An American Betrayal: Cherokee Patriots and the Trail of Tears

Daniel Blake Smith

Nov 2011 · Sold by Henry Holt and Company

About this ebook

The fierce battle over identity and patriotism within Cherokee culture that took place in the years surrounding the Trail of Tears

Though the tragedy of the Trail of Tears is widely recognized today, the pervasive effects of the tribe's uprooting have never been examined in detail. Despite the Cherokees' efforts to assimilate with the dominant white culture—running their own newspaper, ratifying a constitution based on that of the United States—they were never able to integrate fully with white men in the New World.

In An American Betrayal, Daniel Blake Smith's vivid prose brings to life a host of memorable characters: the veteran Indian-fighter Andrew Jackson, who adopted a young Indian boy into his home; Chief John Ross, only one-eighth Cherokee, who commanded the loyalty of most Cherokees because of his relentless effort to remain on their native soil; most dramatically, the dissenters in Cherokee country—especially Elias Boudinot and John Ridge, gifted young men who were educated in a New England academy but whose marriages to local white girls erupted in racial epithets, effigy burnings, and the closing of the school.
Smith, an award-winning historian, offers an eye-opening view of why neither assimilation nor Cherokee independence could succeed in Jacksonian America.

Ratings and reviews

Q. What did you think of this historical episode? A. It was truly, as the subtitle hints, a sad tale. And as the title says, it was a betrayal of the Cherokees by people in power at that time, especially Andrew Jackson. I felt ashamed myself, though I am fairly sure my progenitors were not Americans at that time. Q. So Daniel gets his points across? A. Yes. He quotes primary sources almost exclusively, which may be difficult for some readers, since people in the 1830s did not talk or write as we do now. But it adds authenticity. He really does very little analysis himself, but he does conclude that the Treaty Signers were doing the best they could in their own way. He indicates that many historians consider these Treat Signers as traitors to the Cherokee Nation. Q. So the book aroused in you a feeling of shame? A. Yes. The story shows clearly how greed overcomes all moral scruples, or simply that might makes right. To me, this is truly a human failing that America stands to repel, and it does so to a certain extent today. But we all know that words and symbols are just that and that the shot callers in America are still mostly greedy people, just as the white Georgians Daniel writes about in this book. However, the Cherokees, the Ross adherents, showed no more morality by preying on the weakest among themselves. They never went after the real culprits. Q. Who were the real culprits? A. The avaricious Georgians, their politicians, and Jackson himself. But the Cherokees had no fire power, so there was no way they could fight white Americans. It is just a sad tale. I do not know much about Native Americans but it is obvious, in this book at least, that they were treated unfairly, lied to, and, as Daniel mentions on behalf of some historians, subject to what we would today call ethnic cleansing. All Americans today bear some of that guilt, whether descendants of those greedy whites or not. Q. That is your opinion, of course. Maybe you are being a bit emotional about it? A. Possibly. The story may arouse such emotions in all readers. Read it and see.

About the author

Daniel Blake Smith is the author of An American Betrayal, The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown, Inside the Great House: Planter Family Life in Eighteenth Century Chesapeake Society, and many articles on early American history. Formerly a professor of colonial American history at the University of Kentucky, Smith now lives in St. Louis where he works as a screenwriter and filmmaker.