Cherokee Civil Warrior: Chief John Ross and the Struggle for Tribal Sovereignty by W. Dale Weeks (review)

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• Cherokee Civil Warrior: Chief John Ross and the Struggle for Tribal Sovereignty by W. Dale Weeks
• John P. Bowes

Cherokee Civil Warrior: Chief John Ross and the Struggle for Tribal Sovereignty. By W. Dale Weeks. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2023. Pp. xiv, 231. $32.95, ISBN 978-0-8061-9157-7.)

In Cherokee Civil Warrior: Chief John Ross and the Struggle for Tribal Sovereignty, W. Dale Weeks examines Cherokee Principal Chief John Ross’s leadership over the course of the mid-nineteenth century, beginning with Ross’s defense of Cherokee sovereignty against Georgia and Andrew Jackson but focusing primarily on the challenges that Ross and the Cherokee Nation faced during the American Civil War. The emphasis placed on the Cherokee perspective and the central theme of tribal sovereignty are both critical to this book and its effort to analyze the Cherokee experience. While the context of the Civil War matters, this is not a book about the war.

Over the course of seven chapters, including the introduction and conclusion, Weeks asserts two points consistently. The first is that John Ross always made decisions that he believed provided the best opportunity to maintain Cherokee unity and protect tribal sovereignty. The second is that the federal government’s actions toward the Cherokee and its dealings with Ross “led directly to dismantling the country’s prewar Indian policy of treaty making and its replacement with a less defined policy of impatience and violence” (p. 19). The book supports the first assertion well but is less effective in proving the second.

From the first chapter examining removal to the fifth chapter discussing postwar negotiations, Weeks delineates the challenges Ross and the Cherokee encountered from the 1830s to the 1860s. Not all events are treated in equal depth, however; and at times the analysis moves the narrative forward while not providing details that a reader might want or need. The discussion of removal, for example, serves more as a background to illustrate the forging of Ross’s principal beliefs about unity, sovereignty, and treaty rights. As a result, discussions of Cherokee political changes, the framework of the so-called Marshall Trilogy cases at the U.S. Supreme Court, and implementation of removal are less developed. Similarly, the postremoval period from 1839 to 1860 gets a relatively brief nod on the way to the onset of the Civil War.

The crucible of 1860–1866 receives the bulk of the author’s attention, but the book stays true in maintaining a Cherokee perspective so that the reader views the political and military conflicts in Indian Territory from that vantage point. Ross remains the axis on which this narrative rotates, however, which means that Weeks reckons with Stand Watie and the divisions within the Cherokee Nation. Watie is typically regarded as the foil to Ross. Watie was a member of the Treaty Party, escaped execution in 1839 unlike other Treaty Party leaders, and became a prominent Confederate general, while Ross struggled to keep the Cherokee Nation united. Countering what other scholars have argued, Weeks contends that Watie had little political influence yet by May 1865 had “brought more suffering to the Cherokee people than did the much-maligned Andrew Jackson” (p. 128).

In addition to Ross and Watie, three figures played prominent roles at the war’s end and in its aftermath. Abraham Lincoln’s influence was felt in his absence, as Weeks claims Lincoln would have worked with Ross to restore the [End Page 437] Cherokee Nation instead of punishing it. Instead, Andrew Johnson dismantled prior treaties as retribution for what he judged was Cherokee treason. Lastly, U.S. Army officer, diplomat, and future commissioner of Indian Affairs Ely Samuel Parker did not see Ross as a “true Indian” and used the Cherokee example to encourage the end of the federal government’s treaty-making policy by 1871 (p. 150).

This book has a solid premise aided by its emphasis of the Cherokee perspective, though that perspective is almost exclusively that of John Ross. Ross is developed well as a political figure, but the narrative is less persuasive when asserting a direct connection between this history and the dismantling of treaty-making. Too many...