Demanding the Cherokee Nation: Indian Autonomy and American Culture, 1830-1900.

Demanding the Cherokee Nation: Indian Autonomy and American Culture, 1830-1900. By Andrew Denson. Indians of the Southeast. (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, c. 2004. Pp. [xiv], 327. $55.00, ISBN 0-8032-1726-9.)

In Demanding the Cherokee Nation: Indian Autonomy and American Culture, 1830-1900, Andrew Denson studies the public statements of tribal spokesmen--speeches, appeals and petitions to Congress, published letters and editorials--regarding U.S. policy toward the Cherokee Nation in the nineteenth century. These statements, writes Denson, "amount to a Native American political literature" that reveals the Cherokees' constructive and imaginative engagement with federal Indian policy (p. 3). During removal, for example, Cherokees argued that the civilizing program underlying federal Indian policy depended on Indian nationhood and that any attempt to weaken Cherokee sovereignty in effect undermined the goals of U.S. officials.

Similarly, during President Ulysses Grant's peace policy, formulated to bring a halt to the violent warfare in the West by coaxing Indians to assimilate, the Cherokees promoted their own nation as a central component of the policy, a civilizing instrument that could work to transform the Plains Indians. Their insistence on the civilized nature of their nation persisted through the end of the nineteenth century, allowing Cherokees to posit autonomy and nationhood as an alternative to wardship or extinction. As a last defense of their sovereignty, Cherokees contended that their communal land base represented a desirable alternative to the inequalities and poverty of the Gilded Age, an argument that struck a chord with many Americans but that ultimately did not prevent the United States from dismantling their nation.

Denson's reliance on public statements by official tribal spokesmen inevitably limits the interpretive breadth of his analysis. As he recognizes, the views expressed in these statements were those of a small group of elites. Denson describes these politicians as "bicultural" but never fully explores their social, economic, and cultural position within the Cherokee Nation (p. 19). They were English speaking, formally educated, and engaged in commercial farming and profitable businesses. All of them were men. Other Cherokees--those who did not speak English, women, and traditional religious leaders--imagined nationhood and sovereignty in ways not reflected in the statements of official tribal spokesmen. By including the views of these other Cherokees, it would have been possible to explore how officials constructed the Cherokee Nation in relationship not only to the federal government but also to their own people. Tensions between Cherokees over race, gender, and economy shaped their engagement with the United States in ways that remain to be analyzed.

Yet despite these limitations, Denson's study is a powerful reminder that there were realistic and plausible alternatives to the destructive policies of the federal government. As Cherokee politicians recognized, it was entirely possible to construct a federal-tribal relationship in the nineteenth century that preserved Indian sovereignty. It is laudable that Denson has finally given their views serious scholarly attention.

CLAUDIO SAUNT

University of Georgia