3. Mythological Consciousness
A. Mythos and Logos
B. A Phenomenology of Myth
C. The Dialectic of Mythic Consciousness
Part II: A Brief History of the United States Indian Removal Act of 1830
12,500 words
35 pages1. Native American Tribes of the United States
A. Major Indigenous Tribes of the American Southeast
B. Wildcat Banking: experiments in money creation
C. The Fertile Blackbelt
D. New American Slave Empire
2. The Politics of Aporia
A. Cherokee Chief Major Ridge
B. Chief John Ross
C. Supreme Court Rulings: Marshall Trilogy
D. Troublesome Christian Missionaries
E. Andrew Jackson's Reign of Caprice and Whim of Power
3. The Cherokee Trail of Tears
A. Jackson's Cronies
B. The Exiled Cherokee Christians4. Dangerous Insights
A. The Nationalistic gods of Space
B. New Class Distinctions
C. Death of a Prophet
D. False Flags
E. Gaza: accumulation by dispossession
The
Never-Ending Trail of Tears of Imperialistic Empires
“Remembrance
of the past may give rise to dangerous insights, and the established
society seems to
be apprehensive of the subversive contents of memory.”
--One-Dimensional Man, p. 101 (pdf.)
This
essay is about the American 1830 Indian Removal Act passed through
Congress by President Andrew Jackson and the State of Georgia. The
first part of this essay will address philosophical questions 1.)
about historical (time) and non-historical (space)
ethnocentric ontologies of different cultural worldviews, 2.) the
paradigmatic construction of reality that make societies, and 3.)
mythological consciousness in both ancient and advanced industrial
societies. Part II of this essay will review the removal of
indigenous Native Americans known as the Five Civilized Tribes
(Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Cherokee, and Seminoles) from their
native lands. These particular tribes were known to the European
immigrant settlers as "civilized" because they
enthusiastically accepted the White settlers' invitation to
assimilate into colonized culture. These tribes intermarried with the
White European settlers producing mixed American/Indian children some
who became famous political statesmen. The term “civilized” is
considered demeaning today in referring to the tribes so “The Five
Tribes” is used instead to name those Indian Nations who in the
early 19th century were in fact better housed, better dressed, and
more literate in their own languages than their settler counterparts.
In
part II, I will examine the 1.) money problems during the 1830s
American Wildcat Banking Wars, and 2.) the physical expulsion, known
as the “trial of tears,” during the 1830s of Southeastern Native
Americans from Georgia, part of Alabama, Western Carolina, Eastern
Tennessee, Florida, and Mississippi to the territory of Oklahoma that
later gained statehood in 1907 and lastly, 3.) The Politics
of Aporia, or how Alabama waged “lawfare” against the
Five Tribes to expel them from their native lands.
My
renewed interest in the history of the Trail of Tears Indian removal
is partly a result of serendipity. The word “Serendipity”
is ultimately derived from Sanskrit and an ancient fable about The
Three Princes of Serendip who were always making discoveries by
accident of things they were not first seeking. Sometimes the things
they discovered by accident were more valuable than what they
originally sought.
Vine
Deloria is the "star of the American Indian renaissance."
Serendipitously my
Native American cousin suggested I read the book, “God Is Red: A
Native View of Religion,” (1973, 1st edition) (pdf.)
by Vine
Deloria Jr. (1933–2005).
Deloria is a theologian, historian, and activist for Native American
rights. According to Deloria's Wiki entry, his father, Vine
Victor Deloria Sr. (1901 - 1990) transferred his children's tribal
membership from the Yankton Sioux to Standing Rock. Deloria
Jr.'s paternal grandfather was a leader of the Yankton band
of the Dakota Nation.
Deloria
Jr.'s early education was “at reservation schools, then graduated
from Kent School in 1951. He graduated from Iowa State
University in 1958 with a degree in general science.[7] Deloria
served in the United States Marines from 1954 through
1956.[8] Originally planning to be a minister like his father,
Deloria in 1963 earned a theology degree from the Lutheran
School of Theology at Chicago, then located in Rock Island,
Illinois.[7] In the late 1960s, he returned to graduate study
and earned a J.D. degree from University of Colorado
Law School in 1970.[2]“
In
addition, Deloria Jr. was executive director of the National Congress
of American Indians from 1964 to 1967. In 1970, he attended Western
Washington State College at Bellingham, Washington, and became
Professor of Political Science at the University of Arizona from 1978
to 1990 where he established the first master's degree program in
American Indian Studies within the United States. He taught at the
University of Colorado Boulder in 1990 and then returned to Arizona
in 2000 to teach at the College of Law.
Deloria's
academic credentials are outstanding and so is his record
of political activism as director of the Congress of American
Indians, then founder of the Institute of American Indian
Law, and The Institute for the Development of Indian
law. He was an expert witness for the defense in the Wounded
Knee Trials of 1974. He won fishing rights for Native Americans in
court case United States vs. Washington (1974). In
short, “Reflecting widespread change in academia and the larger
culture, numerous American Indian studies programs, museums, and
collections, and other institutions have been established since
Deloria's first book was published.” His first book was “God is
Red: A Native View of Religion” (1973) which we will now turn.
“The book's singular achievement, for instance, was its systematic and consistent analysis of the distinction between spatiality and temporality as culturally discrete ways of being in the world.”
--George E. Tinker, ”God is Red,” Intro., p. xii
If
Deloria's book “God is Red” only had the one chapter, “Thinking
in Time and Space” (Chapter 5 in 1st edition) it still would
have been a great groundbreaking book. This chapter is Deloria's
critique of temporal, or historical ontology of European cultures.
Not only is Deloria's insight into the Westerner concept of
historical time revealing, but he brings to light the American
Indigenous Indian ontological worldview as primarily spacial, of
place— or nonhistorical.
And
there is another serendipitous discovery: Deloria quotes the Lutheran
Christian Socialist theologian, and Christian
existentialist, Paul
Tillich,
three times in all the editions of his book. After fleeing Nazi
Germany in 1933 and joining the New York City Union Theological
Seminary. Paul Tillich's theological project is to
deliteralize—but not
to demythologize—Christian
theology so to make Christianity comprehensible in the modern age of
quantum physics.
Shortly
after Deloria Jr. was executive director of the National Congress of
American Indians from 1964 to 1967, the American Indian Movement
(AIM) was founded in 1968, so Deloria Jr. emerged during an American
Indian renaissance when Native Americans were becoming self-conscious
and politically active nationally.
A
Letter to a Deceased Philosopher
The
word “essay” comes from the French word essai,
meaning “trial”
or an “attempt.”
Going further back the French term originates from the Latin
word exagium or
“a weighing.” The Latin exigere means
“to drive out; require; examine; try, test, and “to sort
through.” Also, the Latin term "cogitare simul", and "cogitare" means "to think" and "simul" means "together." So, we can say an essay is “an
attempt to think along”
with the author's narrative which in this case is about historical
and non-historical ontologies. The Greek word “ontology” (ὄντος:
part sg pres act neut gen) is the study of “being, of
things, to be, existing.”
I
consider Deloria Jr. a philosopher and as a philosopher he would
expect—even demand—his written works be subject to philosophical
critiques. Deloria's book “God is Red” is itself a
powerful critique of Indian stereotypes of Native American culture
and can be traced back to Tillich's own project of reinterpreting
Christian theology for this post WWII age of
empirical-positivistic-sciences and cyberculture where physical space
is superseded by cyberspace. Some writing tutors teach their students
a method for creating a narrative voice for writing by the author
imagining they are writing a letter to a dead philosopher. My
critique is meant to strengthen Deloria's insights, criticism, and
his entire academic Native American project.
Dr.
John Vervaeke,
philosophy professor and cognitive scientist, makes the distinction
in his lectures between “adversarial
processing,”
and “opponent
processing.” One
network is adversarial in
an argument, its winner takes all in a debate for example. Another
network is opponent processing
that appears to the external observer to be similar to adversarial
processing, but the difference is that with opponent processing both
persons share the same goal.
(see “Ep.
30 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Relevance Realization Meets
Dynamical Systems Theory,” @ 50:30
minutes).
With
the above distinction between adversarial and opponent processing in
mind, I want to criticize Chapter 8, “The
Spatial Problem of History.”
(p. 129-151) of the First
Edition 1973 about
the Russian psychoanalyst Immanuel Velikovsky and his famous book,
“Worlds
in Collision,”
(1950) that is today rightly considered pseudoscience. Velikovsky
theorizes that in the 15th century BC the planet Venus emerged
out of Jupiter and passed near the Earth causing changes in its
orbit, even stopping the earth's rotation which explains the miracles
of the Old Testament and many ancient observations of the stars by
ancient peoples. Velikovsky then claims in the 8th and
7th centuries Mars was displaced by Venus and caused other
strange observations and disasters.
Velikovsky's
thesis is absurd. Deloria unfortunately attempted to use the proposed
planetary collisions to show how different opposing theories, and
ideologies can seemingly coherently explain the same observed
phenomena. Deloria even endorses Velikovsky's theory in a footnote of
“God Is Red,” (2003) 3rd edition (DR3., here after),
p. 132. And in the 1st edition (DR1., p. 148). * Because
the editions are worded differently, and a new chapter added, I must
quote from all three editions.
Deloria
writes:
“There
appears to be no doubt that Velikovsky has been vindicated and that
we are on the verge of an incredible reordering of our conception of
both the world and history... Science and the academic community
have revealed themselves as superstitious, dogmatic, narrow-minded,
and spiteful little people as a result of their treatment of Immanuel
Velikovsky. For nearly two and a half decades, they have refused to
allow him to discuss the theories that have produced such a plenitude
of newly verified facts about the universe as to make the basic
theory the most revolutionary explanation of the creation we have
ever seen. Some men have borrowed Velikovsky's ideas almost totally
without giving him any credit or even mention. Others have reversed
themselves completely without apologizing for their past errors or
acknowledging Velikovsky's earlier and correct contentions (“God
Is Red,”
1st edition, p. 148).”
But
it gets worse. A new chapter 9, “Natural
and Hybrid People” (p.
150-165) is added in “God
Is Red,”
2nd edition, 1994 (pdf.)
wherein Deloria presents Zecharia
Sitchin's thesis
in his book series, “Earth
Chronicles” (2009)
that posits ancient astronauts invaded the earth and were enslaved by
ancient sub-human peoples to work in mines until the alien astronauts
rebelled and created a new worker by genetically producing the first
human being, or Homo Sapiens. This narrative could be made into a
good science fiction movie—a combination of War
of the Worlds and Planet
of the Apes.
Deloria is a little more cautious with the ancient astronaut thesis,
but he still brings Sitchin into his book as an effort to show how
the internal logic of myths function.
Velikovsky's
thesis of planetary chaos and Sitchin's ancient astronaut thesis were
the worst possible examples that could have been used to understand
the internal logic of ideologies, and mythologies. The theses are so
absurd that they become distracting, and if I were to explain why
these theories are absurd, then I also would be distracted just like
Deloria. Instead, a better strategy would be to explain the structure
of paradigms and scientific revolutions. And in the case of Sitchin's
theory, a study and description of mythological consciousness would
be much more interesting and truthful.
Deloria's
intended insights sought in these flawed chapters can be untangled
and clarified! His intuitions and goals were valid and even noble.
Instead of focusing on Velikovsky's absurd theory, I will introduce
the famous, but not infamous,
science historian Thomas
S. Kuhn and
his study of scientific paradigms in his book, “The
Nature of Scientific Revolutions,”
(1962) (pdf.)
(SSR).
And instead of Sitchin, a more comprehensive study of mythology is by
the Neo-Kantian philosopher Ernst
Cassirer,
in his book, “The
Philosophy of Symbolic Forms: Vol. II, Mythical Thought,”
(1925) (here after referred to as PSF2)
(pdf.).
Deloria's
Critique of Temporal, or Historical Ontologies
Deloria
writes about the problem of literalism in Christian Orthodoxy:
“At
best we can conclude that the Christian doctrine of creation has
serious shortcomings. It is too often considered not only as a
historical event but also as the event that determined all other
facts of our existence. It is bad enough to consider Genesis as a
historical account in view of what we know today of the nature of our
world. But when we consider that the Genesis account places nature
and nonhuman life systems in a polarity with us, tinged with evil and
without hope of redemption except at the last judgment, the whole
idea appears intolerable (DR3, p. 86).”
Tillich’s
rejection of biblical literalism that defends the cosmological
argument’s conclusion that God is the Creator, and First Cause
because rationalistic theism is based on
the category of causality: "...the category of
causality cannot 'fill the bill’...In order to disengage the divine
cause from the series of causes and effects, it is called the first
cause, the absolute beginning. What this means is that the
category of causality is being denied while it is being used. In
other words, causality is being used not as
a category but as a symbol (ST,
vol. I, p. 238; italics added).”
Deloria's
most concise statement on historical ontologies is the following:
“When
the domestic ideology is divided according to American Indian and
Western European immigrant, however, the fundamental difference is
one of great philosophical importance. American Indians hold their
lands 'places' as having the highest possible meaning, and all their
statements are made with this reference point in mind. Immigrants
review the movement of their ancestors across the continent as a
steady progression of basically good events and experiences, thereby
placing history 'time' in the best possible light. When one group is
concerned with the philosophical problem of space and the other with
the philosophical problem of time, then the statements of either
group do not make much sense when transferred from one context to the
other without the proper consideration of what is happening (Deloria,
“God
Is Red,”
1973,1st edition, p. 75-76).”
One
ontological view of the world is in spatial terms and another in time
that progresses in a linear direction paired with the belief Western
Europeans were the destined global guardians resulting in the
Crusades, Imperialism, and the war against Communism. In other words,
the temporal (historical) ontology give rise to imperialistic empires
so that “Western political ideas came to depend on spacial
restrictions of what were essentially non-spatial ideas (ibid., p.
76).” From Deloria's insight additional conclusions can be made
such as the struggle over untapped resources and high finance
predicting: “As undeveloped nations continue their own growth,
severe modifications of exploitation must occur as well as more
sophisticated forms of colonialism, if Western countries are not to
suffer economic collapse (ibid., p. 77).”
Deloria
writes of the mutually supporting concept of time and imperialistic
empires—another important insight:
“The
very essence of Western European identity involves the assumption
that time proceeds linearly; further it assumes that at a particular
point in the unraveling of this sequence, the peoples of Western
Europe became the guardians of the world. The same ideology that
sparked the Crusades, the Age of Exploration, the Age of Imperialism,
and the recent crusade against Communism all involve the affirmation
that time is peculiarly related to the destiny of the people of
Western Europe (DR3, p. 62).”
Deloria
predates modern Greek economist Yanis
Varoufakis' claim that
modern Neoliberalism transformed itself into a digital
Neo-Feudalistic fiefdom. Deloria wrote in 1973 about the
feudalization of countries, and ecological threats even before the
oil company Exon announced the coming dangers of climate change in
the late 1970s warning, “At worst the end of one form of
colonialism means the beginning of a movement to feudalize
political systems around the globe so as to stabilize the economic
conditions of the more affluent nations. Either approach means
that the ecological problem is not dealt with, the problem of
technological dehumanization is not reduced, and the breakdown of
individual and community identity is not reversed (DR1., p. 77-78).”
