“Reading the Cherokee Phoenix: Cherokee Literacy, 1828-1835”

In 1828, the Cherokee Nation published the first American bilingual newspaper. The Cherokee Phoenix was published by and for the benefit of the Cherokee Nation from 1828 until 1834 when the Georgia Guard destroyed their printing press. Both editors were members of the tribe. The original editor, Elias Boudinot, wrote in the paper's prospectus that its aims would be for “the benefit of the Cherokee," and that "the following subjects will occupy its columns: The laws and public documents of the Nation; Account of the manners and customs of the Cherokees, their progress in Education, Religion, and the acts of civilized life, with such notices of other Indian tribes as our limited means of information will allow; The principal interesting news of the day and Miscellaneous articles, calculated to promote Literature, Civilization, and Religion among the Cherokee.”

Answering Wayne Wiegand’s call for diversity in the history of reading, this paper sheds light on Cherokee readers from 1828 to 1834 and on the issues that such readers considered newsworthy (1). Using methods of historical research and documentary analysis, it discusses how many articles were published in English, Cherokee, or both, in order to assess the possible reading-level of the intended audience, as well as the percentage of articles falling into each of the four categories outlines by Boudinot, concentrating on issues published immediately prior to the destruction of the printing offices. Rather than addressing a group of people who may not have spent much time reading or communicating in the written word, the newspaper editors shaped the Cherokee into a nation and created a national voice seemingly by a force of will (2). Their goal was to maintain the prerogatives of a free state against the infringements of the white man. John Ross, then Principal Chief, used the paper to communicate with the Cherokee who were spread across an area which comprised parts of present-day Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. The research also carries out a quantitative analysis of the “Henderson Roll” to uncover more details of the newspaper's readers. This document is an emigration census taken of the Cherokees in 1835 to ascertain an accurate estimate of the value of the land to be vacated, so that the Commissioner of Indian Affairs (and thus the rest of the United States) could be assured that the land they were giving up in the West was not of greater value than the lands they gained in the East. The document lists demographic data such as number of persons per household, number of readers of English, number of readers of Cherokee, and race (half blood, full blood, whites, and slaves).

Too often, Library and Information Science has focused only on mainstream populations in the United States. This research focuses on an underrepresented group of readers in an effort diversify our ideas about readers in the 19th century. It raises questions about definitions of literacy, and about the value of researching a historical group through the materials targeted at them.

(1) Wiegand, Wayne A. "Introduction: Theoretical Foundations for Analyzing Print Culture As Agency and Practice in Diverse Modern America", 1997. 7.

(2) Nord, David Paul. Communities of Journalism a History of American Newspapers and Their Readers. The History of Communication. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001. 81ff.