We Shall Remain_3 Trail of Tears.pdf

Episode Three: Trail of Tears

Transcript

Slate : The dramatic sequences in this film are based closely on the historical record, both written and oral.

While there are gaps, we have filled in with words and actions consistent with that record.

Slate : Washington, D.C., 1830

Man : Hello gentlemen, I’m quite concerned.

Narrator : He was called Kah-nung-d-cla-geh, “the one who goes on the mountaintop,” or simply, “The

Ridge.” In the long struggle between Indians and Americans, few native leaders clung to the hope of peaceful

coexistence longer. Few others invested more in the professed protections of the American legal system. Few

set more stock in the promises of the American government and its constitution. By 1830, the Ridge had

already struck a series of hard bargains with the United States. In return for the safety and security of the

Cherokee people—and the right to remain on the land of their forefathers—the Ridge had taken pains to shed

the life he had been raised to.

Major Ridge (Wes Studi, in Cherokee) : I am one of the native sons of these wild woods.

Narrator : He had been born in 1771, into a Cherokee Nation that stretched through the Southern

Appalachians, and had come of age in the landscape on which the Cherokee story had been written. The

wings of the Great Buzzard had carved the mountains and the valleys; Uktena, the horned serpent, had made

his frightful marks on the tall rocks; the Creator had set the first man and woman in this very place.

Theda Perdue, historian : Christians had been cast out of their own Garden of Eden, but the Cherokees lived

in their Eden. It’s the land that they believed their ancestors had always inhabited.

Major Ridge (Wes Studi, in Cherokee) : We obtained these lands from the living God above. I would

willingly die to preserve them.

Narrator : In the Ridge’s youth, the Cherokee Nation had been under constant threat. As a young warrior, it

was his duty to keep a wary eye on any encroachment by their near neighbors—the Shawnees, the Creeks,

Choctaws and Chickasaws—and then a new force in the Southeastern mountains: the Americans. The

Cherokees picked the wrong side in the American Revolution and paid dearly. The Ridge watched American

riflemen burn out his own town, one of 50 they destroyed in Cherokee territory. He lashed out; took his first

American scalp at age 17, and fought the United States past the point of hope.

Russell G. Townsend, historic preservationist : For a generation of Cherokees that destruction was all they

knew. They had seen their world kind of evaporate around them.

Narrator : The Cherokee Nation was still on its knees in 1805. Its population had dwindled to 12,000, and it

had lost more than half its land. Even after the Cherokees and other tribes had signed peace treaties with the

United States, The Ridge knew the safety of his people was not a given thing; he understood that the central

conflict still pertained: the United States meant to have what was left of the Cherokee homeland. Ridge meant

to save it. But he knew that this battle with the United States required a nimble and artful new approach.

Preserving the Cherokee Nation meant walking for a time down the new path America was offering.

John Gambold, reverend (Robert Hatch) : Please accept this, Brother Ridge, as a small gift.

Major Ridge (Wes Studi, in Cherokee) : Thank you. Thank you John. After we eat lets enjoy this together.

Theda Perdue, historian : The United States at the end of the American Revolution developed a policy called

civilization. It helped fund missionary organizations to go into the Indian nations, particularly in the south,

and teach Indians how to be Anglo Americans: how to grow wheat instead of corn; how to eat meals at

regular times instead of when they were hungry; how to dress in European clothing; how to speak the English

language; how to pray in church at designated times; how to live the kind of life that Anglo Americans

believed was a civilized life.

Gayle Ross, descendant of Chief John Ross : The promises of the United States Government were that if the

Cherokees, the Creeks, the Choctaws, the Seminoles, the Chickasaws could somehow assimilate ways of

living that were more like their white neighbors that they could be the political and social equal of their white

neighbors. Literally Thomas Jefferson once assured the Indian leaders in a speech that he believed they could

become the equal of white people.

Narrator : “You will unite yourselves with us,” President Jefferson said, “join our great councils and form

one people with us. And we shall all be Americans. You will mix with us by marriage. Your blood will run

within our veins and will spread with us over this great continent.”

Daniel Ross (Jackson Walker, in Cherokee) : Bear. Good Afternoon.

Bear (Anthony Currne Lett, in Cherokee) : I need a part for my gun.

Daniel Ross (Jackson Walker) : John! Flintlock!

Narrator : John Ross, the future Cherokee chief, grew up at the crossroads of an emerging world where white

settlers and Indians were just beginning a strange new dance of accommodation.

