Last week I listened as a young man, mid-40s, said, 'the Chickamauga deserved to be murdered and destroyed because they killed the colonists.' I politely asked him if he had ever heard of the Whitehall Treaty. He stated that he had not. Then, I asked him if he had ever heard of the 1785 Hopewell Treaty. He said he had not. I then asked if he believed a written contract between two governments should be followed to the letter of the agreements. He said yes.
He did not realize he was now trapped with no where to go as far as his original statement. I again asked if a 1730 contract between England and the Chickamauga retained validity until the Treaty of Paris when England officially ended the war with the colonies. He said legally, yes, it is valid. Then I asked if a 1785 contract between the United States and the Chickamauga was legally valid. To which he again said it was legally valid.
I finally asked if he knew the language of both of those contracts had specific wording allowing for the Chickamauga to kill anyone who crossed over the ridge of the Appalachian Mountains and invaded the homelands of the Chickamauga? He said he had never heard of such. I had him look up the text on his own phone so he would know I was not tricking him with the text of the contracts.
He finally admitted we had the right to kill anyone who had trespassed and squatted on our lands.
I wanted to go further with the conversation, but he had to finish shopping.
I wanted to ask if the Chickamauga were fulfilling the exact wording of the contracts then when did the contract give the United States permission to try to eradicate the Chickamauga from the face of the planet? While I know the answer, I wanted to walk him through the question and see if he could abandon his colonial mindset or if he was still holding to the whitewashed and redwashed history no matter what the facts are.
(C) This document was produced at the request of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs on July 18, 2019, to document the History, Anthropology, Culture, Religion, and Archaeology of The Chickamauga Nation.