6 December 2013
Elias Boudinot: A Native American Pioneer

“Oh, what is a man who will not dare to die for his people? Who is there here that will not perish, if this great nation may be saved?” – Elias Boudinot, Cherokee Nation, December 29, 1835

There might not be any other ethnicity in the United States that has suffered as much deculterization, destruction and blatant ridicule by the majority ruling class than the Native American people. The very beginning of Anglo settlement in the new world marked the beginning of the end of the very way of life and culture that the native people enjoyed prior to the rampant spread of disease and warfare that would come to symbolize the Native relationship with the Anglo-European people of the United States. As the Anglo grip on the nation grew tighter, it became apparent that either you accept violence as your tribe’s only salvation, or you decide to accept whatever offer the ruling white class decided to offer your tribe, in hopes that your tribes willingness to abide by whatever rules and regulations imposed will eventually save your people from the fate of so many of your brothers and sisters across the country. No tribe personified this reality better than the Cherokee Nation of the Southeastern United States, and no one Cherokee Indian should be connected with the struggle of acculteration verses preservation than Elias Boudinot, the editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, the first Native American paper in the United States. As it will be revealed, Boudinot is one of the most controversial members of Cherokee history, a person whose sharp intellect and journalist ability set the standard for Native American newspapers throughout the country, but at the same time, was partly responsible for the eventual Cherokee relocation from their ancestral homeland. Elias Boudinot’s life and achievements is an almost parallel of the