In the third book of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia series, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, there’s a scene that has stuck with me as a good lesson for many times and circumstances, but especially those that require adaptability when facing great change.
I should re-read Johnson. I'm not struck by Worcester in the same way as you are: after Cherokee v. Georgia the year before, Worcester had to answer the open jurisdictional question.
The constitution didn't really answer the critical question of how Indigenous nations were going to fit, and mostly viewed them as completely outside the constitutional order. But the logic of settler colonialism, and the experience of the Seven Years War, and then the War of 1812, revealed the problem, from a Settler point of view, with independent Indigenous sovereigns, free to ally with each other of with European states.
The split of opinions in Cherokee shows the options on offer, from a Settler point of view. Thompson and Story -- the latter of whom has fans to this day -- wanted to go with foreign nations. Johnson wanted to go with 'wandering hordes' due no consideration as governments. Marshall, in constitutional terms inventing from whole cloth, came up with domestic dependent nations. Once you do that, you have to decide whether the states or the feds are in control, and in Worcester, this was answered in favor of the feds.
William Wirt's submission on behalf to the Cherokee Nation is absolutely classic on the subject of "Discovery" and worth quoting at length:
"That the Cherokees were the occupants and owners of the territory in which they now reside before the first approach of the white men of Europe to the western continent, "deriving their title from the Great Spirit, who is the common father of the human family, and to whom the whole earth belongs." Composing the Cherokee Nation, they and their ancestors have been and are the sole and exclusive masters of this territory, governed by their own laws, usages, and customs.
"The bill states the grant, by a charter in 1732, of the country on this continent lying between the Savannah and Alatahama rivers, by George the Second, "monarch of several islands on the eastern coast of the Atlantic," the same country being then in the ownership of several distinct, sovereign, and independent nations of Indians, and amongst them the Cherokee Nation.
The foundation of this charter, the bill states, is asserted to be the right of discovery to the territory granted; a ship manned by the subjects of the king having, "about two centuries and a half before, sailed along the coast of the western hemisphere, from the fifty-sixth to the thirty-eighth degree of north latitude, and looked upon the face of that coast without even landing on any part of it."
"This right, as affecting the right of the Indian nation, the bill denies, and asserts that the whole length to which the right of discovery is claimed to extend among European nations is to give to the first discoverer the prior and exclusive right to purchase these lands from the Indian proprietors, against all other European sovereigns, to which principle the Indians have never assented, and which they deny to be a principle of the natural law of nations or obligatory on them.
"The bill alleges that it never was claimed under the charter of George the Second that the grantees had a right to disturb the self-government of the Indians who were in possession of the country, and that, on the contrary, treaties were made by the first adventurers with the Indians by which a part of the territory was acquired by them for a valuable consideration, and no pretension was ever made to set up the British laws in the country owned by the Indians"
Beautifully articulated with such warm honesty and clarity.
Pain in indeed a currency for control just as it is a medium for self-sabotage and social stasis. I suspect underlying all of this is our need to keep pushing the narrative boundaries of history to unearth its timeless value(s).
This absolutely floored me, Nia. Thank you. That Harari quote! And your last two grafs! Jeez!
"A culture of domination requires control to function. It requires absence of nuance and knowledge. It requires that its hearers accept a shared narrative of history that casts the dominant culture in the best light, a narrative that becomes so powerful that millions find questioning it too painful to contemplate.
It doesn’t just want to keep Eustace within the body of a dragon, collecting gold and slowly dying of loneliness; it wants to erase any desire he ever had to be free of it. Keeping the real stories alive, reopening them and reframing history—no matter how painful the process to some—is the only way to ensure it doesn’t win."
1) I've started to refer to the "Framers" by their relation to whatever subject I'm discussing, and stopped referring to them as a big block of men. It makes it a little more palatable and helps keep the convo on topic (at least for me).
B) Dawn Treader is a top-tier Lewis book. It's funny - his writing is something that I haven't jettisoned as I've moved further and further away from my upbringing. I'm sure I'll figure out why at some point, but right now I'm just going to let that sleeping dog lie.
iii) Just stopping in to say that Andrew Jackson is a supreme bastard, and that his actions that you referenced don't happen without Attorney General Roger Taney (of Dredd Scott fame). Birds of a feather, and all that.