Place
is material existence: time is a transcendental idea. Deloria
mentions Tillich's systematic theology at least three times in his
book, “God Is Red,” and seemingly supports Tillich's
critique of Christianity by statements such as this paragraph: “The
needed basic change depends on a realization of the revolutionary
reorientation of definitions that must occur when time is negated and
space becomes more dominant. Religion has often been seen as an
evolutionary process in which mankind evolves a monotheistic
conception of divinity by a gradual reduction of a pantheon to a
single deity. The reality of religion thus becomes its ability to
explain the universe, not to experience it. Creeds and beliefs
replace immediate apprehension of whatever relationship may exist
with higher powers. As time becomes less important in understanding
religion, the whole monotheistic thesis is threatened. Yet our
supernatural experiences do not necessarily lead to a monotheistic
conclusion (DR1., p. 79).”
“Typology cannot replace historiography; historiography
cannot describe anything without typology.”
-- Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology Vol. I, p. 219
The
focus on space is a greater attention to material existence. Deloria
is ready for a reinterpretation of Christian Orthodoxy—a very
Tillichian spirit. In fact, Tillich does exactly as Deloria described
with the gradual reduction of
polytheism to monotheism. And, Tillich argues for time over place in
interpreting existence. The Ancient Greek polytheistic gods of
Olympus were fittingly lousy gods because they ruled over a lousy
Greek world—the Greeks' worldview understood spatial existence as
the closed realm of ubiquitous irrational undeserved tragedy in a
never-ending “circle
of genesis, and decay, greatness and self-destruction (Tillich,
“Theology of Culture,” pdf., p.32;
here after, TC).”
Also, in
Tillich's three volume systematic theology, he constructs a typology
of polytheism and monotheism. (see, Tillich,
Paul, Systematic
Theology Vol. I of
III, Chicago, The
University of Chicago Press, 1951, p.222; here after ST.,
Vol. I). In
this sense, Greek polytheism was a realistic theology of human
existence. The Olympic pantheon of gods ruled over a circular
spatial cosmology wherein
“space
is tragic,”
and god is a stranger. In post-lapsarian Christian ontology (The
Fall of Man)
humans are essentially connected to the divine, but are not strangers
to God as in Deism—instead, human beings are alienated, or
estranged while still possessing an embedded pre-existing inherent
connection. The concept of time, Tillich writes, as circular
prevented Ancient Greek thought from developing a philosophy of
history. Space and time are the structures of all existence that can
be thought of symbolically as the fundamental struggling forces that
determine human life and history.
According
to Tillich the types of polytheism are universalistic (animistic),
mythological (deities are not fixed characters representing the
realms of being), and dualistic (the holy is based on the conflict
between the divine and the demonic). The types of monotheism are
categorized as monarchic monotheism (the Greek god Zeus), mystical
monotheism (all conflicts between gods are overcome by an ultimate
One), exclusive monotheism (cannot relapse into polytheism), and
trinitarian monotheism (the ultimate, and the concrete in existence
are united). (See ST., Vol. 1, p. 222-230). This section on the
typologies of religion by Tillich is not easy reading.
“Nothing historical completely represent a particular type, but everything
historical is nearer to or farther away from a particular type.”
-- Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology Vol. I, p. 219
(See my essay titled, "The Struggle of the Olympic gods of Space with The God of Infinite Time" for Tillich's views on “a-historical” and historical ontologies.)
Tillich's
view in his book, “The
Protestant Era,”
(1948) (pdf.)
(PE) identifies two main types of forms for interpreting history:
"... the first type in which history
is interpreted through nature and
the second in which history
is interpreted through itself....
These two types exhibit entirely different structures. In the first
type space is predominant; in the second, time is predominant. This
does not overlook the fact that no pure types appear in history, that
always elements of the one type can be found in the other type, since
there is no time without space and no space without time in human
existence (PE; p. 16-17)." The first type of interpreting
history is through nature, or non-historical (space), and the second
type is historical interpretation through time, i.e. through events
themselves that have a (τέλος, télos) meaning
“goal,”
or “end.”
The
Non-historical Type of Interpreting History
“A
religion defined according to temporal considerations is continually
placed on the defensive in maintaining its control over the interpretation of historical
events.”
--Vine Deloria Jr., DR3, p. 67
In
his book, “The Protestant Era,” Tillich gives fewer abstract
descriptions and more concrete examples of the two types of
historical interpretations than in his systematic theology. He names
four specific forms of
nonhistorical doctrines of significance: Chinese Taoism, Indian
Brahma, the Greek nature doctrines, and the late-European
life-doctrine. Consciousness needs both categories of space and
time to have experience. We can't even think of any object, or point
that is not in space and time otherwise we would be unconscious. But
life in culture and community can emphasize one category of
perception over the another. In Taoism, however, the “present is a
consequence of the past, but not at all an anticipation of the
future.” The past is dominate over the future in Chinese
Taoism thinks Tillich. Indian Brahma doctrine experience itself
negates time and space and all being of any reality. Only the
illusion from the point of view of Maya is
the real, except for Brahma-Atman which is the really real. Tillich
again concludes that no event of time has any ultimate meaning in
this doctrine. (See details in PE, Chapter
II, Historical and Nonhistorical Interpretations of History: A
Comparison, p.
16-31).
The
Greek nature doctrine of history is particularly interesting because
Tillich thought this worldview is where advanced Western industrial
societies was gradually moving toward. The ancient Greeks also lacked
any concept of the future since time was for them circular.
Tillich writes:
“Nature
is the structural necessity in which empirical reality participates.
But empirical reality participates within the limitations of its
material nature; by the latter it is prevented from realizing fully
its essential nature. The mark of perfection in nature is the
circular motion of a thing, in which it returns to itself. 'Being' as
such has the form of a sphere, equally perfect in all parts, not
needing higher perfection, immovable and eternal, without genesis and
decay. Temporal things, conversely, show contradictory, irregular
motions without a circular connection of end and beginning and
therefore with genesis and decay, self-destruction and death. History
cannot claim any point of perfection because it is not a circular
motion. The great Greek historiography shows the genesis, acme, and
decay of cities and nations.... It wants to shape the present
according to the experiences of the past, as, for instance,
Aristotle's Politics shows.
But there is no expectation of a more perfect future. Aristotle
describes Greece as the country of the 'center' between north and
south, east and west. He knows a center of space, but he does not
know a center of time, 'Time is nearer to decay than to genesis,' he
says, quoting a Pythagorean. Time for him is endless, repeating
itself infinitely, while space is limited, full of plastic power,
formed, defying infinity (PE, p. 18-19).”
Interestingly,
there are many other similarities between the Ancient Greeks'
nonhistorical spacial interpretation of life, and Deloria's
descriptions of Native American Indian views of nature, life, and
fate. Many scholars of world history consider Ancient Greece the
greatest culture of Western civilization.
The
last form of nonhistorical ontologies in Tillich's typology
is post-Renaissance Modern European naturalism, and is
Tillich's interpretation of modern Western industrial societies
during his lifetime. Modern naturalism is described by Tillich as
a monistic totality formulated in mathematical terms
by the philosopher mathematician Leibniz, or in organic terms
(Bruno), or dynamic terms (Bergson), or in sociological terms
(Spengler).
Note
what Tillich writes about the tragic outlook of Ancient Greece
culture returning to modern times. Post-Renaissance Modern European
naturalism views time ambiguously and acknowledges the
possibility of “...self-destruction or circular motion or infinite
repetition; but in no case is the directed line of history decisive.
Billions of years of physical time frustrate any possible meaning for
the utterly small sum of historical years. In the mathematical type,
time has been made a dimension of space. He who knows the
mathematical world formula in principle knows all the future. In the
organic and dynamic types of modern naturalism, time is considered
a deteriorating force. In the organic and historical
process, life becomes more complex, more self-conscious, more
intellectualized. It loses its vital power and is driven toward
self-destruction.... There is no universal history, crossing the
life-and-death curve of each culture, overcoming the spatial 'Beside'
by a temporal 'Toward.' On this basis even the tragic outlook of
Greece tries to return. In nationalism the gods of space
revolt against the Lord of time. Nation, soil, blood, and race defy
the idea of a world-historical development and a world-historical
aim. This recent development shows that a nonhistorical
interpretation of history, even if arising in Christian countries,
must return to paganism in the long run, for Christianity is
essentially historical, while paganism is essentially nonhistorical
(PE., p. 19-20; bold text added).”
The
word “pagan” is from the Latin term paganus meaning
“villager,” “rustic” and originally meant a
small parcel of land in a rural countryside. “Pagan” at
one time meant a “country hick,” but today it means any
non-Christian polytheistic religion. Some religious thinkers believe
that an overly Neoplatonic Christianity would benefit from an
injection of paganism that recognizes space and material existence
(place) as a significant force shaping spirituality within a culture.
Tillich
summarizes seven characteristics of nonhistorical interpretation of
history: 1.) Reality is interpreted through nature. 2.) Space is the
superior category to circular infinitely repeating time. 3.) The
temporal is less real. 4.) The good, the true and eternal are above
becoming, genesis, and decay. 5.) Salvation of community is not
through time and history. 6.) History is the process of deterioration
and self-destruction in time. 7.) The nonhistorical interpretation of
history either deifies special places as in polytheistic religions or deifies a transcendent “One” that negates both categories of
space and time for interpreting history. (See details PE., p. 20).
The
Historical Type of Interpreting History
As
with non-historical doctrines, the historical doctrines of history
also has multiple forms such as dualistic Iranian
Zoroastrianism (Light
vs. Darkness); monotheistic Old
Testament Jewish prophetism, and apocalyptic Christian teleological
orthodoxies that interpret time as the divine revealing itself in
and through history to
its end (Hegelian view
of history); Anabaptists; English revolutionary peasants; bourgeois
utopianism; and proletarian utopianism; religious socialism and
communism. From here Tillich argues that Ecclesiastical conservatism
has influenced most Christian countries to be politically
conservative, and this monotheistic division expresses itself as
a secular struggle
between political conservatism and revolutionary progressivism.
Historical doctrines of history are very political.
A
summary of the contrasting main characteristics of the historical
interpretation of history will better show the differences with the
nonhistorical ontologies of history:
1.)
History is the superior category for interpreting what is really
real.
2.)
Unlike space, teleological time has a definite goal and end.
3.)
Time is the arena that good and evil struggle against one another,
but the world is essentially good.
4.)
True being, or the ultimately good is a “dynamic process of
self-realization within and above existence.”
5.)
Salvation from evil is won in and through a
“history of salvation.”
6.)
History has a center from which meaning is created by becoming a new
being that overcomes self-destruction and the meaningless circular
temporal movement of nature.
7.)
“The historical interpretation of history is exclusively
monotheistic.”
(See
details PE., p. 27).
In
another book Tillich authored, “Theology
of Culture,” (1959)
with chapters “The
Struggle Between Time and Space” and “Nationalism and
Space” shows
the political nature of a historical interpretation of teleological
time:
“Time
and space should be treated as struggling forces, as living beings,
as subjects with power of their own... time and space are the main
structures of existence to which all existing things, the whole
finite realm, are subjected. Existing means being finite or being in
time and space. This holds true of everything in our world. Time and
space are the powers of universal existence including human
existence, human body and mind. Time and space belong together: We
can measure time only by space and space only in time. Motion, the
universal character of life, needs time and space. Mind, which seems
to be bound to time, needs only embodiment in order to come to
existence, and consequently it needs space. (“Theology
of Culture,”
p. 30).”
So
Then, What Time is It?
Existentialist philosophy,
and phenomenology both
describe and analyze the concrete structures of conscious experience
such as time consciousness which is differentiated by the
phenomenologists (Edmond Husserl, Jean-Paul Sartre) into types
of time, or modes of
time. There is clock
time,
or scientific
time.
Also, we experience lived
time,
or phenomenological
time:
phenomenological time is just as real as scientific time—just as
real as a slow lunch line on a short break. Musicological
time is
experienced as carefully measured units of sound and silence
in quantitative
time,
and there is historical time (the Ancient Greek word Χρόνος,
or chronos). Linear
mathematics is
time applied to space, or time could be experienced as circular.
And isn't there sacred
time?
Paul Tillich writes and speaks of a qualitative
time (καιρός, kairos)
meaning right,
proper, exact, or critical time. And
Tillich describes another existentialist mode of time referred to
as Eternity that
is “neither timelessness nor the endlessness of time. The
meaning of olim in
Hebrew and of αἰώνιος (eternal) in
Greek does not indicate timelessness; rather it means the power of
embracing all periods of time (ST., Vol. I, p. 274).”
(More
details in my essay: “Tillich
on Chronos and Kairos Time Experience,” and see "Multiplicity of the Experience of Time," @ 1:54:24 minutes)
Deloria's
great insight into the differences between historical and
nonhistorical ontologies has opened up these issues and revived
interest in Native American culture and philosophy during the 1960s
and now for yet another generation of young people who must somehow
reclaim remembrance of the past.
However,
there is yet another mode of time we have not considered, but is
relevant to the historical study of the 1830s Indian Removal Act....
The
Mathematics of Bankers' Compound Interest Time
Another
kind of time is banker's compound interest time. Economist Michael
Hudson has studied four-thousand years of debt and interest rates
going back to Ancient Babylonia, Greece,
and Rome. Mesopotamia as early as 1800 B.C. moneylenders discovered
the magic mathematical Rule of Seventy-two compound interest rate
calculation—how loaned money could double in a desired amount of
time: where (t) is the time it takes for a loan to double. And (r) is
the annual interest rate (in percentage form). For example, if the
annual interest rate is 6%, the time it takes to double a loan would
be: 12 days ≈ 72 / 6%. So the interest earning loan will double
in 12 days. The contemporary mathematical formulas are more exact,
and not just an estimate. Hudson notes the Ancient Babylonians had a
“far superior more sophisticated than any model put out by the
National Bureau of Economic Research, or other official agencies
(“Michael Hudson
Discusses the Financial Crisis and Politics with Class Unity,”
@
5:43 minutes).”
The
1830s forced Indian removal by the president Andrew Jackson was
during a time of great economic instability caused by a plenitude of
currency (banknotes) that had little to no value since it couldn't
easily be converted to specie (gold and silver) especially if the
note issuing bank is located deep in a snake infested Louisiana
swamp. For example, around 1837 the bankrupt conservative
Commonwealth of Massachusetts Bank had $500,000 of notes in
circulation, but only held $86.48 in gold reserves. (“Money,
whence it came, where it went,”
John K. Galbraith, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975, p. 107) (pdf.).
One good substitute for gold and silver is fertile agricultural land.
The economic school of Mercantilists believed the source of all
wealth was gold and silver metals earned from international trade.
However, the school of Physiocrats believed the ultimate source of
all wealth is the sun, and argued all national prosperity is created
by agricultural output grown by free sunlight. President Andrew
Jackson and his gang were land speculators. Any bank would want to
sell debt to a private landowner, but it could not be communal land
so both the current economic conditions, and monetary system demanded
Indian land be divided into privately owned allotments and then put
under bank debt. In other words, privately owned land could be
immediately converted into cash. Privatization of
communal land was a key goal of the Indian Removal Act. If the lender
and the creditor both go bankrupt, the collateral becomes an
alienated asset, but never again will it be communal Indian land.
Just by embracing the settlers' monetary system the Indians were
doomed. Imposing, or taking over a society's monetary system is the
more effective way colonial powers seize a host country's wealth.
Age of Uncertainty
BBC Video on 1830s American Wildcat Banking
The Paradigmatic
Construction of Reality
“That proliferation
of versions of a theory is a very usual symptom of crisis.”
