Walking the Berkshires

Denying the Redcoats Coal and Porter: The "Blue Mountain Valley" Whaleboat Raid

Late in January, 1776, word reach the Elizabethtown, New Jersey Committee of Safety that a British supply vessel, the "Blue Mountain Valley", had been driven near Sandy Hook by a storm and was without the protection of armed escort.  Col. William Alexander "Lord Sterling", commander of the 1st New Jersey Regiment, marched for Amboy with about forty men under his command to procure a vessel to capture the prize.  Learning that The British Man of War "Asia" was then offshore and preparing to come to the aid of the supply ship, The Committee of Safety - chaired by Robert Ogden (my 5th great grandfather) - determined to send about 100 Elizabethtown volunteers in three or four boats to reinforce Sterling's expedition. 

A large number of my ancestors participated in this act of privateering.  The list of officers and men  belonging to the militia of Elizabethtown who volunteered to capture that the ship was headed by Col. Elias Dayton, (a 6th great grandfather), and also includes Aaron Ogden (a 4th great grandfather), and a pair of 6th great uncles by marriage (Lt. Col Oliver Spencer and 1st Lt. Francis Barber).  It was clearly the thing to do for the young men of Elizabethtown, and all told 77 patriotic citizens and members of various militia regiments - warmed no doubt by thoughts of prize money - set out in three boats shortly after midnight on January 23rd, 1776 through the floating ice to Amboy to join up with Lord Sterling.

The various histories of Elizabeth (and they are many, for this was the first English town settled in New Jersey) celebrate this night the way communities around Boston recall the Lexington Alarm.  Elizabethtown would feel the impact of the war in numerous Tory incursions from Staten Island and even more profoundly from Knyphausen's Springfield Raid in 1780, but this was the first event of significance to happen in Town since the War began and anyone associated with it assumed the hero's mantle.  From Theodore Thayer's As We Were - The Story of Old Elizabethtown (1964) comes this description of the capture of the ship:

"Together they sailed for the open seas with the icy wind in their faces.  Not until shortly after daybreak did they sight their prey.  Silently they drew alongside the Blue Mountain Valley, fearing each moment to be greeted by a blast of gunfire.  None came, however, and before the enemy was aware of it, the raiders were clambering up the side of the ship and over the rails.  Fifty-year-old Lord Stirling with sword in hand was second man over the gunwales, with Aaron Ogden hard on his heels.  Finding himself surprised and out-numbered, Captain John H. Dempster surrendered without firing a shot."

The "Blue Mountain Valley" was a fine prize of 300 tons.  She had sailed from London on October 13, 1775: an exceptionally long crossing as she made no other port of call.  The ship's manifest, dated September 30, 1775, showed 107.25 "chaldrons (sic) of coal"; 30 bundles of hoops; 100 butts of porter branded "Calvert"; 225 bags of beans; 156 sacks of potatoes (which proved to be mostly rotten); 10 casks sour-kraut; 80 live hogs (only 7 remained); and 35 empty water puncheons.  There was no sign of the armed Britisher, which failed to find the Blue Mountain Valley and returned to its former station.  The Elizabethtown volunteers were disappointed, feeling up to taking this ship as well, but they had a hard enough time with contrary winds and tides and even grounded for a time bringing their prize safely into port.  A further reinforcement of 80 men joined them en route to guard against recapture, and several days later the ship lay at anchor of Elizabethtown Point under the command of Lord Sterling and a prize of war under the care of the Committee of Safety.

This was welcome news in Congress, which on January 29th, 1776

"Resolved, That the alertness, activity, and good conduct of Lord Sterling and the forwardness and spirit of the gentlemen and others from Elizabeth-Town, who voluntarily assisted him in taking the Ship Blue-Mountain-Valley, were laudable and exemplary; and that his Lordship be directed to secure the capture until further order of Congress; and that, in the meantime, he cause such part of the lading as would other-wise perish, to be disposed of by sale."

In March, the Provincial Congress of New Jersey, ordered the vessel and remaining cargo confiscated, sold at auction, and the proceeds distributed among the captors.  A gratuity was allowed the captured seamen, and the personal property of the officers restored to them (£100 in the case of the captain), after which they were set at liberty.  There was some difficulty in tracking down some of the fire-arms provided to the volunteers by the Committee of Safety for the expedition, but all in all the Blue Mountain Valley raid was felt to be a resounding success.

