really sees as opposing this movement. They are invested in separate nations of the Shawnee's being different from other native peoples, even if they have a military alliance with them. So Prophetstown is this place that Tenskwatawa found to bring his converts together.
One of the problems he has is he has a much easier time converting men than women. Women are the farmers still among Shawnees and others in the region, and they don't want to leave their farms. And they also don't want to stop using some of the metal tools that they use that make farming easier. They say, we can be native, we can be Shawnee and still use a metal hoe. It doesn't keep us from being who we are. He's totally advocating removing all Western technology, is he?
All Western technologies and all parts of their religion that seem Western to him. And also splitting apart families. If you're intermarried with a white trader and you have children, that husband, those children are not supposed to be part of this new society. Right. Okay. So they would be cast out too. I mean, there's some disagreement about whether the children have to be cast out or not, but certainly the husband. So it's very radical. Yes. And lots of Shawnees and other native people do not like it.
But also, I mean, it's food and clothes, alcohol and sort of means of cooking and things like that, which some people have grown to like. Exactly right. And, you know, Shawnee women have developed ways of making clothing that you can't easily separate the Shawnee from the European in it by the early 1800s. That's fascinating. OK, so does Prophetstown prosper and grow or is it just a man only factory? I mean, what?
What does it look like? There are a couple of women there, but there aren't enough farmers. They rely on food coming in from Pottawatomie and other towns nearby, women who are farming within their own towns there. But the Americans see this as tremendously successful, as a huge threat. And the United States sends William Henry Harrison to root it out. When is this sort of recognized as a threat? What's happening on the seaboard? It's very quickly. And it's in a time...
Right before the War of 1812. But tensions are rising between the United States and Britain. And in retrospect, we know it's moving toward all-out war. And do the British realize they've got a potential ally in this guy? Yes, right. And Tecumseh makes sure the British realize that. I talked about Tecumseh going around and making great speeches to other native nations, but he does the same thing with the British. He goes up to Canada and advocates a grand alliance.
Does he take their guns? Absolutely. So that's a bit off, isn't it? He can use the guns, but the women can't use the hoe. Exactly. And we can ally with the British, even though we may not mention to them our long-term strategy is having no Europeans here. It's like problems here. So who strikes the first blow? Is it Henry Harrison? William Henry Harrison, who's been told to get this situation under control? We should explain who he is.
the Indiana Territory Governor. Right. So it's a little contested who actually fires first. It escalates into warfare. Tecumseh actually isn't even there. He's off on one of his tours. So Tenskwatawa is there to defend Prophetstown, although he really, to his followers, he's talking about it as an offensive move. He thinks they're going to win a big battle against Harrison, and that will be the first step in this plan to throw Europeans and their descendants off of the continent.
doesn't work. Harrison comes in and the people of Provincetown have to disperse. They lose the battle. Harrison declares great victory, although actually Tenskwatawa's followers actually reconvene pretty soon thereafter. They're not slaughtered. They just leave. They run away. They're losing the battle and some of them are killed and they retreat, which is quite common in native warfare, all warfare, right? To retreat if you're losing and try to fight another day. Retreat, regroup, retreat, regroup. That's not going to be enough for
William Henry Harrison, because he knows that they can just regroup a few days down the track. So what is the next move here? It all grows into the War of 1812, breaks out, and Tecumseh leads as many...
native followers as he can to side with the British and fight against the United States to take advantage of the War of 1812. So some of our listeners will not know the story of this war when the White House gets burnt down by the British. Yes, we should tell this story. You're quite right to pull us up on this because we've been talking about this for ages, but others may not. Give us a little introduction to that war. Okay, so the United States, I'm going to say unwisely goes to war again against Britain
They've tried their luck once, exactly. As we often do from history, we learn the wrong lessons. The United States in its early years is pulled back and forth between the French, whom they had allied with during the revolution, and the British, of course, whom they fought against in the revolution.
