This Day in Native American History

February 21, 1828—The first newspaper in a Native American language, the Cherokee Phoenix, was published in New Echota, Georgia. The publication, which remains in existence today, was part of a wider movement among the five Southern or “Civilized” Tribes (Cherokees, Choctaws, Chicasaws, Creeks, and Seminoles) toward white cultural patterns, including raising large cash crops on plantations and modeling their tribal government after the federal system.

The Phoenix used an 86-character Cherokee alphabet called the “Talking Leaves,” created by the Native American linguist Sequoyah and rapidly adopted because of its ease of use. The paper’s editor was twentysomething (accounts differ as to exact birthdate), Moravian-educated Gallegina (Buck) Oowatie, who took the name Elias Boudinot in tribute to the writer-poet-statesman who served as President of the United States under the Articles of Confederation.

Boudinot’s tragedy epitomized the larger tragedy of white-Native American relations during the 19th century. In 1829, he and friend John Ridge advocated the death penalty for any Indian giving away Cherokee land. Only three years later, however, worried about the threats posed by white encroachment, Boudinot reluctantly came to believe that relocation was the only reasonable alternative to tribal extermination. The decision opened a breach with Cherokee leader John Ross, who forced his resignation from the Phoenix.

In December 1835, 20 members of the “Treaty Party” met in Boudinot’s home and signed the Treaty of New Echota, relocating the tribe to Cherokee Nation (now Oklahoma). On June 22, 1839, Boudinot was working on a translation of the Bible with Ridge and Ridge’s father when fellow Cherokees decided to impose the penalty Boudinot had advocated a decade earlier for ceding tribal land. Taken completely by surprise, the three were stabbed and tomahawked by members of the John Ross faction.

More than two decades after Boudinot’s death, his brother, Stand Watie, became a brigadier general in the Confederate Army—the only Native-American to become a general in either the Confederate or Union Armies during the Civil War.