The Heathen School Read online

  Now debate would spread to other parts of the country. A “correspondent” of the Western Recorder (Kentucky) published a long article in support of tolerance. While acknowledging that “mixed marriages” might seem “inexpedient” to certain “parties,” he insisted they were not immoral. Indeed, “these youths have the same right to marry…[as] any other individuals.” He foresaw some “good flowing” from the current outcry, if only because it would serve to expose “how strong a prejudice exists against the Indians generally.” And he “rejoiced” that “the public eye” should increasingly be drawn “to the lamentable condition and prospects of these original sovereigns of America”; he expected “the most enlightened portion of the Christian community” to respond accordingly. A writer in the Boston Recorder and Telegraph went much further in affirming the “benefits” to be gained from intermarriage; he included a check against the possibility of “these educated heathen youth … reverting back to paganism,” the likelihood of “a happy moral influence upon surrounding pagan families,” an encouragement to “unite the Indian tribes to the United States in bonds of permanent friendship,” and the prevention of “those expensive and bloody wars which have hitherto prevailed.”101

  Indeed, such discussion could touch issues of the widest national import. The same Boston Recorder article declared of Indians: “This continent is their home. It is the land of their fathers. We are foreign intruders. Here they must live … and they cannot be kept a separate people.” In the long term, therefore, they must “by intermarriages become amalgamated with the white inhabitants.… This, beyond all question, is the design of Providence.” Moreover, the same process would serve to “remove … those prejudices which Indians cherish of us.” For “they have their prejudices as well as we.” To be sure, theirs “are more excusable. They have been cheated and demoralized by our people.” Here the writer was entering some very deep waters. And he went on to specify just what he meant. “Their wives and daughters have been debased by our travellers, our fishermen, and our hunters. Sexual intercourse has been mostly illicit, and marriages [made] from motives of gain.” (“Sexual intercourse” and marriage across racial lines. Thus did he bring his case clear around to engage—from the opposite, the Indian, side—the matters immediately at hand.)102

  Nowhere was all this more keenly felt than at the offices of the American Board in Boston. An “extremely distressed” Secretary Evarts poured out his feelings in a series of letters to missionary colleagues. He wrote to one that he could not see “how the contract [between Harriet and Elias, to marry] can be proved … morally wrong.… Can it be pretended, at this age of the world, that a small variance of complexion is to present an insuperable barrier to matrimonial connexions, or that the different tribes of men are to be kept forever & entirely distinct?” He and his colleagues on the board were especially concerned lest the agents’ published position “tend strongly to irritate the young men, who have been educated at Cornwall.… Will it not strike their minds as equivalent to a declaration that they & their people are doomed to perpetual inferiority, and that every attempt to rise to an equality with the whites is imprudent & criminal?” The letter closed with an admonition that “no measures … be taken to prevent fulfillment of a contract lawfully made,” and that “Boudinot, should he visit Cornwall … be treated as becomes a Christian & civilized community to receive a youth educated among themselves & professing a faith in the Gospel of our common salvation.”103

  Hoping to head off adverse reaction among the Cherokees, in particular, Evarts wrote also to one of the missionaries at work among them. The action of the school’s agents, he said, had been taken without consulting members of the board, who learned of it with “much sorrow & pain.” This “should be [made] known to … those Cherokees who take any interest in the affair.” There were, to be sure, some “extenuating circumstances,” since “enemies of missions … had succeeded in exciting much popular feeling in that neighborhood”; hence the agents feared “that the School was in danger of suffering materially.” Indeed, they “naturally partook somewhat in the excitement around them”—and thus had acted too hastily. It was, all in all, a “deplorable business.” Evarts also asked that his personal regrets be conveyed directly to Elias Boudinot, “whom I love.” Elias should be informed that the agents’ position “is disapproved by a great majority of Christians in this part of the country”; perhaps there would be some consolation in that.104