--Thomas Kuhn, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” (1962), p. 70-1.
Early
in this essay I proposed replacing Deloria's choice of a Russian
psychoanalyst and pseudo-scientist, Immanuel Velikovsky, with the
more credible philosopher and historian of science, Thomas
Kuhn. Deloria goes into detail of
Velikovsky's theory that ancient records, and the miracles of the Old
Testament were actual events caused by the disrupted obits of Mars,
and Earth. All this effort by Velikovsky to give naturalistic
explanations of ancient biblical text assumes the
religious narratives, such as in Genesis, literally occurred.
Deloria
does write about the literal interpretation of religious text, but
does not treat the problem of literalism, or symbolism with any
depth, but only expresses skepticism toward a literal interpretation
of religious history, and yet, Deloria relies on, and even endorses
Velikovsky's effort to construct a literal interpretation of biblical
stories. Deloria mentions the problem of literalism and the
theological “demythologizing" project of
theologians such as C. H. Dodd, Rudolf Bultmann, and Martin
Heidegger. Tillich is not mentioned, however, maybe because Tillich
understood the importance of mythic symbolism. But Deloria doesn't
make these distinctions, nor attempt to defend an alternative to
biblical literalism—his attitude toward the literalists and
nonliteralists is, “a plague on both your houses!” Deloria never
asks how two different, and even contradictory theories can
coherently explain the same phenomena--the same appearances. Yet,
Deloria endorses Velikovsky's literalistic alternative
interpretation of ancient religions with a planetary chaos
theory to explain recorded ancient astronomical events and
biblical text.
"To be accepted as a paradigm, a theory must seem better than its
competitors, but in need not, and in fact never does, explain
all the facts with which it can be confronted.”
-- Kuhn, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 17-16.
Dr.
Thomas Kuhn’s book on a history of science, “The
Nature of Scientific Revolutions,”
(1962) (pdf.)
(SSR) explores
the evolution and revolutions of scientific paradigms and provides us
with examples of how paradigms organize sense experience into a
coherent intelligible whole. Dr. Kuhn develops the term “paradigm”
extensively in his work:
“Paradigm has
been used in science to describe distinct concepts, and theories.
It's derived from the Ancient Greek term 'παράδειγμα' (paradeigma)
meaning 'pattern,
example, sample'
from the verb "παραδείκνυμι" (paradeiknumi),
'exhibit,
represent, expose,'
and that from 'παρά' (para),
'beside,
by'
+ 'δείκνυμι' (deiknumi), 'to
show, to point out.' The
original Greek term παραδείγματι (paradeigmati) is used
in Greek texts such as Plato's dialogue Timaeus (28A)
as the model,
or the pattern that
the Demiurge (god) used to create the cosmos (Wikipedia).”
(I
have written in detail about the characteristic of paradigms in
another essay titled, “Ideological
Paradigms,”
and this section will necessarily repeat some parts of the first
essay.)
The
Functions of Paradigms
“Thoughts without content are void; intuitions [perceptions]
without conceptions, blind.”
— Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Meiklejohn, p.34 (pdf.)
Dr.
Thomas Kuhn does not provide a formal definition of paradigms; the
concept is given definition by ostensive historical examples
resulting in about twenty-two different uses of the term according to
Kuhn himself (SSR., p. 181). He employs the concept of “paradigm”
much like the term “hypothesis” is used in the physical
sciences. A hypothesis postulates objective, or independently
external entities that account for our experience of the world.
Atoms, electrons, substance, and the classic laws of physics are
hypotheses that give form and significance to phenomena. Kuhn names
those commonly shared hypotheses “paradigms” (SSR, pp.
10-11).
“Kuhn,
however, is Kant on wheels.”
The
concept of the scientific paradigm emerged out of Kuhn's research
during the 1960s on scientific revolutions. However, Kuhn's
description of paradigm functions is compatible with Kant's
definition of categories which are necessary for
experience with one exception: paradigms are not themselves
necessary for experience. Consequently, there is not a good reason
the concept of paradigms cannot be applied to any discipline:
"It
has since become widely applied to many other realms of human
experience as well even though Kuhn himself restricted the use of the
term to the hard sciences. According to Kuhn, 'A paradigm is what
members of a scientific community, and they alone, share.' (The
Essential Tension, 1997). Unlike a normal scientist, Kuhn held, 'a
student in the humanities has constantly before him a number of
competing and incommensurable solutions to these problems, solutions
that he must ultimately examine for himself.' (The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions). A scientist, however, once a paradigm shift
is complete, is not allowed the luxury, for example, of positing the
possibility that miasma causes the flu or that ether carries light in
the same way that a critic in the Humanities can choose to adopt a
19th century theory of poetics, for instance, or select Marxism as an
explanation of economic behaviour. Thus, paradigms, in the sense that
Kuhn used them, do not exist in Humanities or social sciences.
Nonetheless, the term has been adopted since the 1960s and applied in
non-scientific contexts (Wiki:
paradigm shift)."
The scope of
a paradigm can be a single proposition, theory, hypotheses,
conceptual model, a picture, or axiomatic postulates—all these
terms refer to relative ideological categories which organize and
give significance to the otherwise chaotic world of sense
impressions. Although, all these terms like “theory” are too weak
for Kuhn's uses of the word paradigm. Kuhn explores the
characteristics of “paradigms” in his selected historical
examples of scientific paradigmatic revolutions: “In its
established usage, a paradigm is a accepted model, or pattern, and
that aspect of its meaning has enabled me, lacking a better word, to
appropriate 'paradigm' here (SSR, p. 23).”
After
defining the general concept of paradigm, Kuhn examines historical
examples of paradigm shifts such as Ptolemaic
geocentric astronomy (2nd B.C.)
in contradiction with Copernicus' heliocentric model (16th A.D.)
of the solar system; Aristotelian dynamics opposed to Newtonian
physics; the phlogiston
theory of thermal-dynamics (fire);
electric current traveling in a circuit understood as analogous to
flowing water; and corpuscular optics in conflict with the wave model
of optics. All of these theories were able to describe phenomena that
two opposing models could coherently explain and successfully predict
experiment results. The Ptolemaic and
Copernicus models of planetary movement are particularly good
examples of incompatible paradigms explaining the same phenomena.
Ptolemy and
Copernicus on the Obits of the Planets
Claudius Ptolemy
(100 – 170 A.D.) was the first person to present mathematical
tables and arguments in the book Almagest in Arabic
“the greatest compilation”) supporting antiquities’ widely
accepted geocentric model of the solar system wherein the sun's
obit is around the earth
just as the moon obits the earth. The moon's obit didn't exactly
follow Ptolemy's mathematics, so he needed epicycles to
correct his false theory. His incoherent astronomical model was
supported by the Catholic Church of his time and stood for
about fifteen centuries.
Greek philosopher
Aristarchus (310 – 239 B.C.) in the third century was the
first to propose the heliocentric view of the solar system. When the
Turks invaded Constantinople in 1453 A.D., Ptolemy's
geocentric paradigm also began to collapse when in 1491 A.D. a
student, Nicolaus Copernicus, (1473 A.D. – 1543 A.D.) read a
restored copy of Ptolemy's Almagest and wrote
in response On the
Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres (1532 A.D.)
presenting his heliocentric model of the solar system, but delayed
publication of his final printed copy until the very day of his
death.
What is
important to note here is that for both Ptolemy and
Copernicus the sun's movement appears the same: the sun rises in the
East and sets in the West. Appearance is not reality. A mediating
theory is needed to save the
appearances since the
geocentric empiricist and the heliocentric observer see the same phenomenon. Kuhn notes
that the question of the earth and sun's obit had been a crisis of
centuries because the undoubted assumption was the earth is in
a “fixed”
position. Copernicus's heliocentric hypothesis gained few followers;
his mathematics was not any more accurate than
Ptolemy's calculations, nor did it improve the calendar that was
a desired goal of both theories. However, Copernicus' theory
suggested that other planets should be similar to earth, and
after some sixty years after Copernicus' death astronomers began
reporting previously existing overlooked objects such as
mountains, craters, and other geological formations on the moon.
New paradigms sometimes uncover new objects. (see details, SSR.,
pp. 69, 75, 82,149,150,154).
Kuhn does
this same kind of paradigm analysis of the theories of
Newton, Lavoisier, and Einstein.
1.) Paradigms
are in principle not factual but are interpretations of facts. A
range of phenomena will appear differently according to the paradigm
through which the world is viewed.
2.) Paradigms
set up or organize phenomena according to a pattern unique to
itself and supply a context to an otherwise chaotic mass of
facts. Paradigms form patterns within experience.
3.) Paradigms
are attention directing by emphasizing a certain range, or domain
of phenomena while other phenomena are viewed as less relevant,
or irrelevant all together. What is considered a “fact”
is relative to the paradigm from which one operates.
A “fact” is paradigmatically defined. Any phenomenon that
does not coherently fit a model is simply classified as an unexpected
abnormal appearance, or “anomaly.” Too
many anomalies could indicate a collapse of a school of scientific
thought. A scientific model that fails to explain inclusively
all appearances within its phenomenal domain fails to “save the
appearances” suffers from “paradigm entropy.” Widely
accepted paradigms are applied a priori by scientists
who sometimes uncritically interpret phenomena leading to bias
blindness. Paradigms are
themselves non-factual. Recognition
of paradigmatic patterns are perspectival and
not the result of crude Lockean empiricism, “tabula rasa” (Latin
for “blank slate”). This aspect of paradigms makes them enigmatic
when a scientist must choose between different competing theories
accounting for the same appearances. The epistemological question
of paradigm choice cannot be resolved by appealing to experience
alone since the model itself circularly validates what is accepted
as factual.
Summary of
Paradigm Characteristics:
Universal: Paradigms attempt
to form a transcendental (a
prior) universal
whole to give meaning to the world of singular sensible
impressions. Paradigms relate particulars to a universal frame
of reference so that a particular sensible impression (using our
five senses) is related to a universal frame of reference to
give order, unity, structure, and context to experience.
Non-Empirical: Since singular
sensible impressions are understood through a conceptual principle,
paradigms define the factual by providing a medium, or concept
through which experiential datum can be interpreted as fact. A
paradigm relates facts to concepts to form a unified picture of the
whole experience.
Interpretative: Sensible information
is not given without first being filtered through a medium, or
concept. This information is organized or structured according
to some point of reference. Sensory information is modified by
exclusion of experience and inclusion of unconscious meanings. Henri
Bergson wrote: “...concepts, laid
side by side, never actually give us more that artificial reconstruction
of the object, of which they can only symbolize certain
general, in a way, impersonal aspects; it is therefore useless
to believe that with them we can seize a reality of which they
present to us the shadow alone (Henri Bergson, “An Introduction
to Metaphysics,” trans, T. E. Hulme ,Indianapolis; Bobbs-Merrill,
1978, p.29).”
Totalities: Ernst Cassirer
speaks of this same process as the mind, “weaving the particulars
into a system.” Paradigms attempts to form this totality which
we call the “world,” or better yet Husserl’s term,
“Lifeworld.” Cassirer described this activity of consciousness
as... “The aim
of theoretical thinking as we have seen, is primarily to deliver the
contents of sensory or intuitive experience from the isolation
in which they originally occur. It causes these contents to
transcend their narrow limits, combines them in a definite
order, in an all-inclusive context. It proceeds ‘discursively,’
in that it treats the immediate content only as a point of
departure, from which it can run the whole gamut of impressions
in various directions, until these impressions are fitted
together into one unified conception, one closed system. In this
system, there are no more isolated points; all its members are
reciprocally related, refer to one another; illumine and explain
each other. Thus, every separate event is ensnared, as it were
by invisible threads of thought, that bind it to the whole. The
theoretical significance which it receives lies in the fact that
it is stamped with the character of this totality (Ernst Cassirer,
“Language and Myth,” trans, S.K. Langer, New York: Dover
Pub., 1946, p. 32).”
Relatively
Categorical: Paradigms reduces
the world of objects and events to generalized notions of which
any individual event, or object can belong. Categories are classes,
or types, through which experience is organized and known. “Category”
is understood here in a Kantian sense: categories such as space
and times are the fundamental a priori forms
through which the phenomenal
world is perceived. (see, The Encyclopedia
of Philosophy, Vol. II, Macmillan Pub., 1967 ed., “Categories,”
by M. Thompson, p. 46). Paradigms are
not necessary for experience like absolute Kantian
categories; however, paradigms function the same way
as categories. The absolute categories of
space and time are necessary for
experience, but the concepts that time is linear, or circular
are not necessary to
experience time. Neo-Kantians would describe paradigms as
“relative categories,” or “relative a
priori.” Relative categories
are what builds the social construction of reality. See
my essay “The Social
Construction of Reality.”
Ontological: Paradigms
are concerned only with the particular object, or entity.
Intellectual reflection is directed toward the factors which
give the world of particular experience meaning, and context.
Reflection in this case seeks to examine those categorical
factors which make the empirical possible—to examine those,
“invisible threats of thought” that unites the whole. Paradigms
provides a foundation for empirical concreteness by going beyond
the facts to the “factors which
make facts recognizable (“One-Dimensional Man,”
Herbert Marcuse,1964, p. 106).”
·Circular: “When
paradigms enter, as they must, into a debate about paradigm
choice, their role is necessarily circular. Each group uses its
own paradigm to argue in that paradigm’s defense (SSR, p. 94).”
This summary
list does not mean truth is relative, or unknowable. Copernicus'
heliocentric paradigm is true, and the Ptolemaic geocentric
paradigm is false. * A paradigm that is coherent, able to consistently
explain and give meaning to phenomena, is a necessary but not a
sufficient condition for soundness. A paradigm must
be consistent, and true in
order to be sound.
*(See details
in my essay on “Part I:
Paradigms of Truth and Logic.”)
For some
philosophers the problem of knowledge is not that we can't
know reality, but that we can know reality in so many different
ways.
I
have only explored here parts of Kuhn's study of scientific
revolutions, and he has more to say about the institutions of
scientific study, and the role of the community of scientists. And we
can see some of the difficulties that Deloria encounters agreeing
with Velikovsky's catastrophic narrative of a wayward planet that
“... During the time of the Exodus and later in the eighth
century B.C., Venus came into near collision with Earth and Mars,
disrupting the orbits of each and at one point saving Earth
from a fatal collision with Mars (DR3., p. 120).” Velikovsky's
complete narrative (Ibid., p. 120-132) may not even meet Kuhn's
criteria of a paradigm, and it fails the traditional scientific tests
of verification and falsification while
the problem of literalistic interpretation
of a “comet's tail parting the Red Sea for the Israelites,”
(DR3., p. 124) is presupposed by some of his
adherents. If the miraculous events of the Old Testament actually
occurred, there is no way to verify any of Velikovsky's proposed
events especially if those events by definition are “miracles”
i.e. not subject to physical laws. Velikovsky's alleged events
cannot be repeated for scientific verification even if they were not
miraculous. We cannot commit the informal logical
fallacy known as “Appeal to Ignorance,” or Argumentum
ad Ignorantiam that
states, “X
is true because X has not been
proven false.” There are other counter Velikovsky
arguments.
Cosmos: Sagan on Velikovsky's Catastrophism
https://youtu.be/Es7424qX70U
Mythological Consciousness
“But the
literal is not more but less than symbolic.”
