John Phillip Reid Quotes
A Cherokee man’s most prized possession, the gun, was also his most disastrous acquisition, marking the beginning of Cherokee dependence… No Cherokee could make a gun, keep it in repair, or manufacture powder.
John Phillip Reid, Historian, A Better Kind of Hatchet: Law, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Cherokee Nation during the Early Years of European Contact, 1976
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The quotation is actually combined from two different speeches, July 28 and August 21, 1725. The dependency on guns and gunpowder was one of the key elements that was creating the dependency. See {613048}.
First Published American Indian Author
First Indian to hold the position
Mao Tse Tung in a similar situation with steel dependency upon the West went in the opposite direction. Everyone learned to make steel, and every village to have a small smelter. The Eastern Iroquois learned to make and repair guns thereby avoiding dependency. But The Prophet chose the alternative of tradition and boycott. It was ineffective. The gun was a much better hunting device and the Indians knew that. The anti-modernity approach has never worked.
Published 100 years after it was written. This is the first known written statement of what became a de facto policy regarding the American Indian.
Clinton was a founder of the society. Many sophisticated Americans were in despair about the consequence of White contact with the Indian, and this was even before the worst of the treatment which came later, beginning under the presidency of Andrew Jackson and continuing well into the 20th century. Of particular interest is Clinton’s prescient observations regarding Africa and Africans interacting with whites with slavery the overriding white motive. Clinton was one of the many Americans who were abolitionists from the beginning of the nation.
“Cleaned out” meant destroyed. He had been a strong advocate of peace with whites. See {610679} .
This quotation is often used as the greatest evidence the white usurpation of Indian land and the dubious value of all the treaties that had been made with the Indians guaranteeing them specific lands. Jackson, however, was not completely accurate. The Iroquois who fought on the American side in the Revolution were still on their lands in New York State. However, the Iriquois had their dealings with the State and local governments, and fared better than those tribes that depended in the Federal Government—especially with racists like Jackson in the Presidency.
Pandita Indrani Rampersad. She is the first Hindu woman who ever became a pundit—a religious expert who guides Hindus. She is also a professor in the United States.