but have more in common with, right, and sort of more natural economic ties with. And so every time Europe, particularly the British and the French, go to war, the United States tries to stay neutral and just profit off of it and has a lot of trouble doing that. So unwisely jumps into another war against Britain in the War of 1812. And the British march southwards, deep into the United States. Britain is involved in wars on the continent at the same time, but when it's able, when Britain
the British are able to free up enough troops to invade actually the United States. They march on the Capitol. They march on Washington, D.C. They burn the Capitol. Burn the White House. It's odd. This isn't something we learn in our history lessons. The Brits would like it, you'd have thought, but no. Yeah, no, I know. It's odd, isn't it? But I mean, they've just literally just cleaned out the White House and made it habitable and then it's burnt down. I mean, it
It's not that old. The paint is hardly dried and they burn it down. In fact, the story goes, and I don't know if this is true, but the story goes it only becomes the White House afterwards because of all the whitewash they had to put on it to try to cover up the burn marks. You know what? I'd love that to be true because that's a gorgeous story. I suspect it's not. Oh, let it be. You spoil sport.
Anyway, what's happening to the composite at this point? It's looking pretty good. It's looking like this may be the first step in kicking out the United States. Are the Brits trying to recover the United States? Do they think they can get it back? I don't know. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. They certainly don't.
But the United States absolutely think, people in the United States think Canadians are going to come rushing to us. The British are coming again. So at first, the British and Tecumseh's forces are winning. But at the same time, you know, we talked about the sort of prophecies and prescriptions of Tecumseh.
Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh, they have turned off an awful lot of native people. And so there end up being some native men who fight on the side of the United States, many who work on the side of the United States as scouts and others, who in some ways see Tecumseh as a greater threat. As a zealot, some kind of sort of ideological zealot who's just unreasonable. Exactly. That's right. And in fact, Tenskwatawa has led some witch hunts and killed people within the Delawares and the Shawnees who didn't agree with him.
It really is, you know, internally, a lot of debates and some violence about it. So Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa really don't win the battle for native allegiance. They have some allies, but some enemies. Relatively few. Most Shawnees don't side with them even. Really? Yeah. And then eventually the British and Tecumseh's forces start to lose battles and have to retreat back.
back into Canada. And so Tecumseh is with the British forces as they retreat. And in October 1813, there's a fatal clash. The Battle of the Thames, which is not our Thames, but your Thames. The Canadian Thames River. So the British are on the run by this point. The US win again at the Battle of the Thames and Tecumseh is killed at that battle.
How exactly is Tecumseh killed? Do we know? Yeah, lots of different tales of how exactly. William Henry Harrison goes on to claim the battle as part of his campaigning when he runs for president eventually. Actually, his campaign slogan is tip a canoe and Tyler too. Tyler is his vice presidential running mate.
But Tippecanoe is the battle against Prophetstown that we talked about earlier. I see. That sort of echoes through American political history. It's actually someone different who claims to have personally killed Tecumseh and also builds his own sort of career out of that. But with the death of Tecumseh, the death of Prophetstown, the death of that idea of a unified nation of nations that dies with both of them. That's right. And the eventual end of the War of 1812. In the
The treaty that ends the War of 1812, the treaty leaves most things exactly the way they were before the war began. But the British do exact out of the United States a commitment to basically leave Native nations in
the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes region alone. And perhaps even there's a hint in there that there will be a separate nation, actual sovereign place between Canada and the United States there that's controlled and ruled by native nations. That's not the way it goes down, people. Join us after the break. Keep those hankies close.
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That's survey.empirepoduk.com, survey.empirepoduk.com. Welcome back. So just before we went to break, we were talking about this end of Prophetstown, the fall at Kamsa, and this idea that Native American tribes will be left alone in the Ohio Valley and they'll be untroubled.
But then two names to present to you, Andrew and Jackson. Andrew Jackson has very different ideas. First of all, can you give us a pen portrait of Jackson? What was he like? Where did he come from? What's his Marvel origin story? He comes out of the American Revolution. He's a teenager during the American Revolution. So he's got this story of coming of age during the founding of the United States.