Bear (Anthony Currne Lett, in Cherokee) : Thank you!

Narrator : John’s mother Mollie, a member of the Bird clan, had married a Scotsman, Daniel Ross. Ross was

among the growing number of white men who took Cherokee wives, and gained access to land and trade in

the bargain.

Daniel Ross (Jackson Walker) : John.

Gayle Ross, descendant of Chief John Ross : There would have been many

different classes of Cherokee making their way in and out of the store, from the full-blood traditional people

to the wealthier mixed-blood families that were just beginning to establish themselves.

Narrator : The Ross’s spoke English at home; John had English-speaking tutors. But John Ross was a

Cherokee because of his mother’s blood—an accepted member of the Bird clan. He grew up surrounded by

people whose lives ran to traditional Cherokee rhythms. He was proud to have a Cherokee name, “Koo-wees-

koo-wee,” or “mysterious little white bird.”

Daniel Ross (Jackson Walker) : John.

Gayle Ross, descendant of Chief John Ross : There’s a story that’s told about the time when he was five.

And his father had bought a new little suit for him to wear at the time of Green Corn Dance. And his mother

dressed him up in his white man’s suit. And the other children teased him so unmercifully that supposedly he

came back home and insisted on being allowed to change into the everyday clothes of the other Cherokee

children before he would go back out and join the festivities.

Narrator : Cherokee land—all of it—was owned in common by the tribe, but any Cherokee could work and

improve as much land as personal energy and private resources allowed. And The Ridge and his wife,

Susannah, were energetic and resourceful homesteaders; exemplars of “civilization.” As the years went by,

and The Ridge’s farming wealth grew, U.S. agents would occasionally receive optimistic reports from the

Ridge family. Major Ridge, as he was now called, knew what they wanted to hear: “I take pleasure to state

that every head of his household has his house and farm. . . . The poorer class . . . very contentedly perform

the duties of the kitchen. They sew, they weave, they spin, they cook our meals and act well.”

Major Ridge’s hope for the future was a group of educated young men who could build a strong new

Cherokee Nation, reckon U.S. laws and government and outsmart federal negotiators who were after their

land. His greatest hope was his own son. John Ridge was a frail boy; hampered by a disease that occasionally

made it difficult to walk, but the Major recognized his son’s strengths. When the U.S. War Department

offered to pay tuition for John and his cousin, Elias Boudinot, at a missionary school in Connecticut, Major

Ridge grabbed the chance.

Major Ridge (Wes Studi, in Cherokee) : It will be hard for you, but you must conduct yourself well among

the white people. When you finish school and return home you can help us.

Susannah Ridge (Carla-Rae Holland, in Cherokee) : Little one, don’t forget where you grew up. Learn a

different way, but don’t forget. Goodbye. We will see each other again.

Elias Boudinot (Will Finley) : So I read your essay....

Narrator : John Ridge grew to manhood among white Christian educators, absorbing the lessons of the bible

and the U.S. Constitution alike. Even 900 miles away from Cherokee Territory, he never betrayed a hint of

pain at his separation from home and family.

Jace Weaver, writer : Even from his earliest school days, John Ridge is described by his teachers as being

cold, a little bit aloof, as being haughty. They compare him to his cousin, Buck, who became Elias Boudinot,

who was much friendlier, much more congenial, but not as good a student. John Ridge was brilliant.

Narrator : The faculty selected John Ridge, out of all the Indian students at Cornwall, to prepare an essay for

President James Monroe. In it, he sang the praises of his Christian benefactors, and his own parents: “My

father and mother are both ignorant of the English language, but it is astonishing to see them exert all their

power to have their children educated, like the whites!”

For all his scholarly achievements, John Ridge’s fragile health failed in the New England winters. He spent

much of his time in his room, attended by the school steward’s daughter, Sarah Bird Northrup, until a doctor

alerted her mother that the two seemed to have fallen in love. When Sarah confessed, the Northrups sent her

away to live with relatives, the entire affair kept secret. It took nearly two years, but John won over Sarah’s

parents. He regained his health, qualified as a lawyer, and promised to take care of their daughter.

Minister : Do you thus solemnly and sincerely engage and promise?

John Ridge (Wesley French) : I will, with the help of God.

Minister : And you Miss Sarah Bird Northrup, with your right hand, take Mr. John Ridge by his right hand. In

the presence of God and these witnesses, do you take, John Ridge, whom you now hold by the hand, to be

your wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward . . . forsaking all others, keep only unto him

. . . conducting yourself toward him in all respects, as a kind and tender, virtuous and faithful wife . . .

