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Cherokees and Methodists, 1824–1834
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
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On 29 May 1831, the Reverend James Jenkins Trott, a Methodist missionary to the Cherokee, was arrested in the Cherokee Nation by the Georgia Guard and forced to march 110 miles to prison at Camp Gilmer. Released after four days, he was required to post a five-hundred-dollar bond and ordered to keep out of that part of the Indian nation within the territorial limits of the state of Georgia. He refused to obey the order. Married to a Cherokee who lived near his mission station at New Echota, he went to visit his wife and two children in July. On 6 July he again was arrested and forced to march 110 miles back to prison. With him this time were two Presbyterian missionaries, the Reverend Samuel A. Worcester and Dr. Elizur Butler. Two of Trott's friends, the Reverend Dickson C. McLeod and the Reverend Martin Wells, who were also Methodist circuit riders within the Cherokee Nation, heard of his arrest. They saddled up and rode after him. When they caught up with the prisoners along the road, the officer in charge, Col. C. H. Nelson, ordered them curtly to “flank off!.” When McLeod made some disparaging remarks about the treatment of the missionaries, Nelson ordered him off his horse, arrested him and made him march with the prisoners. Wells, who was left holding McLeod's horse, also was ordered with oaths to flank off. When he refused, “Col. Nelson cut a stick and making up to Mr. Wells gave him a severe blow on the head.”1
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- Copyright © American Society of Church History 1981
References
1. Various accounts of the incident written by Trott, , McLeod and Worcester can be found in the Methodist Christian Advocate and Journal and Zion's Herald, 29 07 1831 and 12 08 1831Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Advocate) and the Cherokee Phoenix, 2 July, 9 July, 16 July, 30 July and 3 September 1831 (hereafter cited as Phoenix).
2. This law is quoted together with the required oath in Edmund, Schwarze, History of the Moravian Missions among Southern Indian Tribes of the United States (Bethlehem, Pa., 1923), p. 194.Google Scholar
3. The standard works dealing with the Methodist Indian missions are Bangs, Nathan, An Authentic History of the Missions under the Care of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church (New York, 1832);Google ScholarMudge, Enoch, History of the American Missions to the Heathen (Worcester, Mass., 1840);Google ScholarJohn, Isabelle G., Handbook of Methodist Missions (Nashville, Tenn., 1893);Google ScholarWest, Anson, History of Methodism in Alabama (Nashville, Tenn., 1893);Google ScholarLazenby, Marion E., History of Methodism in Alabama and West Florida (n.p., 1960);Google ScholarPeacock, Mary T., The Circuit Riders and Those Who Followed (Chattanooga, Tenn., 1957);Google ScholarPosey, Walter B., The Development of Methodism in the Old Southwest, 1783–1824 (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1933);Google ScholarBarclay, Wade C., History of Methodist Missions, 1769–1844, 2 vols. (New York, 1950);Google ScholarMellen, George F., “Early Methodists and Cherokees,” Methodist Review 66 (Nashville, Tenn., 1917): 476–489.Google Scholar None of these works provides a full discussion of the Methodists' stand on Indian removal, and Barclay is the only one to mention the effort of the Methodist missionaries to protest against removal.
4. For discussions of the internal divisions among the Presbyterians' missionaries regarding the proper posture on the removal question see McLoughlin, William G., “Civil Disobedience and Evangelism among the Missionaries to the Cherokees, 1829–1839,” Journal of Presbyterian History 51 (Summer 1973): 116–139,Google Scholar and Miles, Edwin A., “After John Marshall's Decision: Worcester v. Georgia and the Nullification Crisis,” Journal of Southern History 39 (11 1973): 519–544.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5. Niebuhr has a chapter titled “Sectionalism and Denominationalism” but does not mention the Indian removal question. Niebuhr, H. Richard, The Social Sources of Denominationalism (New York, 1929), pp. 135–199.Google Scholar
6. Quoted in McFerrin, John M., History of Methodism in Tennessee (Nashville, Tenn., 1879), pp. 373–374.Google Scholar
7. As noted below, some Methodists in the North took a different view which found expression in the pages of the Advocate, written and published in New York City.
8. See Miles, , “After John Marshall's Decision,” pp. 527–529.Google Scholar
9. For the Baptists see Peck, Solomon, History of American Missions to the Heathen (Worcester, Mass., 1840), pp. 390–394.Google Scholar
10. A full-scale study of the missionaries and removal would require consideration of the Presbyterian, Baptist and Moravian missions as well as of the Methodists.
11. For Riley's role in the inauguration of Methodist missions see The Methodist Magazine 7 (1824): 192–195 and 11 (1828): 256–258.Google Scholar
12. In 1823 the Tennessee Conference sent Andrew Jackson Crawford to conduct a school near Riley's home, and while he preached in the vicinity no formal circuits were established that year.
13. See Phoenix, 1 January 1831.
14. Isaac Proctor to Jeremiah Evarts, 10 July 1828, Papers of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Houghton Library, Harvard University (hereafter cited as ABCFM Papers).
15. Diary of Henry G. Clauder, 12 December 1828 and 7 March 1829, Moravian Archives, Bethlehem, Pa.
16. David Green to Jeremiah Evarts, 28 July 1828, ABCFM Papers.
17. Evan Jones's Journal, 16 May 1830, American Baptist Foreign Mission Society Papers, Baptist Historical Society, Rochester, New York.