He's born in either North Carolina or South Carolina. So in one of the original states. In poverty, huh? In poverty, right. He gets a law degree and moves to Tennessee. So Tennessee is across the Appalachian Mountains from North Carolina. It's one of the new territories that will become a state the next generation after the revolution. He becomes a lawyer, but he's also puts his money into a
plantation he's a slave holder he has a hundred slaves he's a serious slave kind of founding father trajectory for this guy but also he's got a virulent anti-British strand because I mean it's said that his mother and his brother are killed during the battle for independence and he's tough and quite wild and quite aggressive red hair and
angry as angry as his hair is red oh it's a bad sign my wife has got a little of that your wife is a saint your wife is a saint she's a pre-Raphaelite beauty and a saint do not go there at all team olive
Team Olive. Anyway, yes, he's come from shaky beginnings, but now has set himself up as quite the squire, shall we say. I think he even uses that word. And he cultivates this reputation as being slightly crazy, too, and uses that to his political advantage. He's elected senator from Tennessee once it's a state and then runs for president. Loses in 1824 and wins in 1828.
becoming the first U.S. president. He's not born west of the Appalachians, but he represents Tennessee. So he's the first to be elected president from west of the Appalachian Mountains. He doesn't like the native tribes at all. He uses the word savage very liberally, doesn't he? That's right. He's also, we didn't even mention his military career after the revolution. He's a military man as well. He's a general and he fights alongside
side. He fights with Cherokee allies. He fights with Muscogee Creek allies. But never from that does he gain any belief that native nations should exist as nations. He completely believes that their land should be part of the United States. Yeah, yeah. So he's fighting shoulder to shoulder with Cherokee. And then he's got his eye coveting their land the whole time and the Muscogee as well.
Right, so that's all during the War of 1812. But immediately afterwards, he's down in Muskogee country trying to get their land. And when you say trying to get their land, is it with sort of tiny militia armies who are forcing people off the land or forcing them to sign things over? How? Yeah, so he's operating.
So he's assigned to negotiate the treaty, the new treaty with the Muscogee. So the Muscogee Creek Nation has been divided during the War of 1812.
So there's a treaty that's supposed to be between the United States and the part of the Muscogees that were fighting against the United States. In the treaty language, though, he gets the Muscogees to sign away a huge swath of land that actually is clearly in the Cherokee Nation. And the Cherokees were allies of the United States in the war. So basically, it's like giving away your next door neighbor's house. Right.
Right. So those next door neighbors, the Cherokee leaders go, those Cherokees send diplomats up to Washington, D.C. to point out that surely this has been a mistake in the language of this territory to include Cherokee land. And actually, the president does concede, yeah, that doesn't seem right. And then they sort of rewrite, basically rewrite the treaty. And then Jackson starts trying other methods. He goes around and tries to get individual Cherokees to sign a treaty giving that land to the United States. And that gets
called foul on that again with Native Americans in Florida he's even more just sort of just bald violence against them because they're living in Spanish territory and so he gets himself involved in warfare with both Native nations and the Spanish in Florida that the United States is not at war with but he ends up getting territory for the United States out of that illegally and although
That is before he's elected president. I was just going to say that's with limited power. Right. So when he is elected president, what's the year of his elected? He's elected as president. He's elected 1828. It takes him but two years to pass one of the most controversial pieces of American legislation in the history of America. And that would be the 1830 Indian Removal Act.
three words that are such simple words and an ocean of blood is unleashed. Tell us first of all, what does the Indian Removal Act want to do? One of the things that's important to realize is that through colonial histories, British and other colonial powers history and early United States history, it's always assumed that native nations, native tribes are sovereign and that if you want to make any agreement with them, it is a treaty because that's what you do with another nation.
And so even in the Indian Removal Act, there is the provision that the United States needs to make treaties with native nations to remove them. But what the Indian Removal Act says is that the federal government, the US government will make every effort possible to move any native nations that are east of the Mississippi, west of the Mississippi. When you say remove, what does that mean? Is that what we would call ethnic cleansing?