--Tillich, “Theology of Culture,” (1959) (pdf.) p.64
Deloria's
book “God Is Red,” is about “A Native View of Religion” and
directs the reader's attention to problems involving literalistic
interpretations of Old and New Testament biblical events concluding,
“We now recognize that the command of Genesis is not to be taken
literally (DR3., p. 267).” He refers to the “.... 1925 Scopes
trial in Tennessee...marking the conflict between literal believers
of Genesis and those who regard it symbolically, either as an analogy
or as a mythological representation of a greater spiritual reality
(DR3., p. 84).” Deloria is critical of the deliteralization project
by modern theologians such as Rudolf Bultmann, Thomas J.J Altizer,
and Paul Tillich for a literalistic interpretation of some biblical
events such as the appearance of the Christ of Saint John, but
nonliteralistic interpretation of other narratives such as Genesis:
“Christians
ask us to accept that there is a history, that there is a central
event making the rest of the history intelligible, and that because
there is a central event, there must necessarily be a history. The
logic is clearly a precursor of the catch-22 rule. Whenever we focus
on one of the very important events of that line of history, we
are told by Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Jews alike that what
happened was really just the growth of legend, folklore, and
glorification, not a spectacular event. Yet these thinkers insist
that a whole chronology of nonexistent events constitutes an
important historical timeline that is superior to any other
explanation of human experiences (DR3., p. 120).”
“At first sight, to be sure, nothing seems more disparate than truth and mythology: and accordingly, no two spheres seem more opposed to each other than
philosophy and mythology.”
-- Ernst Cassirer, Philosophy of Symbolic Form: Mythical Thought, vol. II. p. 4.
Deloria
believes a literalistic interpretation of certain biblical narratives
also has incoherencies that prepare the way ultimately to dogmatism,
and oppressive hegemony: “There
is another, more serious problem involved in the Christian doctrine
of creation. For most of the history of the Christian religion,
people have been taught that the description of the event of creation
as recorded in Genesis is historical fact. Although many Christian
theologians have recognized that at best the Genesis account is
mythological, it would be fair to
conclude on the basis of what is known of the Christian religion that
many Christian theologians and a substantial portion of the populace
take the Genesis account as historical fact (DR3, p. 84).”
Embracing
either the nonhistorical or historical interpretation of religious
texts and doctrines leaves one with either irrelevant secular
legends, or dangerous dogmatic orthodoxy:
“A
religion defined according to temporal considerations is placed
continually on the defensive in maintaining its control over
historical events. This is the problem of literalism that demands
literal interpretation to maintain religious hegemony, not just
abstract time.... If, however, the separation becomes more or less
permanent, as in Christianity and Western concepts of history, then
religion becomes a function of political interpretations as in the
Manifest Destiny theories of American history, or it becomes
secularized as an economic determinism as in Communist theories of
history. Either way the religion soon becomes helpless to intervene
in the events of real life, except in a peripheral and oblique manner
(DR1., p. 82).”
I
believe that Deloria would agree with Tillich on the question of
literal, and nonliteral interpretations of Christian texts. Tillich
writes:
“These
symbols must be understood as symbols, and they lose their meaning if
taken literally. In dealing with christological symbols, we were
engaged not in a 'demythologization' but
in a 'deliteralization.' We
tried to affirm and to intercept them as symbols. “Demythologization”
can mean two things, and the failure to distinguish between them has
led to the confusion which characterizes the discussion. It can mean
the fight against the literalistic distortion of symbols and myths.
This is a necessary task of Christian theology. It keeps Christianity
from falling into a wave of superstitious 'objectivations' of the
holy. But demythologization can also mean the removal of myth as a
vehicle of religious expression and the substitution of science and
morals. In this sense demythologization must be strongly rejected. It
would deprive religion of its language; it would silence the
experience of the holy. Symbols and myths cannot be criticized simply
because they are symbols (ST., vol. II, p. 152).”
Mythos
and Logos
“Schelling
recognized... myth as an essential modality of human thought.”
--Charles W. Hendel, Mythical Thought, p. X
When
philosophy looks into a mirror, it will
see mythos. Logos (λόγος meaning
'reason') first emerged from mythos (μῦθος)
meaning broadly anything delivered by word of mouth, word, or
speech such as a proverb, or a purpose, or design. Myth
also means, “a tale, story, or narrative.” The
symbolic is much more than the literal, or the particular, but
instead represent "universal" principles of reality in
human experience. Mythological consciousness is not the spirit of
advanced industrial society. The particular objects and beings in
mythology correspond with spiritual consciousness, and the invisible
dynamic creative/destructive forces within nature and life: mythos is
not merely a vast collection of fantastic fictional ancient narratives but are symbolically the truest stories of all. We must
distinguish between three mythical narrative forms. The first
is Legend that hand down oral traditions to younger
generations, laws, and general rules of conduct.
Secondly, Myths that explain creation, fire, medicine,
and wildlife. And lastly, Fables teach life lessons
often through animals characters and tell trickster stories.
There
is much mythology in modern movies such as the 1975 film written by
Ken Kesey, “One
Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.”
The book's introduction is narrated by an apparently deaf and mute
American Indian, Chief Bromden played by actor Will
Sampson,
who is a psychiatric patient preparing to talk about his
experiences in the hospital. The Chief tells the reader:
“It's
gonna burn me just that way, finally telling about all this, about
the hospital, and her, and the guys--and about McMurphy. I been
silent so long now it's gonna roar out of me like floodwaters and you
think the guy telling this is ranting and raving my God; you think
this is too horrible to have really happened, this is too awful to be
the truth! But please. It's still hard for me to have a clear mind
thinking on it. But
it's the truth even if it didn't happen (“One
Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,” Ken Kesey, 1962, Signet, p.13; bold
added) (pdf.).”
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: Chief Bromden leaves
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3c2cXiEUHo
Mythological
consciousness distinguishes between signs and symbols. By inventing
symbolism we are able to access other dimensions of existence that
ordinary pragmatic instrumental language--i.e., scientific object
language devised as a means to achieve an end-- fails describing
human reality. Tillich writes of the symbolic in myth:
“The
sacramental is nothing else than some reality becoming the bearer of
the Holy in a special way and under special circumstances. In this
sense, the Lord's Supper, or better the materials in the Lord's
Supper, are symbolic. Now you will ask perhaps, 'only symbolic?' That
sounds as if there were something more than symbolic, namely,
'literal.' But the literal is not more but less than symbolic. If we
speak of those dimensions of reality which we cannot approach in any
other way than by symbols, then symbols are not used in terms of
'only' but in terms of that which is necessary, of that which we must
apply. Sometimes, because of nothing more than the confusion of signs
with symbols, the phrase 'only a symbol' means 'only a sign.' And
then the question is justified. 'Only a sign?' 'No.' The sacrament is
not only a sign (TC., p. 64).”
A
Phenomenology of Myth
“Mythology
is inevitable; it is an inherent necessity of language, if we
recognize language
as the outward form of thought; it is ... the dark shadow which
language casts on
thought and which will never vanish as long as speech and thought do
not fully coincide, and
this can never happen.”
-- Friedrich Max Müller, PSR2., p. 21
Deloria
had no need for Zecharia
Sitchin's alien
astronaut thesis and could even be interpreted as itself a longing
for mythic consciousness missing in a post-Enlightenment millennium that only understands myth as fictional stories of imagination, and
science as the totality of brute facts about the world. This was a
serious concern for the Marburg Neo-Kantian philosopher
Ernst Cassirer when he was appointed as professor at the University
of Hamburg in 1919 and where he discovered a vast collection of
library books on philosophy, art, literature, religion organized in
the Warburg Library of the Cultural Sciences by founder Aby
Warburg in
a way that would resolve some of the philosophical problems he was
studying. Cassirer told Dr. F. Saxl, “This library is dangerous. I
shall either have to avoid it altogether or imprison myself here for
years (PSF2., p. ix).” Cassirer describes a phenomenology
of myth from
his research in the Warburg library.
Cassirer
thinks that art and religion develop out of the expressive language
of myth, and from natural language science emerges. Mythic
consciousness is the symbolic residuum of language so that, “The
fundamental Kantian 'categories' of space, time, substance (or
object), and causality thereby take on a distinctive configuration
representing the formal a priori structure, as it were, of
mythical thought (SEP: Cassirer),”
These structures are the 'relative a priori,' or “relatively
categorical” that is included in the summary list of
the characteristics of paradigms.
The
Dialectic of Mythic Consciousness
“...the various forms of religious and mythical conception cannot be
due to mere chance; it must be rooted in a common characteristic of
language and myth as such.”
--Cassirer,
“Language and Myth,” (pdf.)
p. 55.
Some
philologists such as Max
Müller,
believed myth was a disease of language. According to Cassirer
mythical consciousness manifests itself in an image-world that
inadequately expresses itself and is continually in a process of
surpassing itself. Mythological consciousness is not a
collection of past dead superstitions but is most alive when it
considers its own self-expression inadequate. Primordially there is no dichotomy in consciousness between the real and ideal, existence and meaning, belief and action, but these antagonistic domains are in continuous flux. The word
“metaphor” is from the Greek word metaphora (μεταφορά),
which means “to transfer” or “to carry over,” from one domain to another. Myths are the first “mimes,” or in Greek, mimesis (μίμησις),
meaning “imitative,” or “to imitate.” Myth creation
is an attempt to imitate the real as an image. Writing begins as a
mimetic sign, or image that stands for the object. Out of this
tension between existence (things) and meaning (signification) myth
engages other symbolic powers of language including the mimetic,
analogical, and symbolic linguistic forms appearing as a historical
process toward a more unified mythological consciousness. The
analogical characteristic of nominalism exploited by mythology is any
object can symbolically represent any other object thereby enabling
myth to rise “... spiritually above the world of things, but in the
figures and images with which it replaces this world it merely
substitutes for things another form of materiality and of bondage to
things (PSF2., p. 25).”
Cassirer
writes: “The new ideality, the new spiritual dimension, that
is opened up through religion not only lends myth a new
signification but actually introduces the opposition between
'meaning' and 'existence' into the realm of myth. Religion takes the
decisive step that is essentially alien to myth: in its use of
sensuous images and signs it recognizes them as such--a means of
expression which, though they reveal a determinate meaning, must
necessarily remain inadequate to it, which 'point' to this meaning
but never wholly exhaust it (PSF2., p. 239).”
An
important influence on Cassirer was philologist Herman
Usener (1833
– 1905) who traced the dynamic history of mythical gods from the
earliest “momentary deities” described as momentary fleeting
objectification of human experience, appearing and then dissolving
overwhelming a single individual. “Special gods” are limited to
certain human activities and are like the functional ceremonial gods
in Greek and Roman religions. These two earlier stages of religion
prepare for the conception of “personal gods” who are given names
and act like human beings.
Myth
offers a reality that can never be grasped or achieved, and so
consciousness must use concepts as symbolic forms as representation
of reality, or organs of reality. Mythology is the science of
the “forms of religious conception.” Philosopher Wilhelm
von Humboldt (1767
– 1835) influenced Cassirer's views on myth by defining humans
as a “language animal” that "makes
infinite use of finite means,” (meaning an
infinite number of sentences can be created using a finite number of
grammatical rules). Unlike Aristotle who defined humans as a rational
animal, Cassirer defined humans as an animal
symbolicum (symbolizing
animal), “the same process whereby he spins language out of his own
being, he ensnares himself in it; and each language draws a magic
circle around the people to which it belongs, a circle from which
there is no escape save by stepping out of it into another (“Language
and Myth,” E. Cassirer, 1946, Dover, p. 9) (pdf.).”
Schelling viewed language as a “faded mythology” having developed
out of itself a formalized abstract linguistic logic-structure from a
mythic point of view embedded in a living natural world of seen and
unseen forces that speaks and acts.
Cassirer
summarizes Schelling's view of mythological thinking:
“Nature
itself is nothing other than a stage in the development and
self-unfolding of the spirit--and
the task of a philosophy of nature consists precisely in
understanding it and elucidating it as such. What we call nature--and
this is already stated in the system of transcendental idealism--is a
poem hidden behind a wonderful secret writing; if we could decipher
the puzzle, we should recognize in it the odyssey of the human
spirit, which in astonishing delusion flees from itself while seeking
itself.”
-- Ernst Cassirer, Mythic Thinking, Vol. II; p. 8.
Part
II
Part II: A Brief History of the United States Indian Removal Act of 1830
1. Native American Tribes of the United States
A. Major Indigenous Tribes of the American Southeast
B. Wildcat Banking: experiments in money creation
C. The Fertile Blackbelt
D. New American Slave Empire
2. The Politics of Aporia
A. Cherokee Chief Major Ridge
B. Chief John Ross
C. Supreme Court Rulings: Marshall Trilogy
D. Troublesome Christian Missionaries
E. Andrew Jackson's Reign of Caprice and Whim of Power
3. The Cherokee Trail of Tears
A. Jackson's Cronies
B. The Exiled Cherokee Christians4. Dangerous Insights
A. The Nationalistic gods of Space
B. New Class Distinctions
C. Death of a Prophet
D. False Flags
E. Gaza: accumulation by dispossession
A
Brief History of the United States
Indian Removal Act of 1830
"You tell all white men 'America First.' We believe in that. We are the
only ones, truly, that are 100 percent. We therefore ask you while you are
teaching school children about America: first, teach them truth about the
First Americans.”
--1927, the Grand Council Fire of American Indians presented a memorial to
the mayor of Chicago in “I Have Spoken” (1991) compiled by
V. I. Armstrong (pdf.) here after IHS., p. 145-7.
The
written history of the Indian Removal Act signed into law in 1830 by
then President Andrew Jackson serving from 1829 to 1837 is voluminous
and includes vastly different fields of study including the
political, economic, and socio-cultural structures of the new
American nation during this early period. Historians see and write
through specific cultural lenses whether they intend to or not. Even
selecting this particular historical topic for study is not a value
free decision. Earlier, we named these cultural lenses “relative
categories,” and “paradigms.” An author may view
time as a linear progression, or the repetition of a cycle, or even
as a teleological spiral. An unconscious ethnocentric
perspective is destructive to
knowledge and is a disease of language. The logician, Ludwig
Wittgenstein, described the function of language as a public tool
for interpreting the private life. Scientific methodologies provide a
way for understanding nature, but another dimension of reality is
subjective human consciousness that include values, desires,
emotions, intention, and reason.
Scientific
positivist-naturalistic-materialism may not be the only appropriate
methodology to study our society and may even contribute to nihilism
and a reflexive uncritical support for the status quo.
Culture
is essentially a tool distributing knowledge for
understanding societal relationships, relative categories, values,
goals and ethical norms of behavior. The very word “culture”
originates from the Latin term “cultura”
meaning “cultivation,”
“to tend,” or “to
care” and is derived from
“colere,” meaning
“to dwell.”
Because we are not born with inherent knowledge of how civil society
and physical environment works, culture must teach us how to meet our
needs, what we should eat, to build a family traditions, and what to
do if we are sick. Some Sociologists bring an interdisciplinary
approach to the study and research of society by including political
sociology, history, psychology, economic sociology, anthropology, and
the sociology of knowledge such as C. Wright Mills (1916–1962),
Peter Berger (1929-2017), Karl Marx (1818–1883), Max Weber
(1864-1920), and Emil Durkheim (1858-1917).
