Leaves That Talk...

Another little known chapter from our history...

--ryan


Hearing From the Talking Leaves

Posted on Sun, Nov. 07, 2004

By David House
Star-Telegram Staff Writer


If 18th-century Cherokee tradition ruled the United States, President Bush would have just been elected as the "red" chief, because the nation is at war.

Peacetime would have required a "white" chief with different skills.

Either way, consensus would have ended debate. Dissenters would either hush or leave. Cherokees valued solidarity and harmony, not turmoil.

That's a tiny piece of the vast Native American heritage that's honored during November -- American Indian Heritage Month, an event that the Star-Telegram will celebrate for the first time.

Executive Editor Jim Witt explained that "we view one of our primary jobs at the newspaper as education. Although we write about different ethnic groups and their activities year-round, we think it's positive to focus even more attention on them during the months designated as 'heritage' months. We've done that for many years for African-American, Hispanic and Asian-American people, and we're glad now to add Native Americans to that list."

This month, coverage of local Native Americans and issues will reach into a present and future that may surprise those for whom Indians are people from and stories in history books.

Any look at Native American heritage must include newspapering.

The first bilingual newspaper in the Western Hemisphere was launched by the General Council of the Cherokee Nation on Feb. 28, 1828, in their capital of New Echota, Ga.

For years, the Cherokee, or Tsa-La-Gi, had been adapting to and learning about the practices of "whites." They based a new structure of tribal government on Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. They were familiar with the U.S. Constitution, the First Amendment and the power of "talking leaves," as they called printed or written pages.

Using 85 characters of the 86-character syllabary invented by the Cherokee visionary Sequoyah, the weekly Phoenix was published in English and Tsalagi, the Cherokee language.

The aim was to provide a voice and unity for all Cherokees, including those who had already left their ancestral homelands in the Southeast for lands in Arkansas, Texas, Mexico and elsewhere.

There was urgency in the Phoenix's mission. Perhaps no problem will invoke the forces of journalism quicker than abusive government, and that's what called forth the Phoenix.

Federal expansion plans relied on removal of all Indians east of the Mississippi River. By the late 1820s, federal authorities and state officials in Georgia were fine-tuning the framework for such a "relocation."

For years, the Cherokees had put heroic effort into demonstrating that coexistence was possible and mutually beneficial. They believed that fairness and decency could prevail -- a belief that died in the jaws of unabashed racism, greed and cruelty.

The story is too huge to tell here. Suffice it to say that because of the situation, the Cherokees had a relatively free press until the Phoenix folded on May 31, 1834, after funds ran out because the federal government quit paying for use of Cherokee land, violating an 1804 treaty.

The Phoenix had fought bravely, ignoring threats and harassment to report relocation-related developments and expose horrors committed by a violent militia, the Georgia Guard. The news columns also carried national and international news, hymns, essays and scripture.

The first editor was a formally educated Cherokee who took the name Elias Boudinot in honor of the elderly president of the American Bible Society.

Boudinot enjoyed higher education at a private Christian school in Cornwall, Conn. He was an exceptional student who fought the view that Indians were savages. He believed that white society would accept Indians groomed in "the arts of civilization."

Boudinot fell in love with a physician's daughter, Harriet Gold. They became engaged. Cornwall residents found out and burned the interracial couple in effigy.

But he and Harriet married in 1826 and moved to Cherokee country. Those flames in Cornwall helped to shape Boudinot's view that self-determined, civilized life was the Indians' best hope for realizing their potential.

In his mind, relocation to lands west of the Mississippi was an essential part of that process.

Such a view troubled the tradition-minded council and most Cherokees. They did not want to lose their homes and move west, a direction they associated with death. Ultimately, Boudinot's view led to his resignation in August 1832.

He and a group of like-minded Cherokees committed a capital offense under Cherokee law when, without authority, they signed the New Echota Treaty of 1835 that took Cherokee homelands and led to the "Trail of Tears" -- the forced removal of 17,000 Cherokees to Indian Territory during which about 4,000 died.

Council loyalists tracked down the "Treaty Party" members and executed them, including Boudinot.

However, like the mythological phoenix and the Cherokees' gift for surviving, the Cherokee Advocate arose in 1844 as the first Native American newspaper in Indian Territory.

These days, the monthly Cherokee Phoenix thrives in Tahlequah, Okla., as the prosperous Cherokee Nation's tribal newspaper. Lively and unpretentious, the Phoenix is also accessible via the nation's Web site, www.cherokee.org.

The Phoenix arcs through time from log cabin to cyberspace, always on the wings of Native American spirit -- and always as a gift of our Native American heritage.
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David A. House, a Cherokee descendant, is the Star-Telegram's reader advocate. (817) 390-7692 dhouse@star-telegram.com