A rousing defence of the Cherokee against the “gross oppression” of the Indian Removal Act, published months before the act was passed.
The anonymous author, identified as Philadelphia chemist and spiritualist Dr. Robert Hare (1781-1858), points out the hypocrisy of the fact that amongst “the inhabitants of Georgia who would deprive the Indians of their homes, is there one who would not shed his blood in defence of his own character or that or his country?” He describes the proposed removals as tyrannical, and an affront to the rights of man.
He outlines the history of treaty agreements between the Creek and Cherokee Nations and the white settlers in Georgia, as well as emphasising the fact that the Cherokee tract in question was reserved for “the use of the Indians” by Royal Proclamation.
Hare ends with a powerful warning: “If such be the irrepressible, and insatiable covetousness of the people of the United States, and such the feebleness and ill faith of the government, what have the Cherokee to expect? Is it not first to be chased beyond the Mississippi, next beyond the Rocky Mountains, and finally to be driven into the Pacific? Is there any permanent asylum for them on this side of the grave?”
Hare’s defence was in vain, and the act was signed into law on March 28th 1830. The forced relocations that followed saw approximately 60,000 Native Americans ejected from their homes and ancestral land, and marched west of the Mississippi. The brutality of this journey, and the many casualties amongst those who were made to take it, earned it the name the “Trail of Tears”.
OCLC finds copies at New York Historical Society, AAS, Penn, Clements, Johns Hopkins and Temple only. There is also a copy in the Brinley collection at Yale (presented to Elias Boudinot by J.J. Barclay), another at Houghton within a sammelband. There is a copy at Duke. No copy listed in Rare Book Hub since 1976.
Sabin, 12467.
