LITHOGRAPH OF CHEROKEE CHIEF MAJOR RIDGE
Page removed from a copy of "History of the Indian Tribes of North America" by Thomas McKenney and James Hall, (Philadelphia: E.C. Biddle), ca. 1836, 9 3/4" x 13, depicting MAJOR RIDGE (ca. 1771-1839), a Cherokee leader who formed alliances with Andrew Jackson in the Creek and Seminole wars. Ridge was later executed by another faction of Cherokee for his role in negotiating the Treaty of New Echota with the US government, which forfeited all Cherokee land east of the Mississippi and became the legal basis for the forced removal of Cherokee to Oklahoma through the Trail of Tears. The book was devised by McKenney as a way of preserving: "...in the archives of the Government whatever of the aboriginal man can be rescued from the destruction which awaits his race." He believed that American Indians were threatened as a people by the expansion of European-American society. Aware that there was ill feeling against them by those who wanted their land, he said they should be: "...looked upon as human beings, having bodies and souls like ours..." Matted in light blue and mounted in a dark wood frame, fine.