John Rollin Ridge

John Rollin Ridge (Cherokee name: Cheesquatalawny, or Yellow Bird, March 19, 1827 – October 5, 1867), a member of the Cherokee Nation, is considered the first Native American novelist. After moving to California in 1850, he began to write. He is known for his novel The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta: The Celebrated California Bandit, based on a notorious outlaw of the period.

His father John Ridge had been assassinated in 1839 in Indian Territory, after removal, by Cherokee who condemned his having signed a treaty to cede communal land to the United States. Ridge was taken by his mother to Fayetteville, Arkansas, for safety. He later attended school in Massachusetts. After returning to Arkansas, he studied the law, set up a practice and married.

In 1850, due to the California gold rush, he went west where his wife and daughter later joined him. There he started writing – both poetry and essays. In his novel and other works, he criticized American racism toward Mexicans, several years after the war by which the United States acquired California and much of the Southwest. After the American Civil War, he was among the Cherokee delegation that negotiated a new treaty for peace with the United States.

Biography

Early life and education Born in 1827 in New Echota, Georgia, he was the son of John Ridge and his wife Sarah Bird Northrup, a European American woman from Cornwall, Connecticut. His father had attended the Foreign Mission School there, beginning in 1819. Sarah's father was steward of the school. His parents married in 1824.

Both his father and grandfather Major Ridge, were signatories to the Treaty of New Echota, which Congress affirmed in early 1836. By this, they ceded Cherokee lands east of the Mississippi River. The tribe had been under pressure to move from state and federal governments, and was ultimately forced to remove to west of the Mississippi River, on what is known as the Trail of Tears. At the age of twelve, Ridge witnessed his father's assassination in Indian Territory at the hands of supporters of Cherokee leader John Ross, who had vehemently opposed the treaty. His mother, Sarah Bird Northrup Ridge, took John R. Ridge to Fayetteville, Arkansas for safety.

In 1843, Ridge was sent to the Great Barrington School in Great Barrington, Massachusetts for two years. After that, he returned to Fayetteville to study law. It was during this period that his first known writing was published. He published a poem, "To a Thunder Cloud," in the Arkansas State Gazette.

After starting a law practice, in 1847, Ridge married Elizabeth Wilson, a white woman. They had one daughter, Alice, in 1848.

On the run In 1849, Ridge killed Ross sympathizer David Kell, who he thought had been involved in his father's assassination, over a horse dispute. The next year, he went west because of the California gold rush, but disliked being a miner.

Writing career Ridge published poetry in The Golden Era and other California magazines (these were posthumously collected).

Literary scholars often highlight Ridge’s critique of racialized structures of power in Gold Rush–era California. Often regarding the text, Ridge and several commentators argue that the violence directed at Mexicans in the text operates effectively "under the color of American law," since local authorities frequently ignored or tolerated such acts.

Civil War and the Southern Cherokee delegation During the Civil War, Ridge openly supported the "Copperheads", Southern sympathizers. He opposed both the election of Abraham Lincoln and the President's Emancipation Proclamation, blaming the war on abolitionists. He was buried at Greenwood Memorial Park in Grass Valley.