Interpretation

 

       After reading through both of my primary sources having to do with John Ross and his opposition to Indian removal, I felt like I had a pretty clear interpretation of what Ross was trying to do and the type of person he was.  I also felt like I understood what was going on between the government and the Indians.  My initial interpretation was to think of John Ross as a hero who was sticking up to the United States government for his people, the Cherokee.  In his speech he talked about how many other Indian groups were relocating to the west like the government told them to do, but a majority of the Cherokee people were staying in their homeland and it was a pretty lonely feeling.  He was making a point to let the government know that he wasn't going anywhere and that he would not go down without a fight.  The protest that Ross made to Congress had a lot of the same meaning as the speech.  He was arguing that the treaties between the Cherokees and the government were not legitimate and had been obtained by fraud.  This also showed me that he was willing to fight for his people and work hard on their behalf.  His intentions seemed genuine, and his effort to fight Indian removal seemed very noble.  My interpretation of the primary sources is that Ross was standing up to the government for bullying the Cherokee and the rest of the Indian groups.  I also thought of John Ross as a hero.


 My interpretation was challenged,    however, by the article I read that involved John Ross and his connection to the Cherokee people.  From my point of view, the article made John Ross out to be somewhat of a dishonest man.  The article claimed that Ross would use old myths about Cherokee people to help fight colonialsism.  While the primary sources did not talk specifically about how Ross went about fighting colonialism, this article opened my eyes a little more to the fact that I can not just assume Ross is a true hero. This might be a stretch, but the story of Robin Hood kind of came to mind.  Ross could have been dushonest to the government, but was doing it for the cause of helping the Cherokee people.  It correlates with Robin Hood who obviously stole from the rich and gave it to the poor.  The article did not necessarily insinuate that Ross was doing it for selfish reasons, so that is the interpretation I had after reading the article through a different lens.

       The primary sources I have read do not elude to the fact that John Ross was a sneaky man, and no evidence is in the speech and protest that he was standing up to fight colonialism for selfish reasons only.  Obivously, since they are both spoken sources from Ross himself, they won't be anything negative about him.  However, I still believe that my original interpretation of Ross as a good leader and hero is more accurate of the true story, regardless of what the article describes.  The protest Ross made against the government that the treaty was illegitimate makes a lot of sense to me because I can't see the Indians making a deal that would require them to leave their homeland.  I don't believe that the Indians would be at a peace with that settlement.  The accusation that the government obtained this treaty by fraud makes sense to me.  Another reason I believe Ross is genuine in his protest is because many Cherokees also protested the treaty with him.  It was believed that almost 15 thousand people from the tribe protested it.  With John Ross leading this protest, my interpretation of him being a great leader and hero appears to be on target after reading both of my primary sources and reading the article as a secondary source through a different lens.  All of the sources are important and have added to my knowledge, but I am confident in my original interpretation that John Ross was a genuine leader for the Cherokee people and Indians as a whole.

Investigation

I really enjoyed the speech and protest of John Ross, who was a Cherokee leader in the 1800's, a time in which Native Americans were being forced off of their homeland in the United States and pushed west.  John Ross stood up to the government, however, and fought against this Indian removal policy.  I gained some respect for him by the way he "went to bat" for his people, something a true leader does.  I could not obtain all of my information about this situation and John Ross just with these two primary sources, so I of course had several questions after reading them.  First of all, and this might be a dumb and ignorant question, I did not picture John Ross looking the way he did in the picture.  He was a white man, and I expected him to look more like my interpretation of an Indian.  I wondered if he grew up as a Cherokee, or was just moved into a leadership position after he got older?  Another question I had involved the Native Americans that stayed put even after they were told to head west.  In his speech he talks about a large base of Cherokees still staying in their homeland.  I am curious to find out how those Cherokees coexisted with the Europeans and where they stayed?  My third question involves his protest.  Where did he get his evidence that the treaties that justified Indian Removal were gathered and obtained by fraud?  These questions made it obvious to me that I still have a lot to learn about the topic/primary source and that I do not have a ton of background and previous knowledge on it.

As far as the speech and protest by John Ross go, I do not know anything about them in particular, but can relate and understand to the context and subject.  When Europeans kept immigrating to the United States, the hunger for more territory kept getting stronger.  The settlers forced the Indians to move off of their homeland and pushed them west.  I knew that there was some resistance by the Indians, but was not sure how much.  John Ross is an example of some resistance, and I am excited to learn more about his role in opposing Indian removal.

In order to get more information about John Ross and his role, I researched other secondary sources.  One source I found, which is cited below and taken from The Journal of American History, looks at John Ross and Indian removal in a few different angles.  This article made it out to be that Ross was pretty strategic, and a little sly as well.  Ross was trying to fight colonialism, so he wanted to learn more about Cherokee history in order to preserve it.  Ross studied ancient Cherokee stories, and found a lot of historical information, that had more than likely been tainted as the years went by.  He used them anyway, and these myths were used to fight colonialism.  A lot of people questioned the authenticity of the stories, because many believed that only the Cherokees of hundreds of years ago knew some of the stories Ross was sharing and passing on as true.  Ross was somewhat criticized  for being only 1/8 Cherokee, which answers a question I had earlier in the investigation.  In the primary sources, I was looking at John Ross through the lens of a hero, but in this article, I view him more as tricky and strategic.  The different viewpoints of the articles are very intriguing and insightful.

Telling Stories: The Political Uses of Myth and History in the Cherokee and Creek Nations

Claudio Saunt

The Journal of American History
Vol. 93, No. 3 (Dec., 2006), pp. 673-697

Published by: Organization of American Historians

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4486409

Pre-Investigation

       The two primary sources I am investigating both involve John Ross and the topic of resistance to Indian removal.  The first is a speech he makes in the Supreme Court, and the second is a protest that he makes in Congress regarding the issue.  Ross was a leading opponent of Indian removal.



      The speech seems to be about the Indian frusteration with the white people coming over to America and forcing them to move out of their homeland.  The Indians felt like they could not live as distinct communities within the rest of America because of the way they were treated by white people.  The protest seems to be about the fact that treaties that allowed and made  Indian, in this case Cherokee, removal right had been recieved illegally and by fraud.

       Both of these primary sources were obviously written by John Ross, as he created and presented the speech and protest to the Supreme Court and Congress, respectively.  It is possible and more than likely that many other people have recoreded these two sources, but John Ross wrote the original primary sources.  His motivation for writing these was to express his frusteration on behalf of the Cherokee Indians, and Indians in general, stating that they were being treated both poorly and unfairly.  He was a leader, so he did the best he could to speak out on his peoples' behalves and to support them the best he could.  He was fighting for them and did his best to stand up against what he felt was wrong.  Defense for Indians was his prime motivation for creating these two works.





       The context of these primary sources seems to obviously be during times of negative relations between the white people and the Indians.  The Indians were being forced out of their lands by white settlers and either had to leave and move farther west, or adapt to the customs of the whites who settled in their land.  The Indians had made great advances in their society, but were being forced to give that all up and act like savages again.  The justifications the white people and the government were giving for Indian removal were not legitimate according to Ross, which created the need for his protest.

Primary source

The primary sources I will be using are the speech and protest by John Ross, both on the topic of Indian Removal Resistance.

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/learning_history/indian_removal/resistance.cfm