Major Ridge
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Major Ridge (c.1771 – June 22, 1839) was a Cherokee Indian leader and protoge, along with Charles R. Hicks, of the noted figure James Vann.
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[edit] Background
Ridge was born into the Deer clan in the Cherokee town of Hiwassee along the Hiwassee River, an area later part of Tennessee. According to some geneaologies, he was a grandson of Attacullaculla, who was a leading chief at the time of his birth; others make him the grandson of Oconostota; his father was named Tatsi (sometimes written Dutsi) and may have at one time been called Aganstata, but this was a common name among the Cherokee as was the practice of changing one's name, which Tatsi's son did. Ridge's maternal grandfather was a highland Scot, thus Ridge was 3/4 Cherokee, by ancestry, and one of the many Cherokees in his time and place with partial European (especially Scottish) heritage. Until the end of the Chickamauga Wars, he was known as Pathkiller (not the same as the chief), afterwards changing his name to what the English version simplifies as "The Ridge" (as did Bloody Fellow to Clear Sky); he acquired the title "Major", in 1814, during his service leading Cherokees alongside General Andrew Jackson at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend during the Creek War. He also joined Jackson in the First Seminole War in 1818, leading Cherokees against the Seminole Indians. After the war, Ridge became a wealthy planter and slave owner of African Americans.
[edit] Removal and Beyond
Ridge had long opposed U.S. government proposals for the Cherokees to sell their lands and remove to the West, but the rapidly expanding white settlement and Georgia's efforts to abolish the Cherokee government caused him to change his mind. Advised by his son John Ridge, Major Ridge came to believe that the best way to preserve the Cherokee Nation was to get good terms for their lands from the U.S. government before it was too late. On December 22, 1835, Ridge was one of the signers of the Treaty of New Echota, which exchanged the Cherokee tribal land east of the Mississippi River for lands to the west. The treaty was of dubious legality, however, and was rejected by Chief John Ross and the majority of the Cherokee people. Nevertheless, the treaty was ratified by the U.S. Senate.
Ridge, his family, and many other Cherokees emigrated to the West soon after the treaty. The terms of the treaty were strictly enforced, and those Cherokees (and their African American slaves) who remained on tribal lands in the East were forcibly rounded up by the U.S. government in 1838, and began a journey known as the "Trail of Tears," during which thousands died.
In the West, the Ross faction blamed Ridge and the other signers of the Treaty of New Echota for the hardships. In 1839, Major Ridge, his son John, and nephew Elias Boudinot, were assassinated by Cherokees of the Ross faction to remove them as political rivals and to intimidate the political establishment of the Old Settlers, which the Ridge faction had joined, into submission. Ridge's nephew Stand Watie, the future Confederate general in the Civil War, was also targeted for assassination, but escaped, and eventually became leader of the Western Cherokees.
Ridge and his son are buried along with Stand Watie in Polson Cemetery in Delaware County, OK.
[edit] Further reading
[edit] Primary sources
- Dale, Edwards Everett. Cherokee Cavaliers; Forty Years of Cherokee History as Told in the Correspondences of the Ridge-Watie-Boudinot Family. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1939.
[edit] Secondary Sources
- Ehle, John. Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation. New York: Doubleday, 1988. ISBN 0-385-23953-X. Largely a biography of Major Ridge.