  As it turned out, concerns for Elias were not misplaced. Until this point, he had reportedly been “conducting well”: teaching school for a time, living with his father and doing farmwork, assisting in the creation of a Cherokee census, and remaining true to his Christian faith and practice. But when news came from Cornwall of the “violent opposition” to his and Harriet’s engagement—followed by “anonymous letters, filled with the most scurrilous abuse and threatening his life”—he went into a deep tailspin. According to one account, he felt “very wretched & did not care what became of him.” In that frame of mind, “he went out … and witnessed a ball play on the Sabbath.” Cherokee ball play (a direct ancestor of modern-day lacrosse) involved violent physical competition between players who were “literally naked … and yet a large proportion of the spectators are females”; moreover, it followed “all night dances … attended by wives without their husbands, and husbands without their wives…[with] all deeds of darkness committed.” Such, at least, was the (undoubtedly skewed) picture that circulated among the missionaries, for whom ball play stood as the very epitome of “heathenish ways.” That their cherished protégé, the “lovely” Elias, could have been driven to such depths—and on the Sabbath, too—was a stunning disappointment. One went so far as to say that he “has become a poor worthless Indian & has given himself up to all the foolish [illegible word] of his pagan countrymen.” Others were inclined to be more charitable, noting the “cruel treatment he had received from those who would claim to be his spiritual fathers…[which] for a moment, darkened his eyes.” (It was mentioned, too, that “the scholars at Cornwall were allowed to do this [ball play], though perhaps in a different form.” However, there is no corroborating evidence from inside the school itself.)105

  Elias himself quickly regretted his “fall.” He assured Evarts, who by now had begun a new journey through the South, that “he had never done such a thing before.” Moreover, “he does not justify or excuse himself”; he would try to regain his footing and move on. To that end, he decided on a forceful response to the charges leveled against him by the school’s agents. He composed a letter to Timothy Stone, demanding “a public recantation … so far as it inculpated him, or that they should prove that his conduct was criminal.” He insisted, too, that Mrs. Northrup had not “enacted any agency in promoting the match.” Neither she nor her daughter Sarah had “advised him in the matter. He commenced the courtship of his own motion.” (Others would later confirm this. And Sarah claimed that her mother had actually tried to dissuade Harriet on the grounds that her own marriage to John Ridge “had made so much difficulty in Cornwall.”) Elias did acknowledge that “courting a lady” while still a member of the school might be “improper,” but he denied “any authority of the agents” once he had left.106

  Elsewhere in the Cherokee heartland, reaction to the events at Cornwall ranged from surprise, to bafflement, to dismay, to outrage. Sarah Ridge “could not help laughing to think how foolish they act.” The elderly and much-respected Moravian missionary Rev. John Gambold “was astonished that gentlemen of intelligence, the professed friends of the Indians, should have opposed a connexion with Boudinot on the single ground that he is an Indian.” (Indeed, Gambold remarked that “if … it should please the Lord to remove my wife,” he himself would have no compunctions about “proposing matrimony…[to] a Cherokee woman of suitable character & attainments.”) In midsummer William Chamberlain of the American Board visited Major Ridge, who confronted him with “a few plain questions…[to which] he wanted … a plain ans
wer.” In particular, “he wanted to know if my Northern friends had any grounds from scripture or anything else to justify them in their violent opposition to intermarriage with the Cherokees?” Chamberlain “could not answer for the northern people,” but agreed “for my own part … that the young people of the different nations should marry where they pleased.”107

  In late September, David Brown wrote at length to Evarts, along very much the same lines. He began by describing the letters received by and about Elias. One, from Connecticut, declared that “if he should come to Cornwall after his intended wife, half the state would rise against him”; another stated simply, “his life would be in danger.” The effigy burnings had been taken by Cherokees as “an expression of abhorrence to the Indian character.” Yet, as Brown noted, many white men “have married Cherokee ladies without censure … so how can it be thought wicked for us to marry among them, especially if some of our white sisters are pleased with such connexions?” Such, he concluded in his typically restrained way, “are the common topics of conversation among us, & we know not how to understand them.” Brown’s friend and mentor, the missionary Daniel Buttrick, was not so restrained. Addressing especially the matter of death threats, he fulminated: “What? Against our dear brother Boudinot?…Even the heathen world blushes, and humanity sickens at the thought.… The tomahawk, and scalping knife, or the more polished weapons of civilized butchery, will be raised against him! The hand of the assassinating murderer, upheld by ministers, and Christians, and the gathering mob, will take away his life! All will unite in the clamorous cry, ‘Let him be put to death!’…Where [else]…can such unfeeling barbarity be found?”108

