John Rollin Ridge was the first Native American novelist. His own story takes him through early Arkansas, the chaos of the frontier and his own close calls with death.
He was born in New Echota, Ga., in March 1827. His Cherokee name was Yellow Feather, but he went by the Anglicized name of Ridge. His father, John Ridge, and grandfather, Major Ridge, were prominent leaders in the Cherokee Nation. For years, the Cherokees had steadily lost lands to white settlers.
In 1831, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law forcing all southeastern tribes into a new area in the west designated the Indian Territory, which is present-day Oklahoma. The Arkansas Territory was split in half to create this territory. Ridge’s father and grandfather had surveyed the dwindling Cherokee lands in Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee, and realized they could not hold out any longer.
The two, along with two other Cherokee leaders, signed the Treaty of New Echota in late 1835, agreeing to give up their lands in exchange for the new territory in the West. Though many Cherokees hoped to hold out and federal courts ruled in their favor, the Jackson administration was determined to force them out. These were the darkest days the Cherokees had to face.
Four thousand died on the Trail of Tears, their bitter march forced at gunpoint by the army from their homes in the Southeast to the Indian Territory. When they arrived, they attempted to rebuild their lives from scratch. The disintegration of the Cherokee Nation in the aftermath had far-reaching consequences. Many Cherokees spread across the nation attempting to escape the reservations.
A number attempted to hide their Native American heritage in hopes that their anonymity would spare them more persecution. What had been a peaceful, democratic community collapsed into factionalism. One of these factions formed their own tribal council in 1839, and declared that the treaty negotiators were guilty of treason and ordered their execution.
Ridge’s father and grandfather were shot and killed as a result. After his father’s murder, his mother took him and fled across the border into Arkansas seeking safety. Once they settled in Fayetteville, their lives were peaceful for the next several years. He briefly attended school in Massachusetts before returning to Arkansas, marrying and starting a family.
He started studying law, but he also had a strong interest in writing. Several of his poems were published in newspapers across Arkansas. However, his past found him. In 1849, he ran across one of the conspirators who had murdered his father. An argument over a horse escalated into a fight and Ridge killed the man. Though he claimed self-defense, he fled to Missouri and then to California to join the Gold Rush. Ridge failed as a miner but soon settled into a successful career as a writer and editor.
He was early editor of The Daily Bee in Sacramento, one of the oldest papers in California, and later, the San Francisco Herald. In 1854, he published his only novel, The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta: The Celebrated California Bandit. Joaquin Murieta had been a notorious outlaw in California in the early 1850s after his arrival during the Gold Rush and allegedly killed in 1853.
Ridge romanticized his life, making up many facts to fill the gaps in public knowledge, and making Murieta a victim of racism who fought for his own sense of justice. However, several writers took Ridge’s novel as fact, which only helped Murieta’s legend grow. Some scholars believe that Ridge’s novel inspired the later Zorro stories.
After the Civil War, Ridge traveled to Washington, D.C., as a delegate for the Cherokees to negotiate a new series of treaties. Ridge had hoped for statehood for the Cherokees in the Indian Territory but failed. After he returned home to California, he fell ill with encephalitis. After several days, he died, barely past the age of 40.
(Dr. Ken Bridges is a history professor at South Arkansas Community College).