"Think I'll Go Eat Worms"

Back when I was living deep the mopaniveld of northern Namibia, there were communities where rural subsistence and even substantial profits were realized on a worm-based economic model.  The caterpillar of the "Emperor Moth" (Imbrasia belina) is an obligate species within Colophospermum mopane woodlands that occur in frost-free, generally alkaline conditions in bands across parts of southern Africa.  The moths oviposit on the leaves of Mopane tree and their voracious larvae - known as "Mopane worms" - are of great significance as non-timber forest products with high value for regional food security.  Although gourmets worldwide can get their sun-dried caterpillars in upscale packaging from purveyors of coffee beans regurgitated by weasels and other exotic fare, the African style is a newspaper cone filled by a roadside vendor from great buckets overflowing with squeezed, salted, fried and dried Mopane worms.

I've eaten these things.  I've eaten a whole cone of them washed down with sorghum beer on a rattling, overloaded minibus brimming with unwashed humanity.  This is not one of those culinary delights I yearn for from my days in the bush - certainly not enough to order up a 1.29 oz pack for $27.41 (+ shipping from Britain).  That absurd price is comparable to the cost of fresh American caviar or half an ounce of saffron, although an ounce of prime truffles will still set you back $150 or so.  Mopane worms are not in the same league as any of these things, but as a source of plentiful, high protein nourishment they are hard to beat.  Laboratory analysis shows on a dry matter basis that these worms are comprised of 60.70% crude protein, 16.70% crude fat, and 10.72% minerals. Of course, this discovery has long part of the traditional knowledge base in many African communities.

As with any natural resource, and especially those that fall outside preservation areas, mopane worms are vulnerable to over harvest and unsustainable exploitation.  Failure to appreciate the emperor moth's complex life cycle can lead to over collection of larvae in ways that compromise their reproductive success.  The challenges of managing a shared resource on lands with communal land tenure are particularly difficult in places where regulation and enforcement of conservation measures are inadequate and local resource users are disenfranchised from management and benefit decision-making.  In Zimbabwe, over-exploitation threatens the viability of these caterpillars and there are fears they could even become extinct:

"Villagers say the steady decline in the supply of (caterpillars) began three years ago when groups of women from Bulawayo and Harare began invading the area to buy the mopani worms, leading to over-harvesting of the delicacy. Traders from Zimbabwe's main urban areas export the caterpillars to Botswana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), South Africa and Zambia. The caterpillars were initially taken to the DRC in 1998, where they were an instant hit, with Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia also becoming major consumers.

The absence of regulations or legislation to control the harvesting of the mopani worms has made it impossible for rural communities in Matabeleland to limit the trade in the delicacy, some villagers told The Daily News.

Canaan Ncube, a ward development committee member in the Donkwe area, said: that the harvesting...had become so commercialized that the mopani tree, the caterpillar's habitat and source of food, was endangered every rainy season.

'People fell down decades-old mopani trees just to get a kilogramme of immature caterpillars,' he noted. "In the process, the habitat is destroyed and once the immature caterpillars are harvested, there is no hope of others re-appearing in the same area.' "

Mopane trees coppice very regularly, and in many parts of northern Namibia the demand for their hard, termite resistant wood has been so great that what was once a high canopy forest is now mopani scrub land.  Livestock can therefore browse more of the surface area of the tree in competition with the hungry caterpillars, which have nowhere to climb beyond the reach of collectors.  Desertification is a real problem in these areas where deforestation and excessive grazing have turned mopanifeld into barren land.

The are reasons to be hopeful, however.  In the part of northern Namibia where I once lived, the local people have established the Uukwaluudhi communal area conservancy.  King Shikongo Josea Taapopi, who I had the pleasure of meeting when I was a volunteer teacher at a Roman Catholic mission located within his kingdom, plays a strong role in helping the conservancy manage and benefit from its wildlife and natural resources and requires that mopane worm collectors register with his Tribal Authority.

"He said people should not start harvesting the worms until he announced the start of the mopane-collecting season.

Usually people harvest mopane worms from March to April, but according to the king, the worms in his area are still immature.

'We have to control our forest and our traditional fruits,' Taapopi said.

Those who register with the Traditional Authority have to pay an unspecified amount of money, Taapopi said.

