Elias Boudinot, survivance?

Elias Boudinot, such a controversial guy! Seems like we could continuously discuss whether or not his decisions were good decisions. But anyway, were his speeches/papers an act of survivance?

I think that his papers definitely expressed the surviving part. Like many of the people in our class said, he was "selling out" and he was not really fighting the whites, but more like persuading them to like the Cherokee Nation.

What about resistance? I guess he resisted in his papers, somewhat, but not so much. He did point out that Indians are assumed to be savages and that should not be the case. But it is important to point out that right after he states that, he begins to defend himself, saying that he has been educated and that he is the perfect representative for the Cherokees. At that point, it seems like he is just selling himself to the whites and not really defending his nation. In trying to prove that he is the best person to speak for the Cherokees, I feel like he is selling them out.

As James pointed out in class, he does show resistance in the newspaper because they have certain columns and articles in their own language. But I think that his "selling out" overpowered any of his attempts to resist and it has me questioning if it was his intention to resist in that way. Perhaps the content of those articles would make it more clear.

First Blog

Well, first of all, I don't really know much of anything about Native American history (which I hope changes after this class). I'm pretty much ignorant about Native American history. So I wasn't really sure of what to title this blog. But I just decided to title this blog "America before 'America'" because when I was in elementary school, I vaguely remember my teacher telling us about Christopher Columbus and how there is the misunderstanding that most people see him as the one who "found the Americas". Then she went on to explain that there were already Native Americans living there before he came along. So I guess that's why I named it this, because there is much history to the place before it was so-called "founded".

I guess I'll talk about Elias Boudinot's papers that we read. I just wanted to say that I thought his papers were a little ironic and contradictory. I feel that he strongly identified himself as one of the Cherokee nation. The fact that he called himself a Cherokee and that he was representing the Cherokees, it seemed as though he wanted to distinguish that his nation is special, different, and unique. But on the other hand, in order to preserve or "save" his culture, he ended up conforming to the way of the whites and seemingly lost some of Cherokee cultures in the process. I guess he was doing it in order to help the Cherokee nation survive, but I feel it wouldn't be worth much if you're living for something that you don't really believe in.