  On one point all were in full agreement: Mission work among the Cherokees was now irrevocably compromised. The “difficulties” surrounding the first “intermarriage” had left strong residues of doubt and tension. A second, very similar sequence—coming little more than a year later, and including “the publication of the Executive Committee” that used the word “criminal”—was sure to have “disastrous effects.” Moreover, the widespread expressions of “harshness & cruelty…[toward] this promising young man [Boudinot]” only deepened the crisis. Elias himself told Evarts flatly that “the Cherokees will not send any youths to the school” in the future.109

  At about the same time came a new round of alarming news from Cornwall. Two Choctaw scholars had been suddenly expelled and “sent off with five dollars each to find their way home, a distance of 1400 miles.” En route, they “told the story of their disaster to all who befriended them,” including many in the Cherokee territories. The school authorities declined to state publicly any reason for their dismissal, but Evarts’s official correspondence included a brief note: “[T]he two Choctaws have been dismissed for a proposed matrimonial union.” Moreover, the young Cherokee David Carter was also sent off “with censure”—probably, though not certainly, for a similar reason. (A proposed matrimonial union? And, possibly, two or three? Where would it end?) From the standpoint of many in Cornwall, this might well have seemed a nightmarish result of the “example” previously set by Ridge and Boudinot. For southeastern Indians, it was another kind of nightmare—a bitter confirmation of the prejudice directed against them, even by some among their erstwhile “friends.”110

  As the New Year (1826) approached, the impasse between Harriet Gold and Elias Boudinot, on one side, and the citizenry of Cornwall (and surrounding communities), on the other, seemed complete. For him to come north “after his intended wife” ought—one would imagine—to have imperiled his very life. For her to receive him as her intended husband ought to have exposed her to withering scorn from many of her neighbors. For the two of them to proceed to official marriage ought to have aroused angry, perhaps violent, local reaction.

  However, none of this happened. Harriet had previously thought “she would have to leave the country and meet him [Elias] in some place agreed on,” yet by winter’s end she had decided “to be married in Cornwall like other folks.” The initially vehement opposition of various family members had continued to weaken. Herman Vaill, for one, wrote to Harriet in early March, wishing that “you will be the instrument of accomplishing much in behalf of that People whom I suppose you now consider your Nation.” He added “kind regards & best wishes, to brother Boudinott [sic], when he becomes your husband.” About the attitude, just then, of others in the town and region, little can be discovered. The only surviving firsthand account—by the woman who made Harriet’s wedding dress—states simply that “excitement ceased and he [Boudinot] came into town unmolested.” However, residues of disaffection were undoubtedly present. Local tradition asserts that Boudinot arrived “in a disguise.” And, according to a town historian writing some years after the fact, minister Timothy Stone declined to perform the wedding ceremony because this “would have exposed him to immediate … insult and abuse.” (Stone’s position was complicated and ambiguous. He was close to the Gold family and was known as “a most sincere friend” of Harriet. As an agent of the Mission School, he had developed a close relationship to Boudinot, as well. In fact, he would lose his pastorate anyway, a few years later, owing “in no small degree [to] the effect of this Indian marriage connection.”)111

