Elias Boudinot (Cherokee) - Career As Editor

Career As Editor

After his return to New Echota, in 1828 Boudinot was selected by the General Council of the Cherokee as editor for a newspaper, the first to be published by a Native American nation. He worked with a new friend Samuel Worcester, a missionary and printer. Worcester had new type created and cast for the new forms of the Cherokee syllabary. In 1828, the two printed the Cherokee Phoenix in Cherokee and English. While planned as a bi-lingual newspaper, the Phoenix published most of its articles in English; about 16 percent of the content was published in the Cherokee language under Boudinot.

The journalist Ann Lackey Landini believes that the emphasis on English was because the Cherokee Nation intended the newspaper to explain their people to European Americans and prove they had an admirable civilization. At the same time, the Council intended it to unite the Cherokee through the Southeast. The Phoenix regularly published new laws and other national Cherokee political information in the paper.

Between 1828 and 1832, Boudinot wrote numerous editorials arguing against removal, as proposed by Georgia and supported by President Andrew Jackson. After Congress passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, federal pressure on the Cherokee increased. Jackson supported removal of the Cherokee and other Southeastern peoples from their eastern homelands to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi. Over a roughly four-year period, Boudinot's editorials emphasized that Georgia's disregard of the Constitution and past federal treaties with the Cherokees would not only hurt Cherokee progress in acculturating, but threatened the fabric of the Union. Boudinot's articles recounted the elements of Cherokee assimilation (conversion to Christianity, an increasingly Western-educated population, and a turn toward lives as herdsmen and farmers, etc.) He criticized the "easy" way in which treaty language was distorted by Indian Removal advocates for their own purposes.

In 1832, while on a speaking tour of the North to raise funds for the Phoenix, Boudinot learned that, in Worcester v. Georgia, the US Supreme Court had sustained the Cherokee rights to political and territorial sovereignty within Georgia's borders. He soon learned that President Jackson still supported Indian Removal. In this context, Boudinot began advocating for his people to secure the best possible terms with the US by making a binding treaty of removal. His changed position was widely opposed by the Cherokee.

The National Council and John Ross, the Principal Chief, opposed removal, as did the majority of the people. Former allies in the Cherokee government turned against Boudinot and other "treaty advocates," who included John Ridge and Major Ridge. Opponents attacked the men's loyalty and prevented their speaking in councils. Ross forbade Boudinot from discussing pro-removal arguments in the Cherokee Phoenix. In protest, Boudinot resigned in the spring of 1832.