Right. Yeah, it is. I mean, within that law, it says they have to agree to a treaty to do it. So to put it in that sort of the neutral language of the law, it would be the Cherokee Nation will agree to take all of their people and move somewhere else. So evacuate their homeland and get an equal amount of land somewhere else.
In reality, it's not nearly that clean. No native nation agrees in any sort of non-coerced way and in most cases, a violent way. And then they are the people, even if their leaders have signed a treaty, the people of these nations haven't agreed. But also the Cherokee Nation, let's talk about the Cherokee Nation for a minute, because they are also a sophisticated country.
group of people. They've developed a judicial system. They have a two-house legislature, which is exactly what the Americans have, led by a man called John Ross. I mean, tell us about John Ross. I mean, he sounds like a character from Dallas from yesteryear. So he's not just Cherokee because you don't get a name like John Ross, which is a very good Scottish name.
from being just Cherokee. What's his story? There have been lots of Scottish traders who have been in Cherokee country and other parts of the southeast for a while. So there are a lot of last names that are Scottish in that region. But he's also fully Cherokee. So the Cherokees are matrilineal. So there's a generation of these men who have some British, usually Scottish ancestry, but also
have not only Cherokee ancestry, but have Cherokee clans that they've inherited through their mother. They speak Cherokee themselves, and they have Cherokee names as well as their British names. This is so interesting because a direct contemporary of his, we're talking now with mid-1820s, at this point in India, is James Skinner.
who is a Rajput mother, but a Scottish mercenary father. And he's caught in exactly the same bind. He says that his ethnicity was like a two-edged sword made both ways to cut against me. But Skinner goes British, whereas... He starts off Maratha, though. Yeah, but this guy stays Cherokee.
beginning, middle and end. He doesn't waver. But it's the same dilemma in a sense. Sure, sure, sure, sure. Yeah, right. And John Ross fully believes that the Cherokee nation is a modern nation. It's a 19th century nation that you don't stop being Cherokee by having a judicial system, for example. It's just continuing to be Cherokee. And in fact, that many of these things are put in place both because people like John Ross think they're the right thing to do for a modern government and because they help
with the effort, the Cherokee effort to get the United States to recognize them as a nation and a neighboring nation, not somebody to be subsumed in the United States. I'm looking at a picture of him just now, and he has very much that mixed ethnicity in his face, but his clothes...
Very Western. He's wearing a bow tie. He's wearing a cravat and a kind of nice high collar. He's looking very smart in this picture. Right. And that picture was probably made in Washington, D.C., when he was on a diplomatic mission to the United States and would wear those clothes. Right. He is well educated in both English U.S. ways and in Cherokee ways.
That's interesting. So how many people like John Ross are there with mixed ethnicity who are able to go backwards and forwards and who are living in both worlds? And who are fighting for the native nations as well. Yeah. So within the Cherokees, there's a whole generation of these young people, some of whom are educated in, you know, they leave the Cherokee Nation to be educated in the United States.
and then go back home to be leaders who can be diplomat, who can work between both worlds on purpose. You know, as Anita says, for the purposes of the Cherokee Nation. Most Cherokees are not like that at this point, right? It's still just a small group of people compared to the bulk of the Cherokee population. Another parallel to him would be Bolivar, presumably, who is roughly this period and who is also mixed race. And clearly, you know, tries to work for his own nation, his own people and multiple people. And in his case, succeeds.
He gets rid of the Spanish. In John Ross, you've got somebody who is educated enough, loyal enough, and motivated enough to call and forgive the French, but bullshit, when Andrew Jackson starts saying, look, this removal is an act of benevolence.