The exact amount would be announced when the worm-collecting season was declared open, he said.

Some of the mopane forests where worms are harvested are in the Uukwaluudhi Conservancy, where community members earn an income from the sustainable use of their natural resources."

The Uukwaluudhi conservancy has its own "mopane worms fund" financed from the sustainable harvest of this resource.  King Taapopi authorized the donation of N$20 000 (currently valued at 2,728.14 USD) from this fund for a regional education initiative.  The benefits of community-based natural resource management for livelihood diversification, as well as sustainable use and conservation, are well established here.

So if you find yourself out of trail mix on a hot and dusty road in Uukwaluudhi, chances are you will find a ready source of sustainably harvested protein, locally managed and protected by royal authority, for sale in a newspaper cone of lowly worms.

One More Indicator that Something is Rotten in Zimbabwe

Back in 1997 when I knew it,  Zimbabwe's Communal Areas Management Programme For Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) was revered as one of the best community-based conservation initiatives in Africa.  Things have fallen apart so badly since then that the campfire-zimbabwe.org web page is no longer maintained and its URL has been taken over by a bottom-feeding American trout fishing concern.  Zimbabwe's natural resources  are yet another casualty of the Mugabe regime, which despite sanctions seems determined to bury what is left and squat above the bones. 

The Zimconservation website has this assessment:

"Zimbabwe finds itself in the midst of an unprecedented political and social upheaval as a direct result of the government-instigated private-land seizures that began in the year 2000. Throughout this turmoil there has been a widespread fear of state agents, lack of fuel, corruption and a rampant disregard for ethics, hyperinflation, a lack of foreign currency, loss of skilled professionals to other countries, a disintegrating education system, widespread HIV and skyrocketing mortality rates, a collapsing tourism industry and a general lack of information about what is really happening in the country.

These rapid social and economic changes have been extremely detrimental to both wildlife and environment, yet the wildlife crisis has been somewhat overlooked given the overwhelming humanitarian disaster gripping the country. Information about the wildlife and conservation industry is scarce and otherwise anecdotal as many wildlife management systems have been dismantled. Even so, a reflective analysis of anecdotal reports reveals some consistent patterns:

•  Wildlife on most of the privately owned conservancies and game farms in the dryer areas of the country have been severely poached by a variety of people exploiting the break down of the rule of law.

•  The damage to Zimbabwe's wildlife heritage has not been systematically assessed due to the prevailing war-like situation on the ground, but all reports point to catastrophic losses of irreplaceable endangered species such as black rhinos and painted dogs, as well as the destruction of commercially important herds of wildlife.

•  The Communal Lands and National Parks have been less severely affected, but worrying reports indicate that the security of wildlife and the environment in these areas continues to deteriorate daily, and risks to animal populations in these areas are increasing due to chronic environmental problems, increasingly uninformed and irrational actions by politicians, loss of human capacity and deteriorating infrastructure.

Chronic environmental problems affecting Zimbabwe include deforestation and overgrazing, water pollution, invasive plant and animal species, uncontrolled fires, human-wildlife conflict, dams, elephant over-population and wildlife borne disease. Zimbabwe is sorely lacking the finances and expertise to systematically tackle these problems, and many of the management, mitigation and education programs in place prior to the year 2000 have stopped due to the deteriorating working conditions and the flight of conservation professionals. The prevailing situation has severely demoralised the remaining conservation professionals and educators."

I remember the hope and optimism expressed by newly empowered CAMPFIRE participants about their empowerment as local resource users caring for their environment and benefiting from their careful stewardship.  The erosion of Democratic institutions like those promoted through CAMPFIRE are another consequence of Mugabe's despotism and the spiraling crisis facing this very troubled land.

Only in Jersey: Cat Trees Bear

New Jersey bears have it easy. There is strong resistance to a hunting season in the Garden State, even with an expanding bruin population.  There are lots of food sources in every suburban backyard - birdfeeders most especially.  Then again, they have to contend with ferocious adversaries, like domestic cats.

Jack the cat sure scared the britches off this old softy. We had a cat that once stalked a stork that had wandered off from a nearby zoo, but never a bear.

Read the article here.

"Never, Ever Play Dead": How to Survive a Shark Attack

Lots of good advice in this article that the vast majority of human beings will never need to know.  In 2004 there were only seven shark related human fatalities and there has been a five year downward trend in reported shark attacks that may well correspond to declining numbers of sharks.  Australia has about 15 a year, among the world's highest rates for shark attacks.