This essay was masterful and pulled together so many threads. Thank you
I should re-read Johnson. I'm not struck by Worcester in the same way as you are: after Cherokee v. Georgia the year before, Worcester had to answer the open jurisdictional question.
The constitution didn't really answer the critical question of how Indigenous nations were going to fit, and mostly viewed them as completely outside the constitutional order. But the logic of settler colonialism, and the experience of the Seven Years War, and then the War of 1812, revealed the problem, from a Settler point of view, with independent Indigenous sovereigns, free to ally with each other of with European states.
The split of opinions in Cherokee shows the options on offer, from a Settler point of view. Thompson and Story -- the latter of whom has fans to this day -- wanted to go with foreign nations. Johnson wanted to go with 'wandering hordes' due no consideration as governments. Marshall, in constitutional terms inventing from whole cloth, came up with domestic dependent nations. Once you do that, you have to decide whether the states or the feds are in control, and in Worcester, this was answered in favor of the feds.
William Wirt's submission on behalf to the Cherokee Nation is absolutely classic on the subject of "Discovery" and worth quoting at length:
"That the Cherokees were the occupants and owners of the territory in which they now reside before the first approach of the white men of Europe to the western continent, "deriving their title from the Great Spirit, who is the common father of the human family, and to whom the whole earth belongs." Composing the Cherokee Nation, they and their ancestors have been and are the sole and exclusive masters of this territory, governed by their own laws, usages, and customs.
"The bill states the grant, by a charter in 1732, of the country on this continent lying between the Savannah and Alatahama rivers, by George the Second, "monarch of several islands on the eastern coast of the Atlantic," the same country being then in the ownership of several distinct, sovereign, and independent nations of Indians, and amongst them the Cherokee Nation.
The foundation of this charter, the bill states, is asserted to be the right of discovery to the territory granted; a ship manned by the subjects of the king having, "about two centuries and a half before, sailed along the coast of the western hemisphere, from the fifty-sixth to the thirty-eighth degree of north latitude, and looked upon the face of that coast without even landing on any part of it."
"This right, as affecting the right of the Indian nation, the bill denies, and asserts that the whole length to which the right of discovery is claimed to extend among European nations is to give to the first discoverer the prior and exclusive right to purchase these lands from the Indian proprietors, against all other European sovereigns, to which principle the Indians have never assented, and which they deny to be a principle of the natural law of nations or obligatory on them.
"The bill alleges that it never was claimed under the charter of George the Second that the grantees had a right to disturb the self-government of the Indians who were in possession of the country, and that, on the contrary, treaties were made by the first adventurers with the Indians by which a part of the territory was acquired by them for a valuable consideration, and no pretension was ever made to set up the British laws in the country owned by the Indians"
Beautifully articulated with such warm honesty and clarity.
Pain in indeed a currency for control just as it is a medium for self-sabotage and social stasis. I suspect underlying all of this is our need to keep pushing the narrative boundaries of history to unearth its timeless value(s).
Thanks so much for writing this gem!
This absolutely floored me, Nia. Thank you. That Harari quote! And your last two grafs! Jeez!
"A culture of domination requires control to function. It requires absence of nuance and knowledge. It requires that its hearers accept a shared narrative of history that casts the dominant culture in the best light, a narrative that becomes so powerful that millions find questioning it too painful to contemplate.
It doesn’t just want to keep Eustace within the body of a dragon, collecting gold and slowly dying of loneliness; it wants to erase any desire he ever had to be free of it. Keeping the real stories alive, reopening them and reframing history—no matter how painful the process to some—is the only way to ensure it doesn’t win."
1) I've started to refer to the "Framers" by their relation to whatever subject I'm discussing, and stopped referring to them as a big block of men. It makes it a little more palatable and helps keep the convo on topic (at least for me).
B) Dawn Treader is a top-tier Lewis book. It's funny - his writing is something that I haven't jettisoned as I've moved further and further away from my upbringing. I'm sure I'll figure out why at some point, but right now I'm just going to let that sleeping dog lie.
iii) Just stopping in to say that Andrew Jackson is a supreme bastard, and that his actions that you referenced don't happen without Attorney General Roger Taney (of Dredd Scott fame). Birds of a feather, and all that.
Instead of Founding Fathers, I could go with a moniker based on "Original English Exploiters." It's clunky, but it says it.