Protestor #1 : This marriage is a sin in God’s eyes!

Protestor #2 : Shame on you!

Protestor #3 : Shame!

John Ridge (Wesley French) : Go! Go!

Jace Weaver, writer : The reaction of New England whites—enlightened, progressive New England

whites—makes a mark on him. He had been told, ‘get an education, take up western ways, you can be part of

us.’ He will never believe whites in exactly the same way again.

John Ridge (Wesley French) : An Indian is almost considered accursed. The scum of the earth are

considered sacred in comparison. If an Indian is educated yet he is an Indian, and the most stupid and

illiterate white man will disdain and triumph over this worthy individual.

Narrator : While John Ridge was away in Connecticut, John Ross was a young man on the rise. A trader like

his father, Ross cashed in selling food and provisions to the well-funded Christian missions sprouting around

the Cherokee Nation. He married a Cherokee woman and made a home on 420 prime planting acres. But Ross

was drawn more and more into the troubled state of Cherokee diplomacy. The Cherokee Nation’s long

alliance with United States was fraying. Washington was dragging its feet on payments owed under the terms

of earlier treaties, and strong-arming the Cherokees to sell off more territory. The Cherokee Nation had

formed a powerful new central government to push back, determined “never again to cede one more foot of

land.” And they needed able English-speaking men like John Ross to articulate the Cherokee position to the

United States government.

Jace Weaver, writer : John Ross was not from a prominent Cherokee family the way John Ridge was. But

Ridge takes John Ross kind of under his wing as a protégé. Here in John Ross he’s got someone who’s only

an eighth Cherokee, is very familiar with white society because of his father. Equally adept at negotiating

both of those worlds.

Narrator : With strong leaders like Ross and the Ridges, the Cherokees could hold the United States

government to its word for a while, but the situation on the ground was changing nonetheless. As dreams of

cotton wealth drove prospective planters deep into the interior south, other tribes were giving up huge swaths

of neighboring lands. The 14,000 Cherokees found themselves surrounded on every side by American

settlers; scores of whites began to scrabble onto Cherokee farmland. A small group of Cherokees had already

taken America up on its offer of new land west of the Mississippi, in Arkansas Territory. But the Cherokee

National Council, to a man, was still confident it had the strength to stand its ground. Major Ridge, for one,

had much to defend: nearly 10 million acres owned in common by the tribe, and his own plantation.

According to the U.S. Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Ridge’s farm “was in a higher state of cultivation and

his buildings better than those of any other person in that region, the whites not excepted.” In 20 years, Ridge

had cleared nearly 300 acres for cash crops: cotton, tobacco, wheat and indigo; he oversaw his own orchard,

dairy and vineyard—and as many as 30 slaves.

John Ross, descendant : John Ross owned slaves and John Ridge, when he got married, Major Ridge gave

him like 20 slaves. And so he was a slave owner also.

Jace Weaver, writer : About eight percent of Cherokees owned slaves. They were mainly the mixed-blood

elite. But more and more that mixed-blood elite is adopting the lifestyle of the Southern planter culture.

John Ridge (Wesley French) : We did so well with tobacco in the past that we’re thinking of adding to that,

or perhaps even some cattle.

Susannah Ridge (Carla-Rae Holland, in Cherokee) : (line in Cherokee)

Major Ridge (Wes Studi, in Cherokee) : (line in Cherokee)

John Ridge (Wesley French) : My father says the rains were heavy here and the cotton was planted late, but

cotton prices are rising again.

Major Ridge (Wes Studi, in Cherokee) : (line in Cherokee)

John Ridge (Wesley French) : My father apologizes to you ma’am. He says the cost of your fine dresses is

going up.

Major Ridge (Wes Studi, in Cherokee) : Toast

Narrator : Not all Cherokees welcomed these new opportunities. “Civilization” was beginning to draw hard

class distinctions that had never existed in traditional Cherokee society. The lives of most full-blood

Cherokees were still marked by loss. What little remained of their old hunting grounds was played out. They

depended almost entirely on subsistence farming. And they worried that their leaders were in thrall to the

ways of the whites. But there were still elemental ties that bound all Cherokees, and change that benefited all,

including a signal advance by a Cherokee named Sequoyah.

Gayle Ross, descendant of Chief John Ross : Sequoyah was devoted to enabling the Cherokee people to

have at their command an essential power that he saw white society have, that being the ability to write in the

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