Lionel Larré. Histoire de la nation Cherokee. Pessac: Presses Universitaires de
Bordeaux, 2014. 285 pp.
Lionel Larré is a French academic who has edited writings by John
Milton Oskison, as well as textbooks. This book is
designed for use in courses on American Indian history for Francophone
students. It consists of thirteen expository chapters in French, interleaved
with thirty-nine documents in English, excerpts from primary sources selected
to illustrate Cherokee history. The documents have been drawn from treaties and
treaty negotiations, letters of colonial officials, memoirs of traders, reports
by missionaries, and from books by Henry Timberlake, William Bartram, and James
Adair. Larré emphasizes earlier periods—the chapter
on the Trail of Tears or piste de larmes begins only on page 201. This emphasis reflects
the strength of Prof. Larré's research, which
analyzes the geo-politics of the Southeast in the eighteenth century, when
English, Spanish, and French imperial ambitions collided in the Cherokee lands
of southern Appalachia. Early sources such as Alexander Hewatt
and James Adair have been used primarily by English-language scholars who have
too easily accepted their anglophilic jingoism. Hewatt, in the first of the documentary excerpts, claimed
that the Cherokee "despised the French, whom they called light as a feather,
fickle as the wind, and deceitful as serpents; and, being naturally of a very
grave cast, they considered the levity of that people as an unpardonable
insult" (23). In truth the Cherokee, like other tribes, were fond of humor, and
most successful when they were able to play one imperial power off against the
others.
Among a few
French sources on the 18th-century Cherokee is a narrative by Antoine
de Bonnefoy, captured by the tribe in 1741 when he
was involved in the French attacks on the Chickasaws, part of the aftermath of
the Natchez attack on the French in 1729 in the town now known as Natchez. Bonnefoy was taken to the upper Tennessee River where he
met Christian Priber (identified as "Pierre
Albert" in Bonnefoy's writings), a German lawyer
from Zittau erroneously labeled a Jesuit in some
sources. He had sailed to Georgia at the time James Oglethorpe was creating the
colony in the early 1730s. After 18 months in Charleston, Priber
sold his possessions to leave for the mountains, where he assimilated into
Cherokee society and earned their trust and support. Priber
planned to build a utopian society, and to welcome refugees from English,
French, or Spanish colonies. Bonnefoy reported he had
already "got together a considerable number of recruits, men and women, of all
conditions and occupations" as well as Cherokee people,
...of whom a large number were already instructed in the form
of his republic and determined to join it; that the nation in general urged him
to establish himself upon their lands, but that he was determined to locate
himself half way between them and the Alibamons,
where the lands appeared to him of better quality than those of the Cherakis, and there he would be disposed to open a trade
with the English and French; that in his republic there would be no superiority;
that all should be equal there; that he would take the superintendence of it
only for the honor of establishing it. (Mereness,
ed., 248-249)
Priber was apprehended by Creek warriors and
brought to Frederika Island where he was held
prisoner and interrogated by General Oglethorpe and by an anonymous journalist
who signed his articles "Americus." As an egalitarian utopian socialist in a
time of absolutist monarchy and mercantilist colonialism, Priber's
story stands out, and underlines the contrast between Native egalitarianism and
European despotism. To the British, Priber was
suspected of trying to solidify Cherokee trade relations with the French at
Mobile, and for this reason was described in very hostile terms by James Adair
in his History of the American Indians.
Larré explains that Cherokee had a matrilineal
kinship network and decentralized political structure, and nuances Priber's proto-communist vision of Cherokee society and its
contrast to the monarchical visions of other traders and officers. For instance
Alexander Cuming in 1729-30 travelled to the Cherokee, presented himself as the
envoy of King George, and supposedly induced several towns' "kings" to each bow
down and bear tribute to him and to the English. Cuming claimed for himself the
ceremonial "crown" of feathers. Cuming's arrogance was exposed by Ludovic Grant's narrative of the 1730 travels, which
includes a dialogue between "the Governor of South Carolina and Chuconnunta a head man of the Cherokkes
whose name formerly was Ouconecaw" (a phonemic
version of the chiefly title Attakullakulla). The
latter insisted that there was no proposal to give away Cherokee lands to
"Great King George" (89).
Larré uses these radically contrasting sources
as an object lesson in the difficulties of interpreting colonial materials
about the Cherokee, and the resulting historiographies. Cuming proudly claimed
the traditional "crown" of Cherokee leaders. Following his tour, Cuming sailed
for London, taking with him "the Crown of the Cherrokee
Nation" and "He let the Secretary of State immediately know that he had full
Power from that Nation to lay their Crown as his Majesty's Feet, and that he
had brought over seven Indian Chiefs as an Evidence of the Truth" (5)
Larré's book is valuable for tracing the origins
and evolution of Cherokee sovereignty, and helps one understand how Cherokee national
identity developed out of a history of frontier imperial conflicts and
post-colonial revolutions. Larré asserts that "the
practicalities of treaties created the Cherokee 'nation' as such" (54), for by
signing a treaty the British crown implicitly recognized the Cherokee as a
sovereign state, even in the absence of any centralized authority or government
among the tribe. A chapter titled "The Birth of the United States" explains how
the revolutionary war divided Cherokees into a Chickamauga faction led by
Dragging Canoe, who fought alongside the British, and a peace party led by Attakullakulla. The process of negotiating treaties asked
the Cherokee to appoint a leadership empowered to represent the entire nation. The
U.S. Constitution faced the difficulty of balancing the sovereignty of thirteen
states, much as the Cherokee had to unite the Upper and Lower towns, and later
balance five factions after the Removal period.
Larré's discussion of métissage is also valuable, and
it is worth noting that the French term has no direct equivalent in English,
for whereas Métis identity is officially recognized in Canada and the adjective
is increasingly used in scholarship on Native peoples in the U.S., the noun
form has not been adopted into English. The word "mixed-bloodness"
does not exist. Larré points out that, as elsewhere
in North America, many fur traders married Cherokee women and produced
offspring who might be perceived as "white" in appearance, education, and dress.
L'essentialisation prédominante dan l'historiographie des sang-purs ou fullbloods défini comme les traditionalistes et des métis comme des progressistes, est bien trop simpliste pour vraiment comprendre les complexités sociales et politiques des Cherokees. (124)
The
essentialism dominant in historiography defines the full-bloods as the traditionalists and the métis
as progressives. This is much too simplistic to really comprehend the social
and political complexities of the Cherokees.
Francophone
students will get an excellent education in Cherokee history from this book,
and any reader of French can enjoy it as well.
Gordon M. Sayre, University of Oregon
Works Cited
Adair, James, History of the American Indians
ed. Kathryn E. Holland Braund Tuscaloosa: U of
Alabama Press, 2005.
"Journal of Antoine Bonnefoy"
in Travels in the American Colonies. Ed. and trans.
Newton D. Mereness. New York: Macmillan, 1916;
239-258.
"Account of the Cherokee Indians, and of Sir Alexander
Cuming's Journey amongst them" The Historical Register vol. 18, no. LXI (1731), 1-18.
"Historical relation of facts delivered by Ludovick Grant, Indian Trader, to His Excellency the
Governor of South Carolina" The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical
Magazine 10:1 (January 1909), 54-68.
Mellon, Knox, Jr. "Christian Priber's
Cherokee 'Kingdom of Peace" The Georgia Historical Quarterly, Vol. 57, No.
3 (Fall, 1973), 319-331.