Elias Boudinot (Cherokee)

75
Elias Boudinot (Cherokee) bigraphy, stories - Leaders

Elias Boudinot (Cherokee) : biography

1802 – June 22, 1839

Elias Boudinot (born Gallegina Uwati, also known as Buck Watie) (1802 – June 22, 1839), was a member of a prominent family of the Cherokee Nation in present-day Georgia. His Cherokee name reportedly means either ‘male deer’ or ‘turkey.’ Access Genealogy, "Cherokee Indian Chiefs."Retrieved February 27, 2013. Educated in New England, he was one of several leaders who believed that acculturation was critical to Cherokee survival; he was influential in the period of removal to the West. In 1828 Boudinot became the editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, the first Native American newspaper. It published in Cherokee and English, to showcase Cherokee achievements as well as to build unity within the Nation while under United States pressure for Indian Removal.

In 1826, Boudinot had married Harriet R. Gold, the daughter of a prominent family in Cornwall, Connecticut. He met her while a student at the Foreign Mission School in town. Following his cousin John Ridge’s marriage to a New England woman there in 1825, Boudinot’s marriage was controversial and opposed by many townspeople. The Cherokee National Council had passed a law in 1825 enabling the descendants of Cherokee fathers and white mothers to be full citizens of the Cherokee. (Formerly they had no place in the matrilineal tribe, as children belong to their mother’s clan and people.) The Boudinots returned to Georgia to live at New Echota. They reared their six children as Cherokee.

Boudinot believed that removal was inevitable and argued for a treaty to preserve Cherokee rights. He and other treaty supporters signed the Treaty of New Echota in 1835, but it was not signed by John Ross, the Principal Chief, and was opposed by most of the tribe. The following year the tribe was forced to cede most of its lands in the Southeast, and remove to the West.

After Harriet died in 1836, Boudinot moved with his children to Indian Territory. He and three other Treaty Party leaders were assassinated in June 1839 by Cherokee opponents of removal, who believed it was a capital crime to alienate their homeland. His son Elias Cornelius Boudinot was sent East to be raised by his mother’s family and educated there.

Early life and education

Gallegina was born in 1802 into a leading Cherokee family in present-day Georgia, the eldest son of nine children of Uwati and Susanna Reese, who was of mixed Cherokee and European ancestry. When Uwati accepted Christianity, he took the name of David Uwatie (later he dropped the "u" from his name.) Gallegina’s younger brothers were Isaac, better known as Stand Watie, who served with the Confederate Army during the American Civil War and served as Principal Chief (1862-1866); and Thomas Watie. They were the nephews of Major Ridge and cousins of John Ridge.

Gallegina Watie, the Ridges, John Ross, and Charles R. Hicks and his son Elijah Hicks, came to form the ruling elite of the Cherokee Nation in the early nineteenth century. All were of mixed race and had some European-American education, to prepare them to deal with the United States and its representatives.

Gallegina’s Christian education began in 1808, at the age of 6, when he studied at the local Moravian missionary school. In 1812 he joined the Spring Place school, in what is now Murray County. Around this time, Cherokee leaders were petitioning the government for aid to educate their children as they wanted to adopt aspects of white civilization.;

Elias Cornelius, an agent from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), came to the community and served as a benefactor for education. In 1817 the ABCFM opened the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, Connecticut for educating promising students from American Indian cultures. In 1818 Cornelius selected Gallegina Watie and a few others to go to the Foreign Mission School. On the way, they were introduced to the Virginia statesmen Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe.

In Burlington, New Jersey, the young men met Elias Boudinot, president of the American Bible Society and a former member and president of the Second Continental Congress. He and Watie impressed each other. Watie asked Boudinot for permission to use his name, which he gave. When enrolled at the Foreign Mission School, Watie started using the name Elias Boudinot, which he kept for the rest of his life.p. 3