Back when I first started SCUBA diving, I had a bumper sticker on my tank that said "Be Kind to Animals: Kiss a Shark."  Never had the opportunity to practice what I preached, but this Aussie abalone diver survived being bitten from the head down.  The shark swallowed his head and he is now in serious but stable condition.

My grandfather, who (I'm embarrassed to say) family members swear once tried to harpoon a pilot whale, wrote this letter home to his children in 1945 serving as a Navy doctor with a Marine air wing in the South Pacific.  He tells about a shark encounter he had while fishing from an LCM:

"We put feather lures on our lines and started to troll.  After about an hour the fun started.  One of the men suddenly had a hard strike at his line.  His pole was almost pulled out of his hands and he began to fight a pretty big fish.  After about 10 minutes he had the fish in to within 50 feet of the boat and we could see it swimming under water - about 4 feet long and probably a king fish.  Just at this moment a great fin came out of the water 200 feet from the boat - it cut the surface like a knife and dashed toward the struggling king fish.  We could not save the king fish and were helpless to save him from the shark.  It was all over in a moment - for the 8 foot shark swallowed the king fish at one stroke - cutting off the body just behind the head and leaving the head dangling on the end of our line. 

But the scene was not yet over - for the struggle, and probably the presence of blood in the water had attracted other sharks, and soon there were three of them around the boat, making made dashes at the dangling fish's head only 10 feet from the boat.  Suddenly a shark grabbed the fish's head (though we were lifting it out of the water when they approached).  the reel sang as the line played out.  We expected to lose our tackle for with light line there was no chance of landing an 8 foot shark.  But luckily the bait and hook became disengaged from the shark's mouth and we were able to get it back intact.

Now all three sharks were snapping at the head - they made regular "bombing runs" on it - going off about 50-75 feet, circling and dashing in as straight as a die.  Finally, we got out the 45 pistol, waited for a big fellow to get his head out of the water right next to the boat, and fired.  Blood spurted from him as her turned violently in the water and tried to get away.  But the blood in the water was his undoing, for sharks are cannibals, and will attack even one of their own kind if he is hurt.  Within a few seconds the other two great gray brown sharks were on him tearing him to ribbons only a hundred feet from the boat.  It was a terrible sight.  While the fight was on we were able to get our boat away, for there could be no fishing while these bloodthirsty giants were dashing about all sides of the boat."

Speaking after shark attack on the abalone diver, Rob Townsend, from Oceanworld in Sydney said:

"Generally, after these kinds of things there's a percentage of the population that's wanting to hunt it down and kill it because it's a man-eater... [Great whites] are not mindless killers," he told the BBC. "I think they're beautiful animals. Understandably, I'm in the minority."

"There are not too many people that see 4-, 5-, 6m sharks with massive serrated teeth as a thing of beauty," Townsend added.

What's not to love?

Roadmap to Yeast

Fans of Zymurgy, take note.  It's not Google Earth (though it's powered by Google), and the load time takes a deadly 30 seconds or so on my computer.  But wherever you are in the US or Canada, you're never truly lost if you've got your Beer Map.  This one is for the Northeast.  You'll have to load your own region.

The Beer Mapping Project has more.  But if you are housebound, without a car, or live in a beer impoverished wasteland, then this article at Beer.com tells you all you need to make your own Kegerator.   Keep your old fridge for salsa and hot wings.

One for the Ages

The oldest living person known today is a 114 year old Connecticut woman whose parents had once been slaves.  Emma Faust Tillman of East Hartford, Connecticut was born on November 22, 1892 in North Carolina.  She has been widowed over 70 years and a member of the same church for 80.  According to the Hartford Courant which had the story;

Tillman, one of 23 children, moved from North Carolina with her family to Glastonbury in 1895.
She graduated in 1909 as the only black student in her high school and later worked as a cook, maid, party caterer and caretaker for children of several wealthy families...

...Longevity runs in the family. One of Tillman's brothers lived to be 108, while one sister lived to 105 and two others lived to 102."

To live that long, I would need to triple my current age.  Astonishing.