Native
American Tribes of the United States
We
grasp existence with language. The ancient Greek word for “nation,”
“race,”
or “ethnic
group”
is ἔθνος
(“ethnic”
is directly from the term éthnos)
and is used to describe a group of people bound by a common culture,
language, and heritage. It could also refer to a tribe,
a nation, or a collection of people with shared characteristics. A
“tribe”
can have a broad definition, or a narrow legal definition. The
federally recognized Seminole tribe originally from Florida is a good
example of just how inclusive a tribe can be. The tribal name
“Seminole”
is originally from
the Alabama Creek (Mvskoke) Indian word “simanoli
“ meaning “runaway,”
“wild,”
or “outcast”
referring to some tribes as escaped slaves, or separatists.
“Muskoke,”
is used to refer to the Creek Language, and “Muskogee”
for the nation. Early British traders in Georgia named the Native
Americans with an exonym
according
to the place
they were found so the Indians living along the Ocmulgee and Ochesee
rivers are referred to as “Ocmulgee Creek Indians,” and then
colloquially shortened to “Creek Indians.” The Muskoke term
itself may
have been an exonym from the Spanish word cimarrón,
meaning "runaway"
or "wild
one",
referring to some of the sixty micro- tribes in Florida. The
Seminoles
culture was primarily Muskogean. (see details, “Indian
Tribes of Oklahoma: A Guide,”
by Blue Clark, 1947, 2009 ed., Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
pp. 209, 323: here after ITO)(pdf.).
“No
tribe has the right to sell, even to each other, much less to
strangers ....Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the great sea, as
well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use
of his children?”
--Chief Tecumseh in 1810 faced Governor W. H. Harrison to bitterly protest the land sales of 1805-06 (“I Have Spoken,” Virginia I. Armstrong, 1991, p. 44). Much
of Native American history is about litigation with the American
judicial system, and is important to give context for understanding
Native American Indian culture today. In California there are 109
federally recognized Native American tribes with some not recognized
by the federal government, but prior to European arrival there were
500 micro-tribes with about 50 to 500 persons per group (Wikipedia:
California
Indigenous peoples).
Oklahoma has 38
federally recognized tribes
out of 42 tribes total, with about three unrecognized such as the
“United Cherokee Nation,” the “Chickamauga Cherokee Nation,”
and the “Yuchi Tribe” (ITO p, viii). Currently,
there are 574 Native American tribes that are recognized by the
federal government in the United States. Over the years, numerous
tribes have merged with smaller groups, resulting in an evolved legal
definition of a tribe as recognized by federal law.
Even
before the Five Tribes were forced marched to Oklahoma from about
1830 to 1838, the US government always plotted to detribalize
the Native Americans ethnic groups on a tribe-by-tribe basis by
passing land allotment laws such as the Dawes
Act of 1887
that added other amendments tailored for specific indigenous groups.
Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts falsely viewed communal land
as inhibiting cultural assimilation, and breeding poverty. In some
cases, African slaves formerly owned by tribes had zero Indian
blood-quantum but were allotted smaller private parcels of land in
Oklahoma as compensation. In this case a person can be identified as
Indian just by their family name being listed on the Dawes tribal
rolls. Between
1887 and 1934 the privatization of land by the Dawes Act resulted in
Native Americans losing about 100 million acres of land or about
two-thirds of the land base they held in 1887. The Five Tribes has
faced at least two more diasporas: forced out of their Southeastern
native home to Oklahoma, lost
land again in 1907
when Oklahoma became a state and land was re-allotted, and again
during the 1930s Great Depression many Indians left the reservations
to seek work. The story of the Trail
of Tears does
not have a happy ending.
The
United States census of 2020 reported a total population of 331.4
million with 3.7 million persons claiming full-blood American Indian,
or Alaskan ancestry along with another 5.9 million persons reporting
mixed-blood ancestry of these two groups. Native Hawaiians are
counted separately as Pacific Islanders and were estimated in 2022 to
be about 714,847 persons claiming some ancestry. (Wikipedia: Native
Americans in the U.S.).
The Navajo Times in 2012 reported
the Navajo tribe has the largest number of persons with full-blooded
ancestry totaling 286,000 in the 2010 census. In the 2020
census,
the tribe is counted
at 423,412
persons. The 2020 census notes that there are over 1,000 tribes and
326 tribal reservations composing a population of 2 million. Also,
any person with ancestry in more than one tribe is counted more than
once.
Major
Indigenous Tribes of the American Southeast
I
believe the most direct way to learn about the 1830
Indian Removal Act
when 60,000 Native Americans were displaced from their homeland is to
follow the histories of Cherokee Chief John
Ross (1790
- 1866), Major
Ridge
(1771 – 1839), and his son John
Ridge
(1802 – 1839). These three mixed-blood Cherokee leaders were
bilingual and effectively communicated the tribes' interests and
requests to the US Congress. The Cherokee tribe had the most slaves.
All three tribe leaders were slave owners themselves. Major Ridge was
nearly a full-blood Cherokee, a tribal councilman, a lawmaker, and a
warrior against the early American settlers. John Ross, and John
Ridge were unusually highly educated and worked closely together in
communication with Washington D.C. to challenge Jackson's Indian
removal legislation and decide other tribal matters. John
Ridge wrote four articles
in the Cherokee Phoenix newspaper between 1828 and 1830 under the
pseudonym
of “Socrates”
defending Cherokee rights and critiquing Andrew Jackson's arguments
against Cherokee sovereignty.
The
five Indian tribes in the Southeastern United States during the early
1800s that were recognized by the federal government were the
Cherokee,
Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muskogee (Creek) and Seminoles.
Early Americans originally named these tribes “The Five Civilized
Tribes,” because the native groups had intermarried and assimilated
with Anglo-American culture. The modern name used today is “The
Five Tribes” to avoid ethnocentrism. “Cherokee” is a name
passed down through multiple languages including Portuguese, Spanish,
French, and English by late 1600s meaning “cave people”; however,
the Cherokees named themselves “Ani-yunwi-ya,” or “real
People.” (ITO., p. 61).The Cherokee language broke off from the
Iroquoian language about 3,500 to 3,800 years ago and the tribe may
have originated from the Appalachian Mountains before A.D. 1000.
(ibid., p. 63). Prior to the Indian Removal Act of 1830, there were
about 16,000
Cherokee Indians
living in the Southeastern part of the United States. In the 2020
Census more than 1.5 million persons claim some Cherokee heritage
while the tribal nation reports 450,000
citizens enrolled.
Wildcat
Banking: experiments in money creation
Money
is a singular thing.... Over all history it has oppressed nearly all
people in one of two ways: either it has been abundant and very
unreliable, or reliable and very scarce. However, for many there has
been a third affliction: for them money has been both unreliable and
scarce.
--J.K. Galbraith, “Age of Uncertainty,” (pdf.) p. 161.
I
am sure you can find more interesting reading other than American
monetary banking policies of the early eighteen hundreds! I am not a
total economic reductionist. The human spirit is not exclusively
determined by material existence, but it certainly profoundly shapes
spirit. In the German language the word “Geist”
means both “spirit,” and “mind.” I believe the severe
economic recessions that characterized this historical period was a
powerful catalyst adding to the general desperation of the white
settlers seeking capital in the form of land, and the indigenous
people's desperation to continue life on communal land. The Indians
were free of the need for money that saturates every level of life
for most of their tribe's existence until the late Eighteenth
century. A monetary system and the need to pay taxes in legal tender
is a powerful force of cultural assimilation.
''If wealth is placed where it bears interest, it comes back to you redoubled,[3] an Egyptian proverb observes. Another compares making a loan to having a baby, viewing there production of numbers in sexual terms. The word for “interest” in every ancient language meant a newborn....”
Compound Rates of Interest: A Four-Thousand Year Overview."
Earlier
in part one, I mentioned banker's
compound interest time
as the kind of time overlooked in some historical reviews of the
Indian Removal Act of 1830. The new American nation experienced
multiple economic depressions because of excessive note issued by
state banks. Some Founding Fathers mimicked the monetary policies of
Britain banking model, but Thomas Jefferson and others were
suspicious of central banks fearing corruption and ruinous financial
speculation such as occurred during the British
Credit Crisis
1772-1773 believed to be England's first peacetime financial crisis
that also greatly affected the American colonies, and the French
financial crash of 1720 caused by escaped felon John
Law's bank failure of Banque
Générale.
The dangers of excessive printing of currency and stocks were known
from these devastating monetary scandals. The
United States had no central banks by law: “The
Constitution restricted the right of coinage to the Federal
government. It expressly forbade the states to issue paper money.
And, a far less convenient inhibition, it also forbade the national
government to issue paper money as well (“Money,
whence it came, where it went,”
John K. Galbraith, Boston:
Houghton Mifflin,1975,
p. 68; referred to as MWW)
(pdf.).”
The
trend was the same then as it is today: a law is an obstacle--until
it's ignored. The state legislature of Kentucky got around the
prohibition of state-owned banks by only providing the funds to buy
printing plates, the paper, and office furniture while all other
expenses were to be paid by the money printed. Chief Justice John
Marshall ruled the state bank unconstitutional, but he died in 1837,
and the Supreme Court allowed the issuing of the “bills of credit”
by the Kentucky bank. (See details, MWW., p. 87). This pattern of
deceit will appear again when Jackson enforces the Indian Removal Act
of 1830.
“The citizens of the new Republic discovered banking
as an adolescent discovers fornication.”
--J.K. Galbraith, Age of Uncertainty,
The
United States didn't have a national central bank and so chartered
the First Bank of the United States in 1791-1811 that was modeled on
the British Bank
of England system.
The American monetary system at the time amounted to a collection of
foreign currencies such as the pounds,
shillings and pence. After
a severe bout of hyperinflation caused by financing the War of 1812
against the British, a Second Bank of the United States was created
with a twenty-year charter in 1816. A responsibility
of The U.S. Second Bank was to make sure the uncharted wildcat banks
did not make excessive loans and could redeem banknotes
issued on “the promise to pay the holder a specific amount species
money (gold and silver).” Wildcat
banks
issued paper currency within the United States but were inadequately
backed by chartered states banks. During The
Free Banking Era
from 1836 to 1865 these two banks antagonistically existed together
as the state-chartered banks forced all banknotes be redeemed into
gold, or silver as soon as possible, but instead these notes were
often collateralized by government bonds, or real
estate notes.
There was the constant risk of possessing unredeemable banknotes.
Often the issuing bank was far away in a remote location making the
notes difficult to redeem. Also, massive fraud was a problem. In one
case the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Bank had $500,000 worth of
notes issued backed by only $86.48 in specie reserves. The bank's
species reserve requirement was 30% of notes in circulation. And in
another case during bank inspection of gold and silver reserves by
commissioners, boxes filled with nails, glass, lead shot, and a thin
layer of gold coins on top were moved from bank to bank just ahead of
the bank inspectors (See
details
MWW., p. 87).
The
American wildcat bank wars lasted generally from 1812 to about 1847.
Many business owners believed it was their human right to print
money. Railroads got into the banking business resulting in newly
built railroads that led to nowhere and depositors holding mounds of
worthless paper. Economist John K. Galbraith writes of how this flood
of paper began: "Free from the discipline of the Bank and
encouraged by the War of 1812 and the postwar boom, the number of
state banks now multiplied — from 88 in 1811 to 208 in 1815. Their
note issue increased from an estimated $45 million in 1812 to $100
million in 1817. The biggest expansion was in the new country in the
Appalachians and the West...with a mass of counterfeit paper (MWW.,
p. 75).
Galbraith follows the explosion of new state-owned banks: “Between
1830 and 1836, the number of banks more than doubled — the increase
was from 330 to 713. Note circulation went up more or less in
proportion — from $61 million to $140 million. Specie holdings —
holdings of gold and silver — showed, as might be expected, a more
modest gain — these increased only from $22 million to $40 million
(MWW., p. 86).“ By the end of the wildcat banking era the damage
was considerable confirming Thomas Jefferson's fear: “An estimated
7000 different bank notes were in greater or less degree of
circulation, the issue of some 1600 different or defunct state banks.
Also, since paper and printing were cheap and the right of note issue
was defended as a human right, individuals had gone into the business
on their own behalf. An estimated 5000 counterfeit issues were
currently in circulation (MWW., p. 89).”
“The
real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial
element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the
days of Andrew Jackson... The country is going through a repetition
of Jackson's fight with the Bank of the United States — only on a
far bigger and broader basis.”
--Letter to Col. Edward Mandell House (21 November 1933); as quoted in “F.D.R.: His Personal Letters, 1928-1945,” edited by Elliott Roosevelt (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1950), pg. 373
During
the entire 1800s there were five depressions with the first appearing
after the 1812 War as the Panic
of 1819.
The Bank of Baltimore nearly collapsed and the new head of the bank,
Langdon Cheves, severely cut new loans and foreclosed
on debtors. In 1823 Nicholas
Biddle
became head of the parent bank, The Bank of Philidelphia, enforcing
even harsher regulations on state banks which started a bitter feud
between banker Biddle and land speculator President Andrew Jackson.
Biddle antagonized Jackson by suggesting his importance was equal to
the President. Pro-banking groups and Senators attempted in 1832 to
recharter the Second Bank of the United States before its official
expiration in 1836 which was vetoed by an angry Jackson who wanted
less state-bank regulations. Being accused of corruption by Jackson,
Biddle did what is still done today when the Federal Reserve
manipulates monetary policy: he withheld loans causing a recession
while Jackson was running for reelection in 1832. However, Biddle's
behavior so angered voters that Jackson won as the preceived lesser
evil. Jackson got his second term and established U.S. Banking policy
for the next eighty years. (see greater details; MWW., p. 80-81).
The
Fertile Blackbelt
Already
in 1831 the Choctaw and Seminoles were being forced out of their
communal lands. During this economically precarious time, if one was
careful, free land could be converted into hard money, gold and
silver, in the form of easy bank loans for farming capital. The
desire for free land is yet another driving force adding to the dark
matter of desperation forcing the indigenous tribes to give up their
communal lands only to be used as bank collateral. What was a great
fortune of the indigenous peoples now became a misfortune: their
homeland was in a unique geographical region with the richest black
soil in the world reaching three feet deep not unlike the rich
“Fertile
Crescent,”
or the cradle
of civilization
in the Middle East. The region known as the “Black
Belt”
of Alabama was once a shallow sea some 70 to 80 million years ago
with vast deposits of dead shell fish collecting over eons enriching
the soil with calcium then the receding waters exposed land ideal for
growing cotton which absorbs the beds of ancient chalk. One old peach
tree grove had tree trunks some 18 inches in diameter.
A
map shows the crescent-shaped
Black Belt Prairie includes tribal lands of the Creek,
Choctaw, and the Chickasaw Nations. Yet, another factor added to
Georgia's urgency to remove the Indian tribes: gold was found on
Cherokee land in 1929. Cherokee territory covered eight states and
the southern Appalahian Mountains from 1721 to 1819, but lost over
ninety percent during the 1700s.
Map
of Five Tribes homelands in 1830 - 1834
New American Slave Empire
“They [Southeastern tribes] have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement which are essential to any favorable change in their condition. Established in the midst of another and a superior race, and without appreciating the causes of their inferiority or seeking to control them, they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and ere long disappear.”
Professor
Claudio
Saunt
("Saunt" rhymes with "font")
is a Richard B. Russell Professor in American History and Co-Director
of the Center for Virtual History at the University of Georgia. In
his book “Unworthy
Republic:
The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian
Territory” (2020),
Saunt explores the Indian Removal Act of 1830. He argues that the
forced displacement of 80,000 Native American men, women, and
children was part of a broader strategy aimed at establishing a large
slave empire in the southeastern United States, extending even to the
island of Cuba.
