Justin Estreicher

Georgia’s antebellum gold rush, beginning with the discovery of the yellow metal in the Cherokee Nation in the late 1820s, is often cited in passing by scholars as one of several factors contributing to Cherokee removal. As intruders streamed into Cherokee territory, the state and federal governments prevented Native mining by selectively enforcing prohibitions on digging and legally excluding Cherokees from the gold and land lotteries of 1832– 33. While focused research on the Georgia gold rush as a whole is limited, the largely overlooked issue of Native mining activities requires particular attention. Considering Cherokee and non-Native commentary on the civilizational implications of officials’ actions, this investigation highlights the rhetorical role of the gold rush in the process of removal. Euro-Americans made great efforts to justify removal by mischaracterizing the Cherokees as savage hunters who made poor use of land that they actually farmed in the fashion of southern planters. Actions against Cherokee mining, though, were more brazen than any measures to displace the Cherokees from their agricultural lands, suggesting that the novelty of mining as a potential mark of Native civilization created an opportunity for white officials to manufacture savagery—that is, to contrive a situation wherein an argument for a superior EuroAmerican right of occupancy could more credibly be made. The result was an enduring myth that the Cherokees had sat idly on precious mineral resources for centuries, never making effective use of them, as only a civilized people could.

Justin Estreicher is a first-year Ph.D. student in the History Department at William & Mary. His research focuses on interactions between white and Native American societies and representations of indigenous people, primarily in the nineteenth century. His recent projects have explored the impact of Georgia's antebellum gold rush on Cherokee removal and civilizational narratives applied to American Indians in public amusements around the turn of the twentieth century.