Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T03:11:20.570Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Evidence of Surplus Production in the Cherokee Nation Prior to Removal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

David M. Wishart
David M. Wishart
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Economics at Wittenberg University, P.O. Box 720, Springfield, OH 45501.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Debate over the level of economic development for the Eastern Cherokees was heated during the 1830s. Removal opponents argued that the Cherokees had adopted white agricultural methods, whereas advocates of removal maintained that little evidence of progress existed. Removal advocates believed that Cherokee economic progress required that they be removed from contact with whites. This article examines the statistical record to show that a majority of Cherokee households produced surplus food before removal. The large number of Cherokee households producing surpluses before removal suggests the existence of significant rents to be transmitted to white farmers via the removal policy.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , March 1995 , pp. 120 - 138
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Atack, Jeremy, and Bateman, Fred, “Mid-Nineteenth Century Crop Yields and Labor Productivity Growth in American Agriculture: A New Look at Parker and Klein,” in Saxonhouse, Gary and Wright, Gavin, eds., Research in Economic History: Technique, Spirit and Form in the Making of the Modern Economies: Essays in Honor of William N. Parker, Supplement 3 (Greenwich, CT, 1984), pp. 215–42.Google Scholar
Cass, Lewis, “Removal of the Indians,” The North American Review, 30 (01 1830), pp. 62–120.Google Scholar
Dekalb County and Floyd County, Georgia, Manuscript Census, 1840.Google Scholar
Finger, John R., The Eastern Band of Cherokees, 1819–1900 (Knoxville, TN, 1984), p. 62.Google Scholar
Fogelson, Raymond D. and Kutsche, Paul, “Cherokee Economic Cooperatives: The Gadugi,” in Fenton, William N. and Gulick, John, eds., Symposium on Cherokee and Iroquois Culture (Washington, DC., 1961), pp. 87–123.Google Scholar
Gray, Lewis C., History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860, 2 vols. (Gloucester, MA, 1958).Google Scholar
Hurt, R. Douglas, Indian Agriculture in America: Prehistory to the Present (Lawrence, KS, 1987).Google Scholar
Kilpatrick, Jack Frederick, and Kilpatrick, Anna Gritts, eds., New Echota Letters: Contributions of Samuel A. Worcester to the Cherokee Phoenix (Dallas, 1968), p. 75.Google Scholar
Lebergott, Stanley, The Americans: An Economic Record (New York, 1984).Google Scholar
McLoughlin, William G., Cherokee Renascence in the New Republic (Princeton, 1986).Google Scholar
McLoughlin, William G., and Conser, Walter H. Jr., “The Cherokees in Transition: A Statistical Analysis of the Federal Cherokee Census of 1835,” The Journal of American History, 64 (12 1977), pp. 678–703.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nixon, George, “Records Relating to Native American Research: The Five Civilized Tribes,” in Eakle, Arlene and Cerny, Johni, eds., The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy (Salt Lake City, 1984), pp. 553–57.Google Scholar
Perdue, Theda, Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society: 1540–1866 (Knoxville, TN, 1979).Google Scholar
Prucha, Francis Paul, “Andrew Jackson's Indian Policy: A Reassessment,” The Journal of American History, 66 (12 1969), pp. 527–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ransom, Roger, and Sutch, Richard, One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences of Emancipation (Cambridge, 1977).Google Scholar
Remini, Robert V., Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, 1833–1845, 2 vols. (New York, 1984).Google Scholar
Satz, Ronald N., American Indian Policy in the Jacksonian Era (Lincoln, NE, 1975).Google Scholar
Schedules of Mines, Agriculture, Commerce, and Manufacturing, 1840, Records for Dekalb County and Floyd County, Georgia.Google Scholar
Shadburn, Donald L., Cherokee Planters in Georgia: 1832–1838 (Roswell, GA, 1990).Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the U.S.: Colonial Times to 1970, Part 1, Bicentennial Edition (Washington, D.C., 1975).Google Scholar
U.S. National Archives, Microcopy No. T-496, Census Roll, 1835 of the Cherokee Indians East of the Mississippi and Index to the Roll, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Record Group 75, Washington, DC..Google Scholar
Weiman, David F., “Farmers and the Market in Antebellum America: A View from the Georgia Upcountry,” this Journal 47 (09 1987), pp. 627–47.Google Scholar
Wilms, Douglas C., “Cherokee Indian Land Use in Georgia, 1800–1838, (Ph.D. diss., University of Georgia, Athens, 1973).Google Scholar
Mary, Young, “The Exercise of Sovereignty in Cherokee Georgia,” Journal of the Early Republic, 10 (Spring 1990), pp. 43–63.Google Scholar