Southern politicians, slave owners, planters, and land speculators
were the primary forces seeking to remake the South into a super
state by depopulating Georgia,
Alabama, and Mississippi
of Indian tribes and replacing them with cotton plantation slaves.
For the Southern Jacksonians cotton and free slave labor would result
in more wealth than gold mining. The Democratic two termed President,
Andrew Jackson, was a land speculator, veteran military leader, and
experienced treaty negotiator making
him a natural ally of Southern slave states. Dr. Saunt describes the
multiple congressional voting procedures to pass the Indian Removal
Act in his excellent video lecture resulting in its passage by only
five votes out of 199 casted. (“White
Supremacy and Indian Removal: Why the United States Dispossessed the
Cherokees in the Age of Andrew Jackson,”
)(2022)(here after SL).
Even though the removal act was unpopular causing some procedural
votes to pass by only one vote, the house was militantly Jacksonian.
Also, up until after the Civil War in 1868 the U.S. Constitution's
undemocratic Three-Fifths clause nearly guaranteed Southern states
legislative advantage by adding the state population and the slave
population with each slave counting only three-fifths of a human
being, then calculating
the number of House of Representatives votes each state would have
for legislation. This padding of votes resulted in the Southern
states having 21 more votes than the north.
“...convert Indian soil to slave soil.”
--Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri commenting
on goal of the 1830 Indian Removal Act (JR., p. 77).
The
removal act granted half a million dollars to set up governments in
former Indian lands and giving Jackson the power to trade Indian land
for parts of the Louisiana Purchase, pay the tribes removal expenses,
pay one year's subsistence income, and compensate the exiled tribes
for lost land. Much of the monies set aside by the removal was stolen
by corrupt government officials. (“The
Oxford History of the American People,” Samuel
Eliot Morison Vol. I, (1965) p. 446; OHAP.)
(pdf.).
Bands of Shawnee, Delaware, and Wyandot in the North were also moved
east, but the Five Tribes were particularly troublesome. The Removal
act made it illegal for an Indian to dig for gold on their own land.
Already in 1930, some four thousand miners were working along the
Georgia
Yahoola Creek sub-watershed.
The Georgia legislature passed laws making it illegal for any Indian
to testify in court, or for tribal councils to meet.
The Politics of Aporia
“.... they could remain where they were risk starving to death, or take a chance walking hundreds of miles through hostile communities to distant
and unknown lands in the West.”
--Professor Claudio Saunt
The
Greek term “ἀπορίᾳ”
when translated with reference to place
means
“difficulty
of passing.”
“πορίᾳ”
without an alpha “ἀ”
means
a “pathway,”
but combined with the letter “ἀ” a negative prefix (alpha
privative)
changes the meaning to “no
pathway,
or “no
way out.”
However, when applied to persons,
aporia
means
“poverty.”
Native Americans
who lived on private, individually owned lands were not subject to
removal. The
tribes were continually faced with the dilemma of abandoning their
communal lands-- or, face death. But these dilemmas were human made
Hobson's choices only giving the illusion of having a choice.
Jackson's strategy was to divide the tribes into factions and instill
fear to discourage tribal unity as each group dealt with their own
situation and fears. Despite
the fact that the United States entered into treaties to safeguard
Cherokee citizens, white settlers would often threaten them, shoot
them on sight, steal their livestock, intentionally kill the local
wild animal population, and restrict access to ammunition needed for
hunting. These actions were aimed at pushing the Cherokee people
further west. One
consequence of such hyper-factionalization of the Indian nations was
tribal and inter-tribal violence. The tribal people either believed
removal could be halted by appeal to the courts and American public,
or that removal was enviable. Principle Chief John Ross belong to the
first group, and Major Ridge the second.
I
would like to avoid simply presenting a lot of data about the key
figures connected to the removal of the Five Tribes. Instead, I want
to paint a picture of the experiences of those who suffered during
this period of profound injustice inflicted upon an understandably
bewildered ancient people.
"The Great Spirit made us both....He gave me lands and He gave you lands. You came here and we received you as brother....We do not want riches, but we want to train our children right....But, by and by, the Great Father sent out a different kind of men; men who cheated and drank whiskey; men who were so bad that the Great Father could not keep them at home and so sent them out there."
--Chief Red Cloud in a speech in New York City, IHS., p. 91-2.
Cherokee
Chief Major Ridge
Major
Ridge was a child refugee in the conflict between Indians and
settlers. As a young boy he once got lost in the countryside, but,
he managed to navigate his way back home by following a familiar
ridge-line, which earned him the nickname “Ridge.”
As
he grew older, Major Ridge became involved in the Cherokee-American
wars, fighting against murdering frontiersmen taking his first
American scalp when he was only seventeen. He later earned the title
“Major” after fighting along side General Andrew Jackson during
the Red
Stick War,
which pitted the more radical northern Upper Creeks against settlers.
The Upper Creeks were aligned with the British and were actively
resisting settler expansion. Ridge's involvement in these conflicts
also extended to the battles against the Seminole tribes,
contributing to the annexation of Florida from Spain. Even in 1813,
General Jackson was playing various tribal factions against each
other, including the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Lower Creeks, to
undermine the Upper Creeks. Following the Upper Creeks’ defeat at
the Battle
of Horseshoe Bend,
Jackson exacted revenge by forcing all
Creeks
to relinquish over 21 million acres of land, which included parts of
southern Georgia and central Alabama.
Historian Ronald Takaki reports in his book, “A
Different Mirror,”
(2009) that after the Battle
of Horseshoe Bend
Jackson's soldiers made
bridle reins from skin cut from Indian corpses, and cut off the tip
of the nose of the dead to verify body counts.
Major Ridge, like all tribal Chiefs, in the hope of keeping their
land had to constantly choose sides in conflicts between the American
government, British, Spanish, Northern abolitionist, Southern slave
states, and inner-tribal factions. He
believed that establishing positive relationships with the U.S.
government and culturally assimilating was the best way to protect
their homeland.
Ridge
exemplified this belief through his actions, setting up one of the
most
modern plantations in all of Georgia tended by thirty African
American slaves. Some indigenous Indians dressed better in deerskin
clothing, lived in better houses, and were more literate in their
native language than the invading white settlers. His pragmatic
approach to leadership is reminiscent of a pragmatist.
John
Ridge
“An Indian is almost considered a curse. 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.”
--John Ridge in “Trail of Tears,” American Experience episode 3; @ 19 mins. Major
Ridge also focused on education for his family. He sent his son, John
Ridge, to the Foreign
Mission School in Cornwall, Connecticut,
to receive a European American classical education. John Ridge later
followed in his father’s footsteps and became a Cherokee tribal
leader in 1835. However, when he married a white woman named Sarah
Bird Northrup, the local community expressed outrage, which
culminated in an attack on the Christian seminary that burned down in
1826. John
Ridge played a significant role in negotiating better terms with
President Adams concerning the Treaty
of Washington
(1826)
on behalf of the Upper Creeks. He gained considerable experience as a
negotiator through his involvement in numerous tribal delegations,
meeting with U.S. officials in Washington, D.C.
*Author
Rebecca Nagle is a direct descendant of Major Ridge and has published
“By The Fire We Carry,” (Fall 2024) that reviews this historical
era in greater detail with insights into the judicial consequences
for Native Americans leading to today.
Chief
John Ross
"My
people have kept me in the harness, not of my seeking, but of their
own choice. I have never deceived them, and now I look back, not one
act of my public life rises up to upbraid me. I have done the best I
could, and today, upon this bed of sickness, my heart approves all I
have done. And still I am, John Ross, the same John Ross of former
years, unchanged.”
--John Ross, April 3, 1866, “John Ross, Cherokee Chief “ by G.E. Moulton (1978)
(pdf.) here after JR, p. 1. John
Ross is a thought-provoking character in American history. He has an
Indian name, "Kooweskoowe," which means "Mysterious
Little White Bird," a reference to a mythical bird from Cherokee
oral tradition. The Cherokee people regarded Ross as a profound
thinker, and I would describe him as a rational idealist
or an
idealist,
shaped by his education from these mysterious missionaries. Ross's
only surviving daughter, Jane, attended a
Moravian
Female Academy, Salem in North Carolina for a time. Under
the mentorship of Chief Major Ridge, Ross served as the Principal
Chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1828 to 1862. In 1810, he was
designated a U.S. Cherokee Indian agent and fought alongside General
Jackson at the Battle
of Horseshoe Bend,
similar to Major Ridge. Chief Ross, who had only one-eighth Cherokee
heritage, was later targeted by certain U.S. Indian agents that
included Georgia Governor G.R. Gilmer, Colonel John W. A. Sanford,
and the nihilistic Reverend John F. Schermerhorn, who was referred to
by the Cherokees as “the devil’s horn”. They attempted to take
advantage of Chief Ross's mixed ancestry to drive a wedge between the
full-blood and mixed-blood members of the Cherokee Nation. But
growing up working in his father's store, Ross built strong
connections within the Cherokee community and eventually became one
of the wealthiest Cherokees, owning a plantation that employed 20
enslaved individuals, along with a trading business and a ferry
service. His father, Daniel Ross, valued education highly; he
established a large home library, hired tutors, and enrolled his son
into a Christian seminary that offered advanced courses. Although
John Ross was not fluent in Cherokee, his impressive proficiency in
English garnered the attention of tribal leaders and government
officials leading to his selection in 1816 as part of the first
Cherokee delegation to Washington, D.C. In
1819, he was appointed to the Cherokee
National Committee,
which was the only empowered body to negotiate treaties on behalf of
the tribal nation. Throughout his career, Ross focused on resisting
the ongoing pressures from the U.S. War Department to cede ever more
Cherokee land. Ross
wrote the complex constitution that was first adopted by the Cherokee
Nation in 1827, and the following year, he was elected as the first
Principal Chief.
Supreme Court Rulings on State and Tribal Jurisdictions: Marshall Trilogy
“And he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, a cry! Woe to those who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is no more room, and who are made to dwell alone in the midst of the land.” --(Isaiah 5:7).
Georgia
tried every pretext imaginable to test and extend control over
Cherokee territory. The term "Marshall Trilogy" refers to a
series of three landmark Supreme Court cases adjudicated by Chief
Justice John Marshall, which addressed the jurisdictions of Cherokee
laws and Georgian sovereignty. Ultimately these cases led to the
passage of the Indian Removal Act by President Andrew Jackson and are
as follows: 1. Johnson
v. McIntosh (1823)
established that private individuals could not acquire land in
violation of Cherokee law. 2. Cherokee
Nation v. Georgia
(1831) held the Cherokee Nation possessed a right to self-governance
within its territory and dodged the question of Cherokee soverignty
by categorizing its territory as a "domestic
dependent nation"
rather than a foreign nation. 3. Worcester
v. Georgia
(1832): The state of Georgia imprisoned missionary Worcester and ten
others for entering Cherokee territory without state permission.
Chief Justice Marshall determined that individual states lack the
authority to regulate Indian affairs, which fall exclusively under
the purview of the federal government.
"And yet these white men would be always telling us of their great Book which God had given them. They would persuade us that every man was bad who did not believe in it. They told us a great many things which they said was written in the Book; and wanted us to believe it. We would likely have done so, if we had seen them practice what they pretended to believe— and acted according to the good words which they told us. But no! While they held the big Book in one hand, in the other they held murderous weapons — guns and swords — wherewith to kill us poor Indians.
Ah! And they did too. They killed those who believed in their Book as well as
those who did not. They made no distinctions.”
--A Delaware chief spoke to David Heckewelder about the Gnadenhutten Massacre, 1782, when ninety Christian Indians were slain by 200 whites, led by Colonel David Williamson, because two renegade Indians had done injury to a white man many miles away.
“I Have Spoken” (1991) here after IHS (
pdf.) p. 133
These Supreme Court cases required careful attention from Chief John Ross, who needed to inform his fellow citizens about Georgia's legal and probing efforts to remove the Five Tribes from their land. After Sequoyah, also known as George Guess, developed a functional writing system for the Cherokee language both Chief Ross and the respected Moravian convert, Chief Charles Hicks, established in 1828 the first Cherokee language newspaper of the tribe, named the Cherokee Phoenix. Publishing a weekly newspaper was made possible by Samuel Worcester, a missionary from the American Board mission at Brainerd Mission, who received donated board funds to purchase the printing press, and type faces. Elias Boudinot, also known as Buck Watie, later took on the role of editor. However, the press was later seized by Major General Winfield Scott just before the forced removal of the Cherokee people in 1838.Troublesome
Christian Missionaries
Samuel
Austin Worcester also played a significant role supervising the
translation of classic literature and the Christian Bible into
Cherokee. A blend of Protestant Reformed groups among the
missionaries advised the Cherokee leaders that they were being
cheated in treaty negotiations with the federal government. They
encouraged the Cherokee to litigate Supreme Court case against the
state of Georgia in order to protect their land and rights—this was
Worcester's message. Ironically, his name in Cherokee meant "the
messenger." Georgia's governor, G. R. Gilmer, wanted to kill the
messengers by driving these subversive Christian missionaries out of
the state. Jeremiah
Evarts
was an official on the American
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions,
a largely
Congregationalists
and Presbyterian organization that loyally supported
the Five Tribes against removal. In response, Georgia passed a law
requiring white men to obtain a license to settle in Cherokee
territory and Christian missionaries to sign a pledge of allegiance
to Georgia. Missionary Rev. Worcester and eleven others refused to
comply with this law, recognizing that it was a tactic to undermine
their material and spiritual support for the Cherokee people.
Consequently, they were arrested by Georgian soldiers and sentenced
to four years of hard labor. While nine of the men were pardoned,
Worcester and Elizur Butler chose to reject their pardons to allow
their cases to proceed to court for a decision. Ultimately, the
Supreme Court ruled that the Cherokee Nation was solely under the
jurisdiction of the federal government, leading to Rev. Worcester and
Butler's release.
Throughout this entire court process, politicians in the South who
supported removal continually warned of the possibility of civil war
if the southern states did not achieve their desired outcome.
Andrew
Jackson's Reign of Caprice and Whim of Power
“On
all important questions, when a difference of opinion arise in regard
to their rights and interests, the sentiments of the majority should
prevail. . .. The duty of the minority to yield, and unite in the
support of the measure, this is the rule of order, sanctioned by
patriotism and virtue; whilst a contrary course would lead to
faction, confusion and injury.’’
--John Ross, General Council meeting, October, 1833, JR., p. 52
While
officials in Georgia feigned ignorance about the boundaries of tribal
lands with the goal of expanding their laws over the Cherokee
territory, they overlooked the presence of land-hungry intruders who
harassed and committed crimes against Native Americans. Many settlers
viewed Chief Ross as a significant barrier to the acquisition of free
Indian land. On November 30, 1831, Chief Ross was visiting Major
Ridge when a man named Harris approached and inquired if Ross had
seen a horse thief who had used his ferry the day before. Ross stated
that he had not seen the thief. The following day, as Ross was riding
alongside his brother Andrew, Harris rode up behind them and shouted,
"Ross, I have been wanting to kill you for a long time (JR., p.
47).” Reacting quickly, Ross turned his horse and rode away just
as a gunshot was fired, missing him.
“Build a fire under them. When it gets hot enough, they'll move.”