The Old Field Desk

The old field desk intrigued me the moment my great Aunt mentioned its existence and wondered if I might like to have it.   It belonged, she said, to one of our Revolutionary War ancestors, though she wasn't precisely certain which.  In any case, it was packed away either in the depths of her rent controlled apartment in New York or down at the Jersey Shore where she spent her summers and unavailable for examination.  We were neither of us in any great hurry to track it down, and twenty years would pass before I finally saw the object in question.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, military field desks were used by officers on campaign to store their writing materials, provide a writing surface and keep their regimental records.  Such desks were little more than hinged boxes, often made of mahogany with metal reinforced edges and recessed handles to facilitate storage.  Some had inner compartments and unfolded to create more "desktop".  This one has all of these features, but held another surprise as well.

My great Aunt had thought that this field desk had belonged to one of two people.  One possibility was Matthias Ogden, Colonel of the 1st New Jersey Continentals and the brother of my direct ancestor Aaron Ogden, a captain in the same regiment and also brigade major.  The other was that it had belonged to Francis Barber, their good friend and brother-in-law who was Lt. Colonel of the 3rd New Jersey and a divisional staff officer under Sullivan.  Francis Barber was killed at the very end of the war by a falling tree as he rode toward Washington's New Windsor Headquarters on the Hudson.  Both of these field-grade officers undoubtedly had their own field desks, but it was not clear to me why our branch of the family should have one for them until I saw the nameplate on the top of the desk and my Aunt's uncharacteristic confusion as to its ownership suddenly made sense.

Francis Barber Ogden (1783-1857) was the son of Matthias and Hannah Dayton Ogden, born the same year that his father's comrade-in-arms Francis Barber was killed.  His name is clearly readable on the brass plate recessed and screwed into the cracked mahogany of the field desk cover, though I would need an expert to tell me whether it is original or perhaps replaced an earlier one belonging to his father.  Though finely made, the piece shows the wear and tear of two centuries but its historical value even in its current condition makes any thought of restoration firmly out of the question.

Francis Barber Ogden had a distinguished diplomatic career as US Consul to Liverpool (1829-1840) and Bristol (1840-1857) and was a pioneer in nautical steam engines:

"Mr. Ogden devoted attention to mechanical science, and is credited with having first applied the important principles of the expansive power of steam and the employment of right angular cranks in marine engines. In 1813 he receded a patent for low-pressure condensing engines with two cylinders, the steam working expansively and the cranks being adjusted at right angles, and in 1817 the first engine ever constructed on this principle was built by him in Leeds, Yorkshire. He submitted his plan at Soho to James Watt, who declared at once that it would make "a beautiful engine" and that the combination was certainly original. The first screw propeller that was introduced into practical use and carried into successful operation was brought out by John Ericsson on Thames river in May, 1837, and was called the "Francis B. Ogden." The first propeller in the waters of the United States was the "Robert F. Stockton," an iron boat, which was built at Liverpool under the superintendence of Mr. Ogden."

Ericsson, you will recall, was the inventor who designed the USS Monitor.

Princeton University has in its collections a letter from Sam Houston dated 1843 appointing Francis Barber Ogden consul for the Republic of Texas in Liverpool.

With all his engineering experiments and diplomatic responsibilities, he seems to have had little occasion to use a military field desk.  In fact, his only military service was during the War of 1812, but it was of singularly significance nonetheless.   For Francis Barber Ogden was among General Andrew Jackson's aides-de-camp at the Battle of New Orleans.  In all probability, this is the desk he used during that battle.

As for how the desk came back to our family, I can only speculate.  I do know that Francis Barber Ogden was not the only one in our family with a deep interest in steam-powered vessels.  His uncle and my ancestor Aaron Ogden was deeply engaged in an early steam ferry service between New Jersey and New York.  The US Supreme Court decision that upheld the federal government's ability to regulate interstate commerce, Gibbons v Ogden, ended the monopoly that Aaron had been assigned by steamboat tycoons Robert Livingston and Robert Fulton and cost him his fortune. 

In our family papers I find an indenture for the sale of land, dated October 30, 1815, signed by Aaron Ogden and witnessed by his nephew Francis Barber Ogden.  Perhaps it was then, fresh from victory in Louisiana and before setting out for England, that he gave his uncle the desk.  His own father had died of yellow fever at 36 in 1791, so the relationship between them may have been more like father and son.  However it came about, Francis Barber Ogden's field desk is an extraordinary piece of American history and a treasured part of our family's past.