And I think one of the phrases is, you know, surrounded by the whites with their arts of civilization, which by destroying the resources of the savage, doom him to weakness and decay, humanity and national honor demand that every effort should be made to avert so greater calamity. We are here to avert your calamity. We are taking your house and burning your shed and chasing your dog into the forest and
to avoid your calamity. And John Ross is exactly the kind of person who's well-read enough and well-versed enough to fighting in court to say, no, I'm sorry, what? And that's exactly right. They found the newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, to make this point over and over. One of the editorials in the Cherokee Phoenix says, I don't know of a single Cherokee family that makes its living from hunting. Because one of these arguments is like, you can't hunt anymore, right? What century are you living in? We're in the 19th.
century. So tell me, who's reading the Cherokee Phoenix? Is there a whole urban population of literate Cherokees sitting there, you know, going out to the newsagent on a Friday night? I mean, yes, kind of so. So the Cherokee Phoenix is printed in English and in the Cherokee syllabary. So by this point in the very early 19th century, a Cherokee man named Sequoia and his daughter invent a, it's basically an alphabet, it's called a syllabary because each character stands for a syllable. It represents a
syllable rather than just one sound, but it's like an alphabet. And they can then write down the Cherokee language in syllable. They can write the Cherokee language. It's very well designed. And apparently they say a very easy for somebody who already speaks Cherokee to learn to use. And so by this point, by now,
By the 1830s, the literacy rate in the Cherokee Nation is over 90%. Over 90% of Cherokees can read Cherokee, which is much higher than the literacy rate in the U.S. population at this point. Are there any American readers of the Cherokee Phoenix who would say, you know, you're right? Yeah. And so the English language, the parts of the Cherokee Phoenix that are written in English are,
mostly directed at those readers, at white American leaders and reformers and all kinds of people who are against Indian removal. So the Indian Removal Act, we talked about how it's controversial, including it is controversial at the time. It does not pass easily through the U.S. Congress. There are many elected officials who are against it. There are some prominent U.S. senators who speak on the floor of the U.S. Senate against it as a travesty and point out the hypocrisy we've been talking about in Indian removal.
And so I think it's easy to imagine Native American history as being the loss, as being inevitable. But the Cherokees, Cherokee leaders at the time really believed that there are these efforts they're doing in the U.S. courts for U.S. public opinion that may change the tide. They are, for one thing,
really hoping that Andrew Jackson loses his re-election bid, which is totally possible. You know, anybody can win an election. He's running against Henry Clay. Cherokees really hope Henry Clay will win and will shift policy back away from Indian removal. So it's really up in the air. It could go either way, but it goes Jackson's way. It doesn't go their way. Andrew Jackson is again reinstalled in the White House. And so now the Trail of Tears begins, which is this rather poetic story
term that's given to something that is an utter disaster and in many cases a death march. Could you talk us through what happens? I mean, I sort of said an ocean of blood and it is a lot of people. Talk us through this. So the Cherokees actually win a US Supreme Court case. The US Supreme Court says the laws of Georgia have no force in the Cherokee Nation, recognizes some
at least some sovereignty by the Cherokee Nation. But Jackson ignores the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, goes ahead with sending the military in to the Cherokees, literally rounds up Cherokee people, puts them in a stockade. I mean, I saw a figure of about 125,000 people
It's on the scale of the Armenian death marches a century later. Where are they told they have to go and how long have they got to get there? Yeah, so the lands that they're told they have to exchange for their homeland are in what's now Oklahoma. It's west of the Mississippi River. It's a long way away. It's more than a thousand miles away. There are various routes that they take. Some go at least part of the way by river. Much of it is walking though.
With whatever they can carry and whatever they can get on cards. That's right. So they have to leave, you know, they leave not only their land property behind, they leave the property that they can't take with them, they leave behind. They pile what they can into wagons. Now, I should say some Cherokees at this point own human beings, are slaveholders. They take that human property with them. Yeah.
Yeah. So in a travesty upon a travesty, they're enslaved people who are forced on the Trail of Tears. Yeah, but as late as the 1840s. I don't know why I thought that wouldn't be happening. Right. Right. Until the Civil War, through the Civil War. Right. Right. And still, it's a minority of Cherokee people who own slaves, but they do. It's still pretty. Can I just have a moment to go bleh? Okay, but bleh.