--Andrew Jackson ordered removal seven months after losing the
Supreme Court case Worcester vs. Georgia.
Ross
commented to the Tennessean, David Crockett of Jackson's removal
policy: “Cupidity and Avarice by sophistry intrigue and corruption
may for a while prevail—but the day of retributive justice must and
will come, when integrity and moral worth will predominate and make
the shameless monster hide its head (JR., p. 42).” Philosopher
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a letter to President Martin Van Buren on
April 23, 1838, protesting the removal of Cherokee Indians from
Georgia, in part warning, "... However feeble the sufferer and
however great the oppressor, it is in the nature of things that the
blow should recoil upon the aggressor.....”
Ross
was threatened with arrest for not agreeing with the unauthorized New
Echota Treaty
(1835) signed by only a minority of Cherokees which gave legal
authority to Georgia for Indian removal. Some US Indian agents,
settlers, and con-men continually sought any person--sober or
not--willing to sale public lands for some ridiculous price. As a
deterrent, Chief Major Ridge rewrote in 1829 an ancient “blood law”
that forbade any person from selling public land without approval of
the Cherokee nation or otherwise suffer the death penalty by any
citizen “in
any manner most convenient.”
Ironically, Major Ridge himself was accused by some Cherokees for
violating the blood law by signing the Echota Treaty. In
1834, Major Ridge was part of a faction that supported the treaty,
which included his son, John Ridge, as well as Elias Boudinot, David
Vann, Andrew Ross (who was the son of John Ross), and T.J. Pack (a
cousin of Ross)--and of course the state of Georgia backed by the
executive office of the President. Ross
and sixteen other persons composed the anit-treaty group. John Ross
closely followed the blood law restriction, which aimed to ensure
that no treaties could be negotiated without the full knowledge and
unanimous approval of the entire nation. (see details, JR., pp. 56,
68, 114).
"We have been made to drink of the bitter cup of humiliation; treated like dogs; our lives, our liberties, the sport of white men; our country and the graves of our Fathers torn from us, in cruel succession: until driven from river to river, from forest to forest, and thro a period of upwards of two hundred years, rolled back nation upon nation, we find ourselves fugitives, vagrants and strangers in our own country, and look
forward to the period when our descendants will perhaps be totally
extinguished by wars, driven at the point of the bayonet into the
Western Ocean or reduced to... the condition of slaves."
--John Ross's speech in 1834 to the Seneca delegation in Washington, JR., p. 55
President
Jackson simply ignored Marshall's Supreme Court ruling in Worcester
v. Georgia
and continued enforcing the Indian Removal Act of 1830 which
guaranteed Georgia would not violate any earlier Indian treaties. In
1831, Georgia enacted a law that prohibited the Cherokee General
Council from holding meetings, imposing a penalty of four years of
prison labor for those who violated this law. As a result, Chief John
Ross had to conduct council meetings in Red Hill, Tennessee, instead.
Already in 1833 Georgia had surveyed the land into small lots granted
all Cherokee land to Georgian citizens by lottery so that any
Cherokee could be approached by a stranger with a lottery ticket
demanding they leave their home and possessions. During 1835 Ross
returned from Washington to his farm in Alabama arriving at evening
and discovered that his family was gone, and a total stranger was
living in his home! While Ross is enroute from Washington the Head of
the Georgia Guard, Colonel William N. Bishop placed all of Ross's
property in the possession of a new rightful “legal claimant”
including the estate's fields, ferry, and farm improvements. Ross had
to search for his missing family and move to a small log cabin in Red
Hill. (See details, JR., p. 62).
John
Ross was a target of President Jackson for his refusal to sign the
fraudulent New
Echota Treaty, along with several other questionable agreements that
granted Georgia the authority to carry out Indian removal. To
exert more pressure on Ross, Jackson halted the payment of the
agreed-upon annuities that were owed to the Cherokees, resulting in
severe financial difficulties for both the Cherokee people and their
government. On
November 7, 1837, Ross was in his modest two room cabin at Red Hill,
hosting the renowned American actor, poet, and playwright John
Howard Payne,
who had extensively documented Cherokee history, culture, and
language although his work was never published. Without warning,
around twenty-five armed members of the Georgia Guards stormed into
the cabin, arresting both Payne and Ross. Payne was accused of being
a French spy and an advocate for abolition, and was slapped around by
Sergeant Young. Ross is accused of obstructing a census of the
Cherokee people. Ross was released ten days later, and Payne four
days after Ross. There was speculation by both men of the involvement
of Benjamin F. Currey, the Jackson-appointed emigration agent for the
Cherokees, and Colonel William N. Bishop for setting up the
arrests--the same Georgia Guardsman that signed away Ross's home and
business.
Also, Ross's brother, Lewis Ross, had been threatened with property
seizures by Currey if he opposed signing the Echota Treaty. Lewis was
arrested days before his brother and released from jail. (see
details, JR., p.
69). The
land owned by pro-treaty Chief Major Ridge was protected from being
seized by Georgia Governor Wilson Lumpkin. This action was taken to
maintain divisions among tribal groups and facilitate their removal.
"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's." --Exodus, Chapter 20:17During
1835, Tennessee Governor William Carroll appointed the despised
Reverend John F. Schermerhorn as commissioner to oversee negotiations
for the removal of the Cherokee people. However, when Chief Ross
declined Schermerhorn's request for a meeting, the Reverend responded
by presenting forged documents that questioned Ross's status as a
Cherokee citizen.
Later
on, Schermerhorn would criticize Ross, alleging that he exerted
"unrestrained influence over the Indigenous people... trained
like a Swiss guard, to obey only orders (JR., p. 64)."
Then as now
every accusation is a confession. Additionally, Schermerhorn
and Curry permanently seized the Cherokee printing press to prevent
publication of material by anti-treaty delegates.
The
Cherokee Trail of Tears
“ 'Cherokees,'
we are answered, 'You're only Indians, and you cannot expect us to
quarrel among ourselves over you. We know we have made promises. Oh
yes, the white man is honest and a Christian. We know we're a
Christian', said to white men, 'We know we're honest, but don't
expect us to keep promises made to you. You're only Indians!' “
--John Ross, Speech in “The Trail of Tears,” (1970) @18:00 min.
After
some thirty years of effort by the U.S. Government to move native
American tribes from east of the Mississippi river, Jackson was able
to make removal a reality by forcing some twenty-six tribes to cede
land with eight-six
treaties hoping they would “...cast
off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and
Christian community (1830
speech).”
In
1837 Martin Van Buren became President, but continued removal. Here
are the removal dates and estimated death
tolls of the Five Tribes:
15,000
Choctaw moved from 1831 to 1836 resulting in about 2,000 to 4,000
deaths.
20,000
Creek (Muskogee) moved 1834 to 1837 with 3,500 to 4,500 deaths.
4,600
Chickasaw moved 1837 to 1847 with 500 to 800 deaths.
16,000
Cherokees moved 1836 to 1838 with 4,000 to 8,000 deaths. The Bureau
of Indians Affairs reported that by 1841 some 25,911 Cherokees had
moved.
2,833-
4,000 Seminoles moved 1832 to1842 with 5,500 war dead in the Second
Seminole War resisting removal from Florida.
We
must remember that one hundred years after Christopher Columbus
arrived in North America about 90% of Native Americans died from war,
slavery, and disease in the era know as the “great
dying”
amounting to about 56 million deaths. Many Choctaws, especially
children, died on the long trek to Oklahoma from
influenza,
measles,
and
the
first cholera epidemic ever to infect North America in 1832.
John
Ross engaged in legal battles and achieved a significant victory in
the Supreme Court case Worcester
v. Georgia,
which validated his legal strategies as effective means of resisting
forced removal. However, despite this ruling, President Jackson and
the state of Georgia disregarded federal law. They proceeded with the
removal of the Cherokee people after the minority pro-treaty faction
signed the New
Echota Treaty
in 1835, which authorized their displacement. Throughout this period,
Ross endured continuous persecution from the state of Georgia. This
included attacks on his character, judicial harassment, the
withholding of treaty funds while U.S. commissioners subsidized
pro-treaty party, unlawful searches of his home, seizure of his
documents including all property, as well as death threats, a failed
assassination attempt, unjust arrests of himself and brother, and the
stirring of dissent among factions fueled by outside agitation
propaganda agents. Federal government officials created material
dependency in treaty agreements only to withhold promised supplies to
force removal. Because
of the huge imbalance of power, all of Ross's appeals to democracy,
morality, and logic were ineffective. Ross came to realize in May or
April in 1838 that removal was inevitable and redirected his
attention to assisting the Cherokee people making the over 800-mile
journey to Oklahoma by boat, wagon, and foot a little less brutal.
Chief Ross was able to convince General Scott to allow thirteen
detachments of Cherokees to organize their own removal. Ross later
discovered someone forged his signature on the bogus Echota Treaty.
The
pro-treaty leader Major Ridge knew the purpose of the military
Georgia Guard led by Colonel William N. Bishop was to exterminate the
Indians if they refuse to obey state orders to remove. Land-greedy
Georgians who could not control themselves began driving Indians out
of their homes even before evacuation decrees were announced. Most
likely the pragmatic Major Ridge decided to sign the Echota
Treaty
out of concern for the safety of his people. If the tribes refused to
leave, they would be slaughtered without any reserved land
whatsoever. In contrast, John Ross held an unwavering faith in the
U.S. Constitution and the democratic process, while President Jackson
placed his trust in brute military violence. Both Ridge and Ross
witnessed Jackson's willingness to use violence and inflict cruelty
upon Native Americans during wartime. A member of the Tennessee
militia named Davy Crockett witnessed the actions of Jackson’s
troops during the conflict with the Upper Creek Indians, known as the
"Red Sticks." He described harrowing scenes in which
militia members shot women and children "like dogs." In one
instance, the militia set fire to a house containing Indian women and
children, tragically allowing a 12-year-old boy to burn alive. The
following day, when the militia found themselves short on supplies,
they returned to the charred remains of the house in search of food.
Crockett recounted the grisly scene:
“No
provisions had yet reached us, and we had now been for several days
on half rations. However, we went back to our Indian town on the next
day, when many of the carcasses of the Indians were still to be seen.
They looked very awful, for the burning had not entirely consumed
them, but given them a terrible appearance, at least what remained of
them. It was, somehow or other, found out that the house had a potato
cellar under it, and an immediate examination was made, for we were
all as hungry as wolves. We found a fine chance of potatoes in it,
and hunger compelled us to eat them, though I had a little rather
not, if I could have helped it, for the oil of the Indians we had
burned up on the day before, had run down on them, and they looked
like they had been stewed with fat meat (“Davy
Crockett's Own Story,” 1955, M.
Glaser, p. 71)(pdf.).”
The
term “Wetico”
(alternatively spelled “Wetiko” or “Witiko”) originates from
Cree and other Algonquian languages, denoting a cannibalistic
spirit
or monster characterized by greed, excess, and selfish consumption.
However, Wetico encompasses more than just the act of cannibalism; it
also signifies the "eater of life." In essence, the
European settlers acted as parasites upon the Indigenous peoples.
The Indian Removal Act of 1830 only granted the President the legal power to negotiate the exchange of federal lands in the East for Western lands. President Martin Van Buren gave Major General Winfield Scott command of six thousand federal U.S. and state militia troops in the Cherokee Nation during April 1838 and began the roundup of 16,000 Cherokees on May 26th. Stockade prison camps were built to hold Indians for removal, an invention inherited from the experienced British imperialists. Following Scott's orders, soldiers began actively seeking out Native Americans, apprehending families at mealtime, men working in the fields, and children playing. No one was spared from the extensive trauma inflicted, including the young, sick, elderly, and disabled. As these persons were forcibly taken to the stockades, they often faced violence during the journey. In many cases, groups of looters followed Scott's soldiers, burning the abandoned homes of the Native Americans, stealing livestock, and even robbing graves to pilfer jewelry--and teeth for sale to dentists. Meanwhile, John Ross, who had tirelessly fought to protect the Cherokee people from such injustices, received the grim news that his wife, Quatie Ross, had died of pneumonia while on a steamboat to Oklahoma. Her illness came after she selflessly gave her blanket to a sick child during a snowstorm.
Jackson's
Cronies
“[white men] who, like vultures, are watching, ready to... strip them of everything
they have or expect from the Government of the United States.’’
--Brigadier General John E. Wool, who had been placed in command of United States troops in the Cherokee Nation (JR., p. 77).
Professor Claudio Saunt's historical research reveals that the government officials responsible for the removal process lacked the necessary logistical expertise to manage such a massive operation. Army officer George Gibson was appointed by President Jackson as the Commissary General of Subsistence. His job involved overseeing about a half-dozen War Department accountants who tracked the costs associated with supplying troops and the expenses related to treaty-negotiated migrations. John Ross scrupulously tracked the costs charged against the Cherokee Nation for removal. Notably, Gibson was a longtime friend of Jackson, which led to the Office of Indian Affairs (which would later become the Bureau of Indian Affairs) being completely bypassed. Professor Saunt points out the federal government bureaucracy amounted to 10,000 employees of which 8,000 delivered the U.S. Mail. Gibson's team of accountants back in Washington D.C., “had no experience transporting families, the elderly, sick people, pregnant women, infants, toddlers who were all unwilling to move in the first place and were not really likely to cooperate (SL., @ 33:54 min).” The critical necessity for essential supplies— food, tents, medicine, clothing, materials for bridge crossing, and other resources—to reach weary migrating groups navigating unclear maps and routes westward amidst harsh winter storms, was unfortunately entrusted to self-serving subcontractors.
"I could not but think that some fearful retribution would come upon us. The scene seemed to me like a distempered dream or something worthy of the
Dark Ages then the present reality."
--Lieutenant John Phelps wrote in his diary on June 22, 1838, during the roundup of Cherokee Indians at Fort Butler, North Carolina.
What Ross had feared became a reality. At the total mercy of merchants Nashville charged high prices for supplies, exchange rates for federal currency shorted buyers, toll roads and ferry crossings imposed additional financial burdens on the Native Americans. In 1838, a group of Cherokee people traveling from Red Clay across Tennessee and Kentucky finally reached the Ohio River, opposite southern Illinois, at a place called Berry's Ferry. There, the ferry's owner compelled the Cherokee travelers to wait for an extended period. Seeking refuge, they sheltered under a bluff known as “Mantle Rock,” where some tragically succumbed to exposure and illness. Under usual circumstances, the ferry would charge twelve cents for a crossing (equivalent to approximately $3.43 today). However, the exiled Cherokees were charged a steep fee of one dollar each (roughly $28.61 adjusted for inflation). During that harsh winter, Berry's Ferry amassed $10,000 in earnings (according to sources such as Wiki: Trail of Tears; Cardinalpine). Due to illness afflicting many in the Cherokee groups, local people were hesitant to offer assistance while other locals would shoot and kill some dispossessed Indian refugee to keep the group from stopping. Professor Saunt tells of one Cherokee father who lost his daughter in a large crowd boarding a boat, but a soldier forced the distraught father onto the boat by bayonet (long knife) leaving the lost child behind.
“I fought through the civil war and have seen men shot to pieces and slaughtered by thousands, but the Cherokee removal was the cruelest work I ever knew.”
--A Georgia volunteer then, and later a colonel in the Confederate service (JR., p. 96).