When Beachcombers Go Bad

Time was in Merrie Olde England, any vessel wrecked on British shores was a royal prerogative and its contents devolved to the crown.  The same was true for beached whales, which along with sturgeon were "royal fish".  Times have changed and now the laws of maritime salvage favor the owners of the vessel.  Still, there has been little call in Britain to enforce its ancient laws to compel those on shore to restore what they may have scavenged from shipwrecks to the rightful owners.  That is, until now.

The MSC Napoli, a fully laden container ship, was severely damaged in a English Channel storm last week and deliberately grounded off the coast of Devon to prevent the ship from breaking up in deep water.  All 26 crew were rescued, but dozens of containers - and a fuel oil spill - washed into the sea and came ashore along a wide stretch of beach.  And here is where things appear to have gotten out of hand.

According to the BBC:

"The police said organised gangs were targeting the beach and were behind some of the worst looting.

Over the last two days scavengers have descended on the beach, taking away goods that included BMW motorbikes, wine, face cream and nappies.

Officers closed roads to the beach to deter treasure-seekers and to allow contractors to start the clear-up operation, which is expected to begin at 0700 GMT on Wednesday.

That meant people had to walk several miles to the beach but that did not deter about 200 scavengers who were rummaging through the cargo...

...some of the items plundered from the container ship have already been listed on the internet auction website eBay.

BMW steering wheel airbags - advertised as coming from the Napoli - were up for sale online."

Not only goods for sale but personal belongings were among the looted cargo.  Having once shipped my worldly goods from Southern Africa to Boston by sea, I can only imagine the shock felt by one couple that reportedly saw television coverage of crowds rifling through their own possessions on the beach. 

To make matters worse, the wreck occurred in a World Heritage Site and threatens sea birds and marine life as well as private property. 

"About 200 of the vessel's 2,323 containers have gone overboard, 158 of which are classed as having potentially hazardous contents."

The Impossible Choice of Elias Boudinot

In his mother tongue he was Gallegina  or "the Buck", the eldest of nine children born to a prominent Cherokee family in northwest Georgia.  By the time he was murdered in Oklahoma by fellow tribe members he had a new name - Elias Boudinot - and was considered a traitor to his people, a sellout whose advocacy of assimilation ultimately led to a contrived treaty with Andrew Jackson's government enabling the "The Trail of Tears".

His story still inflames passions today but is far more than a morality tale against appeasement.  He was an educated young man of good family with a foot in two incompatible camps, trying to bridge the gulf between tradition and modernity on terms ultimately trumped by race.  He failed, with catastrophic consequences for the Cherokee nation, but faced an impossible choice that deserves a fresh historical treatment.

Contrary to the impression given by Paul Revere and the Raider's chart topping "Indian Reservation", the Cherokee people who remained in their ancestral homeland in the early 1800s took away their old ways of life and adopted new ones. The Cherokee were known as one of the five "civilized tribes", a term now considered pejorative but at that time widely applied to the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Seminole, Creek and Cherokee of the southeastern United States who had adopted many of the customs of white society - including the ownership of black slaves.  Sequoyah's syllabary, at first viewed with skepticism and scorn by his people, was in full use by 1823 and designated the official alphabet of the Cherokee Nation in 1825.   Cherokee volunteers under Boudinot's Uncle John Ridge - appointed Major by Andrew Jackson during the Creek War of 1813-1814 - fought with Jackson at Horseshoe Bend and later in the Seminole War of 1818.  A thirty year period of rapid acculturation among the eastern Cherokee in the early 1800s established an elected tribal council, a capital at New Echota, Georgia, and a constitution modeled on that of the United States.

These efforts occurred during a period of intense pressure on the Cherokee to relinquish their lands to settlers from the rapidly expanding states of the eastern seaboard and the Gulf coast.  Georgia's population increased six-fold between 1790 and 1830 as the frontier moved westward.  Despite their adoption of white culture and social organization, the Cherokee were not American citizens and had no rights that American's felt bound to accept.  A supreme Court Ruling in 1823 found that a Native American "right of occupancy" was subordinate to the United States' "right of discovery", paving the way for systematic dispossession.