18. Elias, Boudinot, Phoenix, 12 11 1828.Google Scholar
19. The Methodist Magazine 7 (1824): 194.
20. Daniel Butrick's Journal, 4 November 1828, ABCFM Papers.
21. See Phillips, Ulrich B., Georgia and State Rights (Washington, 1902), pp. 66–86.Google Scholar
22. Porter's report is printed in the Phoenix, 7 January 1829.
23. Advocate, 19 December 1828.
24. Advocate, 8 January 1830.
25. Advocate, 29 October 1830; 1 October 1830.
26. Elizur Butler to Jeremiah Evarts, 22 September 1830, ABCFM Papers. Butler did not identify the speaker, but the sermon was later attributed to James J. Trott by Col. J. W. A. Sanford; see Phoenix, 29 October 1831.
27. Henry Clauder, one of the Moravian signers, reported, “Mr. McLeod of the Methodist Church and some others were also present but did not unite with us.” Henry Clauder's Diary, 29 December 1830, Moravian Archives, Bethlehem, Pa. It was probably because of this statement that McLeod and the other Methodists present did not sign the New Echota resolutions, for they had publicly (in their sermons) exhorted the Cherokee to oppose removal.
28. The New Echota resolutions were printed in an extra edition of the Phoenix, 1 January 1831.
29. Schwarze, , History of the Moravian Missions, p. 194.Google Scholar The law specifically excluded women (and children) from the oath; Bass, Althea, Cherokee Messenger (Norman, Okla., 1936), p. 130.Google Scholar
30. Phoenix, 8 January 1831.
31. This impression was greatly strengthened by the activities of Dr. Alexander Talley, the prominent Methodist missionary to the Choctaw Nation who was an ardent advocate of the removal of that nation. In 1831 Talley played a leading role in writing a treaty which effected their removal and many of the Choctaw petitioned for his removal from their nation. Debo, Angie, The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Republic (Norman, Okla., 1934), pp. 52, 63, 64.Google Scholar
32. Phoenix, 8 January 1831. The action of the conference may have helped to convince the Georgians that the churches would not oppose their effort to put a quietus on missionary opposition to removal. When Trott was arrested, Col. J. W. A. Sanford of the Georgia Guard referred to him as a preacher “who had been discountenanced by his own Conference for his officious and overzealous interference in Indian politics.” Phoenix, 29 October 1831. However, the Conference did not have any idea how rough the Georgians would be on their missionaries, so it is not accurate to suggest that they willfully threw them to the wolves.
33. Schwarze, , History of the Moravian Missions, p. 196.Google Scholar
34. See McLoughlin, , “Civil Disobedience,” and Miles, “After John Marshall,” p. 522.Google Scholar
35. Advocate, 11 March 1831.
36. Advocate, 20 May 1831. However, because women were excluded from the oath, some mission establishments were left under the care of wives of missionaries who departed Georgia refusing to take the oath.
37. Advocate, 29 July 1831, and Phoenix, 2 July 1831. Col. Sanford also told Trott “that the Cherokees were going backward and that they were incapable of understanding the Christian Religion and that if God wished them to become religious he would make them so without so much concern on the part of the missionaries.” Ibid.
38. Walker, Robert S., Torchlights to the Cherokees (New York, 1931), pp. 261–262 On 31 05,Google Scholar Henry Clauder had been arrested, but he was released when he promised to leave the state. Schwarze, , History of the Moravian Missions, p. 196.Google Scholar
39. Advocate, 12 August 1831; Phoenix, 3 September 1831.
40. Advocate, 8 July 1831 and 29 July 1831. Phoenix; 20 August 1831.
41. Advocate, 12 August 1831.
42. Advocate, 30 September 1831; Phoenix, 29 October 1831.
43. Phoenix, 15 October 1831.
44. Moseley, J.Edward, Disciples of Christ in Georgia (St. Louis, 1954), p. 127.Google Scholar
45. Phoenix, 15 October 1831.
46. Phoenix, 22 October 1831.
47. Moseley, , Disciples of Christ in Georgia, p. 128.Google Scholar
48. Millennial Harbinger 3 (February 1832): 85.
49. Trott at first did not go West with the Cherokee but remained in the South as an itinerant Campbellite preacher. In 1856, however, he moved into the Cherokee Nation again, purchased land for a mission and made 75 converts to the Disciples before he was forced out by fighting during the Civil War. He returned to the nation in 1866 but became ill and went to Nashville, where he died in 1868. Moseley, , Disciples of Christ in Georgia, pp. 123–131.Google Scholar
50. West, History of Methodism in Alabama, p. 398. It is worth noting that on 22 December 1832, Georgia repealed its law requiring an oath of allegiance; hence white missionaries were free thereafter to preach in the Georgia part of the nation. Evidently, few were aware of this, however.
51. Foreman, Grant, Indian Removal (Norman, Okla., 1932), p. 286.Google Scholar
52. For the census figures see McLoughlin, William G. and Conser, Walter H., Jr., “The Cherokees in Transition,” The Journal of American History 64 (12 1977): 678–703.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Between 1831 and 1838 the Moravians increased from 45 to 132 church members; the Presbyterians remained static at 167; and the Baptists increased from 90 to over 500.
53. See Barclay, , History of Methodist Missions, pp. 131–134.Google Scholar Barclay comes closest among all the historians of Methodist missions to explaining the decline when he says “widespread demoralization set in” after 1830. However, he seems to use that phrase to refer to Cherokee political demoralization. I would argue that there was a more general demoralization (especially after the Presbyterians seemed to acquiesce in removal in 1833) which included a loss of faith, and particularly faith in the whites' professions of benevolence, humanity and Christian concern. The strong growth of the Baptists after 1830 seems to me to stem from their continued effort to identify Christian brotherhood with active support of social justice for the Cherokee.
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