I mean, on figures, the things that I've been looking at, 125,000 people. That's how many live east of the Mississippi. But by the 1840s, there were only 30,000. What is the mechanism by which those that do remain, remain? Is it just that the officials don't get around to moving them or have they negotiated their right to remain intermarried? Do reservations exist?
Yeah, they do. They do. The reservations exist from the 1600s in Virginia. So reservations are very early in some places. And so
So there are large numbers, not relative to those who are forced to move, but there are large numbers of Native people who remain in the East. And they do so by a variety of measures. So some have managed to get individual land ownership title. So state courts have to recognize. So, for example, the Catawbas of South Carolina, they get their land.
what is actually communal national land put in the names of individuals. And so the South Carolina courts just can't kick those people off that land because they have it in land title. It would throw everybody's land title. But three quarters are kicked out. Yeah, so relatively not that many. And then so there's a group of Cherokees, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. They stay in...
Western North Carolina, they are able to put some land title in some of their names, but also in some of the names of some white neighbors. And then there are also ways of just sort of hiding, you know, as you suggested, there are ancestors of the Lumbees, for example, in North Carolina, right near the coast.
They just, they're native communities that are settled, that sort of retreat to swampy land, land that isn't useful for plantations and just kind of hide out there. I mean, their white neighbors know they're there, but they don't seem threatening and they aren't on land that white populations particularly want. But Kathleen, these are horrific numbers and horrific stories. Can you call it a genocide?
Yes, I think so. I mean, there are lots of debates about when and whether to use the word genocide, but the era of Indian removal seems very clear. It is a purposeful effort by the United States to get rid of them. It's certainly ethnic cleansing to separate the sort of white population from the native population. And many, many thousands of people die.
on the way west. Yeah, it's a genocide. Is it the Andrew Jackson portrait that hung in the White House in the Trump presidency? Is that what kicked up a storm? Am I remembering that right? That's exactly right. Right, right. Yeah, it's not there right now. Yeah, yeah. Jackson's a very controversial figure in the United States, as he was in his own day. The legacy of this is something that Claudio Sont looks at in his book, Unworthy Republic.
And I just read this. He says, the US-sponsored expulsion also occupied the minds of the Russian officers in the Caucasus in the 1840s. Circassians are just like your American Indians, the regional governor reportedly told one American visitor shortly before Russia deported half a million people.
Good God. Army.
Mississippi. Wow. So those are three horrific examples of those who learn genocide and ethnic cleansing from Andrew Jackson's United States. Look, pleasure is not the right word, but it's been illuminating, Kathleen. Thank you so much for holding our hands and taking us through this. Kathleen Duval's excellent, and I really mean excellent, eye-opening book is called Native Nations, a Millennium in North America. Brand new also, is it? Brand spanking new.
I've got the big hardback. It's very shiny. Beautifully written, Kathleen. We should say also accessible. If anyone wants a single volume on this, it's highly, highly accessible and totally recommended by both Anita and I. Yeah, absolutely. Look, next week, the baton is passed from east to west of the Mississippi, where these Indian nations, these tribes are meant to have a life of peace and security, according to the treaties that they have been signing or forced to sign.
Is this a happily ever after? No, sadly not. It might not be. Join us when we talk to Katie Hickman about some really extraordinary stories. Anyway, until the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnott. And goodbye from me, William Durham.
And there you have it. Dr Al Bamawe is not responsible for the death of Lord Harmsen. British Podcast Award nominee for best new podcast. We simply must ask ourselves who planted the idea in Lord Harmsen's head that he was stung by a bee.
Who was in the hospital garden that very morning to do so and who was sleeping with his wife? British Podcast Award nominee for Best Fiction. Dr Sir Michael Winstanley. British Podcast Award nominee for the Listener's Choice Award. Officers, take Dr Sir Michael away. Show him to his cell.
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