Chief John Ross and the Legacy of Art
Emery Benson & Jennifer Crutchfield with contributions from 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.
Jennifer Crutchfield, National Park Partners
Chief John Ross and the Legacy of Art - Part I
In 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, which included furthering his goal to remove all Cherokee people to lands west of the Mississippi and opening the Cherokee lands for development which then still represented a country within a country.’ Over the course of eight years, a majority of the roughly 16,00 Cherokees were routed from their homes, culminating in thousands marched by General Winfield Scott’s troops to new lands under harsh, often deadly, conditions.
Cherokee removal is a tale of factions, assassinations, broken trust, and the immutable tension between pragmatism and idealism. Opposition to removal among the Cherokee Nation was fierce and legislators and politicians were equally passionate in their fight against the legislation.
Portrait of Chief John Ross, courtesy of the Smithsonian Institute
The story of Indian Removal and the Trail of Tears can be interpreted from an unusual source, a unique portrait of John Ross, 1790 - 1866, Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. Hanging in the Smithsonian Institute, this portrait spurred questions and research that led to correspondence with the Smithsonian, inspiring a better understanding of Cherokee factions during the 1830s, and the little-known story of one U.S. politician’s attempt to preserve a record of the Indian nations he recognized were on the verge of being removed from their ancestral homes.
This portrait appears normal at first glance, one in a long series, though a careful observer might notice a few curious details. Chief John Ross holds a document called Protest and Memorial of the Cherokee Nation, dated September 1836. Additionally, the portrait’s description on the Smithsonian website attributes it to Alfred Hoffy, an artist contracted to copy Charles Bird King’s original painting. Who is Alfred Hoffy? Charles King? To figure out the Ross portrait’s artist, and, equally as important, who commissioned it, we looked to the Smithsonian, the Thomas L. McKenney legacy, and McKenney and James Hall's History of the Indian Tribes of North America, a publication in which the portraits are said to have appeared.
Thomas McKenney served as the U.S. Superintendent of Indian Trade, which later became the Bureau of Indian Affairs from 1824 to 1830 and is identified as having commissioned Charles King to paint portraits of leaders of many Indian delegationswhen they visited Washington. McKenney apparently recognized that the Native way of life was under threat and wished to preserve a record of indigenous life and culture.
McKenney believed that Indians should remain on their lands but be firmly assimilated into the White Anglo-American culture, contrary to President Jackson’s assertion that Indians must be removed west of the Mississippi River. Charles King ultimately painted 143 portraits of various Indian leaders, including John Ross. In 1830, McKenney was removed from his position in the government, likely the result of disagreements with President Jackson. McKenney had displayed the portraits in the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices in anticipation of their inclusion in a book documenting the Indian nations of North America, an idea that ultimately became the tri-volume work, History of the Indian Tribes of North America. With McKenney no longer working for the government, he had to figure out a new method to continue his work.
Tune in next week for the second installment in this exploration of Chattanooga history!
Chief John Ross and the Legacy of Art - Part II
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.