  So it was that on March 28, 1826, Harriet and Elias were married by Rev. Francis Case, minister at nearby Goshen, in the parlor of the Golds’ home. According to the same dressmaker’s account, “they had a splendid wedding at two o’clock p.m.… My mother and father attended.… No young people were invited. Only the married friends and relatives of Harriett’s parents were present.” Just beforehand, there was a family breakfast, at which Stephen managed a civil greeting to the groom—“[H]ow do you do, Boudinot”—and “waited upon us, and upon Boudinot also.” Again the source is the dressmaker, who was “in the room with them,” and was charmed by Elias: “I almost forgot that he was an Indian; he prayed so fervently, and sang so sweetly.” Stephen, however, still clung to his grievance and “could not see them married. He worked all that afternoon in the saw mill.” And when the ceremony was finished, the newlyweds left town immediately, accompanied by Harriet’s parents; they would spend the ensuing night at an inn in the town of Washington, Connecticut, some distance to the south. Reportedly, armed men stood ready to protect them if necessary; but the scene remained calm.112

  The impossible had once again become real. That it passed without major incident this time remains, in view of all that had come before, something of a puzzle.

  Coda: There is a second possibly contemporaneous source—and it is another kind of puzzle.

  Buried deep in the archives of the Cornwall Historical Society lies an old, unattributed typescript fragment, which casts a strange, stark light on the Gold-Boudinot wedding. Indeed, this is no ordinary depiction; arranged as a kind of biblical allegory, it begins thus:113

  Then Bennett saddled his hind horse and went to the land of Goshen and implored the Levite of that place to come with him to the house of Benjamin and join in marriage the heathen unto the daughter of Benjamin & he took with him as servants others of the sons of Ishmael.… (“Bennett” would have been Bennett Roberts, an assistant teacher at the school, who was known to be a particular friend of Harriet. “Goshen” was the town adjoining Cornwall to the east. “The Levite of that place” was its minister, Rev. Case. “The house of Benjamin” was the residence of Benjamin Gold. “The heathen” was Elias Boudinot. “The daughter of Benjamin” was Harriet Gold. “The sons of Ishmael” meant other Indian youths then at the Mission School. The original Ishmael, in the Old Testament, was the unfortunate outcast son of Abraham and Hagar, of whom it was predicted [Genesis 16:12]: “[H]e will be a wild man, whose hand is against every man, and every man’s hand is against him.” Obliged with his mother to shift about in the wilderness, he would grow up to become “an archer.” All these elements—wild man, wilderness setting, wandering life, personal estrangement, even bow-and-arrow skills—were, for white Americans of the nineteenth century, re
adily identified with Indians.)

  A middle portion of the document describes an elaborate process of summoning guests to the wedding ceremony.

  And Bennett … spake unto Erastus the Merchant & Uriah the [illegible word], saying … come I pray thee and attend the Marriage of the daughter of Benjamin with Elias, one of the sons of Ishmael, and eat of the marriage supper & drink of the wine & they said So be it.… Then Bennett sent messengers to John & his wife Sarah, saying … ye are invited to be guests at the wedding of Harriet the daughter of Benjamin with Elias the Ishmaelite the smell of which Ishmaelite thou loved. And Bennett also bid Abijah & his wife Lucy to the wedding, saying Come I pray thee … and join with those who also love the smell of the Ishmaelites at the Marriage of Elias the Ishmaelite & Harriet the daughter of Benjamin, and Abijah said So be it & his wife said seeing as thou art pleased to bid me also & as my Bowels yearn for the sons of Ishmael it shall be according to thy saying. (“Erastus the Merchant” was Erastus Swift and “Uriah” was Uriah Tucker, both longtime residents of Cornwall. “John & his wife Sarah” could perhaps have been John and Sarah [Northrup] Ridge, though their attendance at the wedding seems improbable and is otherwise undocumented. “Abijah & his wife Lucy” were a local couple surnamed Peet. The repeated mentions of “the smell of the Ishmaelites” are perplexing; possibly they have a sexual meaning, given the linked references to love and “Bowels [that] yearn for.”)

  Finally, the wedding itself:

  Now after the Priest of the Land of Goshen had joined the Ishmaelite unto Harriet in marriage the Guests ate of the Bread & Meat & drank of the Wine that was prepared for them and made themselves merry. Each one went his way except Sarah, the Wife of John, who abode by the [illeg. word] all night to take the smell of the Ishmaelite whom she loved so well & in the morning she departed & no one looked after her.