Elias Boudinot (1803-1839), Cherokee orator and newspaper editor, was born near present day Rome, Georgia. His birth name was Galagina Oowatie, but he later assumed the name of Elias Boudinot, a New Jersey statesman and philanthropist who was his educational benefactor. Educated at the Moravian Mission School at Spring Place (Georgia) and at the American Board of Foreign Missions' School in Cornwall, Connecticut, he also attended classes at Andover Theological Seminary in Massachusetts.
Returning to the Cherokee Nation in 1822, Boudinot worked with Reverend Samuel Worcester in preparing translations of the Bible and hymns into the Cherokee language. Being politically connected and among the more educated, Boudinot was selected by the Cherokee government in 1826 to go north on a lecture tour-from Charleston to Boston--to solicit funds for operating an academy and establishing a newspaper. Although he gave essentially the same speech at each stop, the version of his "Address to the Whites" at the First Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia on May 26, 1826 was the source for the text printed as a pamphlet. In the speech, Boudinot remained a loyal advocate for his people but presented statistical evidence of advancing Anglo-American acculturation as a positive goal. Understanding his audience and employing the rhetoric of evangelical Christianity, he implored these white congregations to aid in the assimilation and civilization of the Cherokees by providing funds for an educational institution and a bilingual newspaper to be published by the Cherokee Nation.
It was during his lecture tour, on March 28, 1826, that Boudinot married Harriet Ruggles Gold, creating scandal and concern among her family and the white Christian community of Cornwall. They returned to the nation where Boudinot taught at the High Tower Mission School until 1827 when he was elected Clerk of the Cherokee National Council and moved to New Echota (east of Calhoun, Georgia). Then in February, 1828, he became Editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, the first American Indian newspaper.
The discovery of gold in on Cherokee lands in northern Georgia in 1829 led to increased incursions by whites and continuous harassment by the Georgia Guard, and the enactment of the Indian Removal Act by Congress in 1830 further undermined the hopes Boudinot had expressed in his "Address to the Whites" that the Cherokee could remain politically viable by adopting the institutions of the dominant culture. While victorious in the Supreme Court case of Worcester v, Georgia, President Jackson refused to recognize the rights of the Cherokees or to enforce the decision of the Court..
After another northern speaking tour to seek support for the Cherokee cause in March, 1832, Boudinot concluded that removal to the west was the only hope for maintaining tribal sovereignty and ethnic integrity for the Cherokee. Following heated disagreements with Chief John Ross over editorial policy on the issue of removal of the Cherokees to Indian Territory and despite his editorials claiming freedom of the press, Boudinot was forced to resign as editor of the Cherokee Phoenix and Indian Advocate in September 1832.
By 1835, Boudinot and his relatives-John Ridge, Major Ridge, Stand Waite-had formed a "Treaty Party" and negotiated the Treaty of New Echota, ceding tribal lands and agreeing to removal, without authorization from the Cherokee government. In fact, they had done so despite a statute providing the death penalty for such an offense. John Ross and the majority repudiated the treaty with petitions to Washington representing more than 90% of the tribal membership, yet Congress ratified the treaty on May 23, 1836.
After Harriet Boudinot died in 1836, leaving her husband with six children, he married Delight Sargent, a white missionary from nearby Brainerd Mission, and they left New Echota for Indian Territory in 1837, before the forced migration on the "Trail of Tears." Joining Samuel Worcester at Park Hill, I. T., near Tahlequah, Boudinot served as his interpreter and assistant in the newly-established publishing enterprise, printing textbooks, religious tracts, the Cherokee Almanac, and other materials in the Cherokee language
On June 22, 1839, Boudinot was assassinated at his Park Hill home by three men believed allied with the Ross faction, summarily executing punishment for the treason of the Treaty of New Echota. He is buried in the Worcester Mission Cemetery at Park Hill, Oklahoma.
Elias Boudinot's younger brother, Stand Waite (1806-1871), was later a Brigadier General in the Confederate Army. His son, Elias Cornelius Boudinot (1834-1890), became a prominent attorney, a newspaper editor, and a member of the Confederate Congress.
—Stephen Smith, University of Arkansas
Source: Dale, Edward Everett, and Gaston Litton, Eds. Cherokee Cavaliers: Forty Years of Cherokee History as Told in the Correspondence of the Ridge- Watie-Boudinot Family. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1939.; Gabriel, Ralph Henry. Elias Boudinot, Cherokee and His America. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1941.; Luebke, Barbara Francine. "Elias Boudinot, Cherokee Editor: The Father of American Indian Journalism." Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Missouri-Columbia, 1981.; Perdue, Theda, Ed. Cherokee Editor: The Writings of Elias Boudinot. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983.