Dr. Saunt's lecture recounts how deadly the forced journey during a Cholera epidemic was for children: “This is the voyage of the Thomas Yateman which carried a party of approximately 500 Cherokees down the Tennessee River up into the Ohio then following the Ohio down to the Mississippi River, and following the Mississippi down to the mouth of the Arkansas, then went up the Arkansas as far as it could in central Arkansas. The Cherokees had to disembark and walk the final 200 miles by foot. They left in the middle of March 1834....we can follow the the voyage by reading through the Journal of the Federal Officer who is in charge of this particular contingent...'April 5th buried here the girl child of Astonish, a Cherokee; April 6th Stephen Spaniard's girl child died this morning of measles; April 7th Bear Paws boy child died this morning of dysentery; April 9th Henson's child died today of the worms; April 10th Richardson's child died this morning.' It got worse in the space of two days; 'Black Fox lost his wife and three children. Welltalkour lost four sons.' And over one three-day period 23 people died by the time the party reached present-day Oklahoma. One out of every six people had died, including 45 children under the age of 10 (Saunt @ 38:32 min.).” Retired army officer Joseph Carr, who lived in Lake Providence, Louisiana, recalled an incident from the fall of 1831. During a sleet storm, he witnessed a group of starving Choctaw Indians, including elderly women and children, who were walking barefoot with their legs exposed to the cold. After Carr granted them permission, they entered his pumpkin patch and eat the raw, frozen pumpkins. They were exhausted and reduced to the level of animal existence.
“The Law is the Devil's Greatest Whore.”
--Revision the 16th Century Protestant Reformer Martin Luther’s famous declaration
condemning the theological debates of his time, “Reason is the Devil's greatest whore....”
(Martin Luther, Erlangen Edition v. 16, pp. 142-148)
I think the next two incidents epitomize how Native American land was confiscated by Alabama and the United States as a whole. Women were easy targets of the lowest of the white settler land-grabbing class as in the case of Taki Gehelo from Tallahassee Town, Alabama during the summer of 1834. She was invited by her neighbors to join them to eat peaches, but when she arrived the neighbor forced her to sign a paper warning that otherwise she would lose her land. She signed the paper and lost her land. In return, the white neighbor gave here three handkerchiefs, and a bag of flour. In a separate incident, Hatsuka, a Creek Indian, found herself in a difficult situation involving her former husband, who was also the white father of her child. He persuaded a government census taker that he was the legitimate owner of Hatsuka's land. After the ownership title was changed, he went ahead and sold the property without obtaining his wife's consent.
These next cases epitomize the vulnerability of Native American people during the diaspora. In the summer of 1834, a woman named Taki Gehelo from Tallahassee Town, Alabama, became a victim of these land-grabbing tactics. Her neighbors invited her to share a meal of peaches, but upon her arrival, they pressured her into signing a document, threatening that she would lose her land if she refused. Unfortunately, she signed the paper and subsequently lost her land, receiving only three handkerchiefs and a bag of flour in return. In another incident, a Creek Indian woman named Hatsuka was deceived by her former husband—the white father of her child. The husband persuaded a Government Census taker that he was the true owner of Hatsuka's land. Once land ownership was transferred to him, he sold the land without her consent. A woman named Sully was threatened with death by a man and signed away her land in fear.
"As the taste of the porridge does not tell you who grew the oats, no more does this simple process tell you of itself what are the social conditions under which it is taking place, whether under the slave-owner’s brutal lash, or the anxious eye of the capitalist, whether Cincinnatus [A Roman dictator regarded to be a virtuous farmer] carries it on in tilling his modest farm or a savage in killing wild animals with stones."
--Karl Marx, "Capital: A Critique of Political Economy,” vol. 1, p. 130 (pdf.)
Private property is a cornerstone of capitalism, where land is viewed as a commodity that can be bought and sold. Often, the largest landowners are wealthy oligarchs, who influence and create the laws that safeguard private property rights. When states confiscated land from Native Americans, it was crucial for the state to maintain the false public image that these actions were based on voluntary financial agreements—the reason for the token exchange of handkerchiefs and a bag of flour. For instance, in 1833, the state of Georgia held a lottery to distribute Cherokee land to its citizens despite the Supreme Court's decision that Georgia law had no jurisdiction over Cherokee territory. This process led to outsiders entering Indigenous homes and demanding that families vacate their properties, citing lottery tickets as justification. While individual stories may fade from memory, the signed documents obtained through these means often serve as misleading evidence of legitimate economic transactions—the taste of the porridge does not tell you who grew the oats. In some cases, individuals pretended to be Creek Indian to unlawfully acquire land. In other instances, hesitant Indigenous people were subjected to beatings until they signed away their land.
The
Exiled Cherokee Christians
Some dedicated Christian missionaries faced arrest and imprisonment for being too helpful to the Native Americans. Now, their converts became part of the great 1830s diaspora. Before embarking on their arduous journey to Oklahoma, a congregation of Christian Cherokees meticulously disassembled their church, labeling the position of each wooden board to ensure that nothing was misplaced. They transported the lumber to Westville, Oklahoma, where they then meticulously reassembled their former church piece by piece to recreate the Old Baptist Mission. (see, ITO., p. 68). In general Moravians and Methodists favored removal. On the other hand Baptists, Presbyterians, and the American Board of Commissioner of Foreign Missions (ABCFM) opposed removal. (See, ITO., p. 67).
Dangerous Insights
“Tautologies can be exceedingly useful in the clarification of conceptualization. If they are used intelligently, they can also be effective rhetorical devices. But they ought not to be confused with heuristic, open-ended questions of the sort which can
be resolved by empirical research.”
--Historian David Hackett Fischer in “Historians' Fallacies,” p.34 (pdf.).
All written histories contain inaccuracies because they often omit details deemed unimportant, and the historian's own cultural biases, values, traditions, and implicit assumptions can distort facts, leading to misinterpretations of events. Historian David Hackett Fischer identifies 122 common fallacies in his work, “Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought.” I tried to avoid those fallacies. Once factual information is gathered, the challenge shifts to how to interpret these facts, specifically which interpretive principles should be applied. Understanding the significance of facts is one of the most complex issues when examining historical events. The comprehensive discussion in Part I regarding scientific paradigms is essentially a hermeneutical inquiry aimed at "saving the appearances"—organizing our experiences into coherent understanding. Our challenge is not that we cannot know reality; rather, it is that we can know reality in so many numerous and diverse ways.
The
Nationalistic gods of Space
As I delve into the history of the Indian removals—often viewed as a form of ethnic cleansing—during the 19th century, I look for recurring patterns that illustrate the broader context of these events. Ethical reasoning is fundamentally teleological, meaning that a moral agent aims to achieve goodness through free will and righteous actions, which can be understood as the pursuit of justice. This perspective informs the critique by Christian theologian Paul Tillich, who challenges the imperialist conceptions of divinity—what he refers to as the "gods of space." Tillich’s understanding of history is teleological, rooted in the Christian theological notion of justice. Tillich bases his interpretation of history on the prophetic figure Amos of Judah, who lived around 755 B.C. and is featured in the Hebrew and Christian Old Testament, rejected the title of "professional prophet." Amos distanced himself from such labels due to the disreputable history of prophets who had succumbed to nationalism and overlooked the injustices perpetrated by those in power. Although Judah is located just west of the Dead Sea, Amos preached in the Northern Kingdom of Israel during the reign of Jeroboam II (781-741 B.C.), a time marked by the conquest of regions like Syria, Moab, and Ammon. He warned of the impending downfall of Israel, which was fueled by its nationalistic idolatry and mistreatment of the impoverished. Amos faced persecution for his messages; he was tortured by Amaziah, a priest of Bethel, and subsequently exiled, thereby becoming the first known literary prophet to write down his warnings. He emphasized that there is a singular universal divine justice that applies to all nations and peoples, thereby leveling the playing field in the eyes of a righteous deity. Amos argued that mere adherence to ritual sacrifices is inadequate for true righteousness; it is essential that worship is unforced, intentional, and participatory. Amos warned that for a nation to have a meaningful relationship with God, it must actively seek economic justice and denounce injustice in every form.
New Class Distinctions
“I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half.”
--Jay Gould, American railroad magnate
A group of Cherokees who opposed removal, deeply upset by the loss of their homeland and the thousands of lives lost, resolved to uphold the Blood Law. On June 22, 1839, a band of 25 men ambushed and killed Major Ridge, shooting him five times. On the same day his son, John Ridge, and nephew, Elias Boudinot, were brutally beaten and stabbed to death at their homes. Stand Watie, Elias Boudinot's brother, later survived an assassination attack. The result of deliberately organized hyper-factionalization is internal violence that destroys communities and rendering them vulnerable to further injustices and exploitation. Jackson consciously worked to keep the Indigenous peoples permanently divided and therefore manageable. A new situation arose that the Indigenous tribes had never encountered before: significant class divisions formed due to vast disparities in power and wealth. This development led to further fragmentation among individuals, as they began to see each other as economic rivals rather than members of a community.
Death
of a Prophet
Another example of this factionalization pattern is the Cherokee prophet, Tsali (Sally) who adamantly refused to surrender any land to settlers. Tsali foretold a significant impending apocalypse and believed the only place where they would find safety was in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, where he and others sought refuge from federal troops. Eventually, Tsali and his family were captured by soldiers, who cruelly whipped and beat a Cherokee woman holding her baby leading to breaking the skull of the infant. In a fit of rage, Tsali and his sons beat two soldiers to death with clubs while one soldier escaped. General Winfield Scott negotiated with the fugitive Cherokees, promising that if they surrendered the Tsali family, the rest of the group would be allowed to go free. Tsali and his family immediately surrendered, but another fugitive, Chief Lichen, ordered and carried out the execution by firing squad of Tsali, Lowney (his brother) and Ridges (his Son). General Scott ordered the executions to prevent any future alliances between the tribes. However, the decision to execute Tsali might have reflected Scott's conscious or unconscious interpretation of a biblical metaphor, symbolizing a community's betrayal of the prophet sent to liberate them.
False
Flags
The story of the Boston Tea Party is a source of pride for American patriots who resisted British colonial exploitation. In 1773, Parliament enacted the Tea Act, which permitted the East India Company to import tea from China without having to pay a tea tax. This led to outrage among American tea merchants, who felt that local tea shops were being unfairly burdened by high prices. In an act of defiance, these merchants disguised themselves as Native Americans and boarded an East India ship, where they dumped approximately one million dollars' worth of tea into Boston Harbor. However, this incident can also be viewed through the lens of a false flag operation. The settlers viewed Indigenous tribes as adversaries, which led them to portray Native Americans as the instigators of the protest. Many people may not recognize that this event was essentially a false flag operation that endangered innocent persons, or they may compartmentalize this knowledge as collateral damage from colonial conflicts. Even after the true identities of the tea tax protesters were revealed, the stigma against Native Americans persisted. Occasionally, government agents would spread false rumors about specific tribes allegedly stockpiling weapons in preparation for a surprise attack on another tribe, with the aim of inciting conflict.
Gaza:
Accumulation by Dispossession
“We have seen genocide before. We have also seen the complicity or silence of nations that have the power to intervene. History doesn’t repeat itself, but too often it rhymes.”
The
conflict in Gaza involving the Palestinian people can be compared to
the historical wars waged by the United States against Indigenous
tribes in North America, as well as similar colonial wars experienced
by numerous other nations throughout history. Such wars are not
simply natural occurrences; they stem from the ways in which human
societies organize themselves to sustain particular cultural and
economic structures. In both the current conflict and past imperial
wars, we see common factors: land that is rich in resources,
indigenous communities with distinct cultures, an abundance of cheap
labor, cyclical economic instability, and sometimes a lack of
established military forces within the affected territories. Empires
have an inherent need to expand its markets; if they do not, their
economic system will become unstable, or collapse. An empire's need for "expansion” is euphemistically called “expropriation,”
that means the seizure of land and natural resources for
commodity production. A “commodity” is anything produced
for the sole purpose of selling for a profit—not necessarily for
the good of humanity. Scholar David Harvey calls this periodic
process of resource seizure, “accumulation
by dispossession.”
As of October 29, 2024, the Gaza Health Ministry has reported a shocking death toll of at least 43,000 Palestinians, including 16,000 children, with approximately 1.9 million people displaced of a population of 2.3 million. 22,500 Palestinians have experienced life-changing injuries. At least 10,000 people are missing of which 4,000 are children are most likely buried under bombed building debris. This situation is characterized by immense human suffering and loss. It's important to note that 47% of Gaza's population is under the age of 18. Furthermore, between 70% and 80% of all structures in northern Gaza have been destroyed.
Some historical context is critical showing the continuity of efforts to dispossess the Palestinians. Middle-Eastern history is the most complex history to study with maybe the exception of ancient Chinese history. During another criminal act against humanity known as the Nakba (or "catastrophe") in 1948, Zionist militias forcibly exiled around 750,000 Palestinians and carried out over 70 massacres. Throughout Middle Eastern history, there have been many tragic massacres committed against Palestinians, including: - The Massacre of 1953, where Israeli forces killed more than 275 Palestinians. - The Khan Yunis Massacre of 1956, resulting in the deaths of over 275 Palestinians. - The Rafah Massacre, also in 1956, during which more than 111 Palestinians lost their lives. - The Cave of the Patriarchs Massacre in 1994, where Israeli settlers killed 29 individuals. - The Nuseirat Refugee Camp Massacre in 2024, which resulted in the deaths of over 274 Palestinians.
U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has described the current destruction in Gaza “genocide as colonial erasure,” highlighting the severity of the crisis (see the interview “Genocide as Colonial Erasure” on The Chris Hedges Report). The tactics employed today bear resemblance to those used against the Five Tribes in the southeastern United States, albeit with modern cybernetic advancements. The Israeli government is implementing a blockade, deliberately preventing food supplies from reaching the starving population in Gaza resulting in at least 34 deaths from malnutrition documented by September 14, 2024. Local communication systems have been shut down, about 130 Palestinian journalists s have been murdered by snipers to limit international coverage. Palestinians who are hungry and exhausted frequently have to relocate from one designated "safe zone" to another nine to ten times . They often discover that their temporary shelters are vulnerable to attacks from remotely operated kamikaze drones provided to Israel by the United States and its proxy allies. The modern arsenal of democracy such as GPS guided missiles, advanced tanks, and artificial intelligence enhanced warfare are being deployed against a civilian population, nearly half of which consists of teenagers.
Chris Hedges presents a detailed overview of the recent attacks in Israel. As of October 20, 2023, he reports that 233 staff members from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) have lost their lives in Gaza since the conflict escalated on October 7. He also highlights that 32 out of 36 hospitals have sustained damage, with 20 hospitals and 70 of 119 primary healthcare centers rendered nonfunctional. By August, there had been a total of 492 attacks on healthcare facilities. In another incident, Israel besieged Al-Shifa Hospital for a second time in March and April, resulting in the deaths of over 400 individuals and the detention of 300 people, which included doctors, patients, displaced individuals, and civil servants. Additionally, a forced evacuation left only 100 of the 650 patients remaining in Al-Aqsa hospital. (See details, Genocidal Scorecard by Chris Hedges, Nov. 17, 2024).”
Over the past three hundred years, the methods of cruelty implemented during the removal of the Five Tribes have been refined and repeatedly applied to both ancient and contemporary societies. Even George Orwell would be taken aback by how these historical strategies of authoritarian control have been adapted to fit our modern digital age, all in pursuit of the same goal: the accumulation of wealth through the dispossession of a people.