The leaders of the Eastern Cherokee at the time when Elias Boudinot was growing up included many of mixed blood, and in the eyes of white society this carried the unacceptable taint of miscegenation.  This proved particularly true for Boudinot, of mixed ancesry himself, who experienced firsthand an American intolerance of marriages between Indian and White.  It happened not in Georgia, however, but in the Litchfield Hills of Connecticut.

Elias Boudinot's father Oo-watie, the head of a prominent and progressive Cherokee family, educated several of his children, including Boudinot and his half brother Stand Watie (later a Confederate general), at a Moravian missionary school at Spring Place, Georgia.  In 1817 Boudinot was among the first students to attend the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions school in Cornwall, Connecticut.  The school was established to create potential missionaries out of "heathens" with the sponsorship of Yale's President Timothy Dwight.  During the journey north, the Cherokee met the aged founding President of the American Bible Society - Elias Boudinot - whose name Gallegina adopted as his own in a sign of respect.

The Mission School lasted less than a decade and racial prejudice was its undoing.  Both Boudinot and his cousin John Ridge converted to Christianity while at the school, but they also became involved with local Cornwall girls.  In 1825 Ridge married Sarah Northrop, whose father was the school's steward, in a union that many citizens of this small New England town considered "unnatural."  The next year, Boudinot married another Cornwall woman, Harriet Gold, despite her own brother leading a group of citizens that burned the couple in effigy on the town green.  The school was immediately pressured to close because of these scandalous weddings.

It would be fascinating to research the later writings and letters of Elias Boudinot to see what impact he ascribed to this experience.  He certainly redoubled his efforts on behalf of the Cherokee.  He and his wife returned to Georgia, where they worked in a mission and he started a national speaking tour and campaign to raise support for Cherokee progress in the "arts of civilization."  He became editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, a bilingual periodical that quickly became embroiled in the removal crisis that threatened to dispossess the Cherokee from their ancestral lands.  Boudinot came out in favor of voluntary removal, a choice that would cost him the editorship of the paper in 1832 and ultimately his life. 

The Indian Removal Act of 1830 prompted the Cherokee to petition the Supreme Court to recognize their status as a sovereign nation.  Remarkably, the court ruled in their favor, declaring unconstitutional Georgia's extension of state law over them.  Neither Georgia nor Andrew Jackson, however, recognized or enforced the ruling, but it did mean that to be legal, the Cherokee would have to sign a treaty agreeing to removal. 

At this time of extreme crisis, the Cherokee split into two factions.  The largest, more than 16,000 under paramount chief John Ross, opposed removal (or as some suggest, wanted to hold out for better terms).  Boudinot and Stand Watie, their Uncle Major Ridge and cousin John Ridge, represented perhaps 500 Cherokee who favored voluntary removal.  This faction signed the Treaty of New Echota in 1835 authorizing removal.  Despite a formal petition protesting this action as unauthorized and containing more than 15,000 Cherokee signatures, the treaty was ratified by both houses of Congress (passing the Senate by a single vote, with Daniel Webster and Henry Clay among those voices raised in opposition). The Boudinot-Ridge-Watie faction left for Oklahoma ahead of the soldiers, and in 1838 the shameful forced removal and atrocities of the "Trail of Tears" accompanied the eviction of the rest of the tribe.  Over 4,000 Cherokee perished during the relocation.

On June 22, 1839, Major John Ridge, his son John and his nephew Elias Boudinot, were methodically killed by members of the Ross faction.  Sarah Northrop watched her husband dragged from his bed and stabbed 25 times out in the yard before their home and children.  Major ridge was fired on from ambush and struck by 5 bullets in the head and body.  Elias Boudinot's end came as he was directing carpenters at the home he was building.  He was approached by four unknown men asking directions to a nearby Doctor's house, and as he turned he was stabbed and tomahawked from behind.   Only Stand Watie escaped, and remained a bitter opponent of Ross - and unreconstructed foe of abolition -until the old John Ross died in 1866. 

Most histories conclude at this point that Elias Boudinot got what he deserved as the signer of a fraudulent treaty and betrayer of his people.  Such an interpretation has the satisfying quality of a Shakespearean tragedy, but it provides an incomplete picture of a complex young man caught in the vice of an expanding America that had no place for his kind, no matter how civilized they might aspire to be.  The angry torches of the Whites of Cornwall could not deter him from a missionary zeal to make the Cherokee - and himself  - worthy of American acceptance.