Chief John Ross and the Legacy of Art - Part II
Emery Benson with contributions from Jennifer Crutchfield and Dr. Vicki Rozema
Our team at National Park Partners works to champion the conservation of the natural, historic, and cultural resources of our National Parks, engaging current and future generations in preserving and promoting the stories of these national treasures. As a small team, NPP is grateful for a partnership with the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga History Department, that allows student interns to join us in this important work. This year Emery Benson, a history major and rising Junior from Maryville, Tennessee, worked with our team and, in this assignment, explored the Trail of Tears through this portrait of Chief John Ross. Join Emery for this three-part blog series as he introduces us to conversations and insights sparked by an almost 200-year-old work of art. The National Park Service Trail of Tears National Historic Trail engages all to remember and commemorate the survival of the Cherokee people, forcefully removed from their homelands in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee to live in Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. With an interactive map, digital resources, photo galleries, trip-planning resources, travel itineraries and more, the NPS supports online experiences as well as providing on-site interpretive elements, Ranger experiences and more. This access ensures that the memory of the tragedy is honored while future generations learn and are inspired to connect history, place, and future.
During the last segment, our National Park Partners intern Emery introduced readers to the Trail of Tears through research and interpretation related to a famous portrait commissioned of Chief John Ross. Join us now as we learn more about how this portrait illuminates a dark time in our nation’s history, offers insight into a treaty that changed the country and a battle between the President and Supreme Court.
Jennifer Crutchfield, National Park Partners
Despite Thomas McKenney’s firing by President Jackson, he remained committed to preserving a record of Indigenous Nations. Absent any technology to reproduce the paintings he had commissioned, McKenney had to copy those that had been displayed, hiring the prominent artist Henry Inman to copy the paintings. In 1858 the paintings were moved to the Smithsonian Institution, where nearly all of them burned in a tragic 1865 fire due to a faulty stove.
The portrait of Cherokee Chief John Ross that we learn from today is the result of Inman’s work. Inman’s copies aren’t the end of the portrait’s tale, though, as McKenney still worked to publish the proposed book, teaming up with attorney James Hall. They commissioned lithographic copies of the portraits for publication, explaining how the Ross portrait is attributed to both Charles King, the original portraitist, and Alfred Hoffy, who made the lithographic copy the Smithsonian treasures today.
Having determined the provenance of the portrait and traced some of the story behind it, an examination of the document John Ross is holding, titled Protest and Memorial of the Cherokee Nation and dated September 1836 creates more questions. What happened in 1836? What was this primary source document? Did contemporaries understand why it was included in the painting? Why was it important enough to be a part of this portrait representing the leader of the Cherokee Nation? How does this document connect the Indian Removal Act of 1830, granting President Jackson authority to exchange lands West of the Mississippi for the Cherokee surrender of eastern lands to the United States and the 1835 Treaty of New Echota?
The Indian Removal Act provided authorization for President Jackson to resettle the Cherokees, but the Supreme Court had already established that the Cherokee’s right to their land was totally legal and they could not be forced to leave. President Jackson, nevertheless, worked to somehow legitimize his aims and a factional split within the Cherokee Nation provided an opportunity US leaders manipulated to achieve Removal. Protest and Memorial was the written response, by a majority of Cherokees, to the 1835 Treaty of New Echota, a disputed treaty document signed by 21 Cherokee leaders under Major Ridge at a meeting with between two and three hundred Cherokees in attendance. Ridge was a chief and warrior who fought with American troops during the War of 1812 and the Creek War of 1813-14, earning the rank of Major, fighting alongside then-General Andrew Jackson and future Principal Chief John Ross. In 1835, Ridge’s faction signed the Treaty of New Echota, pledging to cede Cherokee land to the United States government in exchange for $5 million and land West of the Mississippi in what was then known as “Indian Territory,” much of modern Oklahoma.
Major Ridge, however, can’t be clearly painted a traitor to his people as nothing is black and white in this tragic story. Ridge’s motivations for legislative surrender could have been rooted in many factors, including the response to his son and nephew’s marriages to women from Cornwall, and as writer and professor Dr. Vicki Rozema puts it, “the extension of oppressive GA laws over the Cherokee Nation and his realization that GA did not acknowledge the Cherokee Nation’s right to exist even though the Supreme Court legally acknowledged their sovereignty. Major Ridge was a realist and believed it was more realistic for the Cherokees to remain together as a nation and to keep some of their language and their culture if they moved.” Ridge is said to have uttered that he signed his death warrant alongside the treaty, and indeed in 1839 embittered Cherokee assassinated Major Ridge in what would become Oklahoma.
Tune in next time for the conclusion to this series about Chattanooga, Chief John Ross, Major Ridge and how art can open doors to history.