Monuments to Absence: Cherokee Removal and the Contest over Southern Memory

by Andrew Denson

The 1830s forced removal of Cherokees from their southeastern homeland became the most famous event in the Indian history of the American South, an episode taken to exemplify a broader experience of injustice suffered by Native peoples. In this book, Andrew Denson explores the public memory of Cherokee removal through an examination of memorials, historic sites, and tourist attractions dating from the early twentieth century to the present. White southerners, Denson argues, embraced the Trail of Tears as a story of Indian disappearance. Commemorating Cherokee removal affirmed white possession of southern places, while granting them the moral satisfaction of acknowledging past wrongs. During segregation and the struggle over black civil rights, removal memorials reinforced whites' authority to define the South's past and present. Cherokees, however, proved capable of repossessing the removal memory, using it for their own purposes during a time of crucial transformation in tribal politics and U.S. Indian policy. In considering these representations of removal, Denson brings commemoration of the Indian past into the broader discussion of race and memory in the South.

Genres: History, Grad School, Native American, Nonfiction, American History

304 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 2, 2017

Reviews

[eenayde · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this! A really thorough and well researched deep dive into removal era commemoration in the South that covers a very wide array of source material. The writing did repeat itself often throughout but I found that I didn’t really mind - it actually helped at times considering the amount of information you get thrown. The book concerns a niche subject maybe but definitely an interesting one, and the strident analysis that accompanies it helps to break up a very information-dense book to be easier to read. The book considers questions about public history: narratives and the way they’re presented (and thus who ‘owns’ a narrative); why and how history is told, by whom, for whom. This was very accessible to me as someone who was pretty unfamiliar with Southern history as well!

[Sasha (bahareads) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Andrew Denson explores the public memory of Cherokee removal as it developed from the early 20th century through to the beginning of the 21st century. He explores the power and meaning of the most famous southern Indiana episode in a variety of modern contexts.

The structure of the book documents how the tourist industry embrace of Cherokee history in the 1920s and 1930s, to the substantial ware of removal commemoration that developed after WWII to the national campaign to remember the trail of tears that comes to the present day.

Denson argues that memorialising the Cherokee removal is a southern tradition, not a recent innovation. By examining the commemoration of Indian removal, Denson opens new terrain for native American scholarship within southern history. I enjoyed how Denson lets readers know that he wrestled with his own research motivations, and how his research evolved during its process.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely well-researched examination of historical and current commemoratives and interpretations of Cherokee Removal and resilience. Written by a history teacher at Western Carolina University, the book helped confirm some stories and tales to which I was introduced during my years living in east Tennessee, north Georgia, and western North Carolina. This is not exciting "narrative" nonfiction, but still approachable in style. I was especially touched by the epilogue and Jeff Marley's monument addendums: "we are still here."

[Mikaëla Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent reflection on public memory and heritage work and the ways that Americans have memorialized Cherokee Removal over time. Denson calls into question the reasons why people choose to reflect on particular historical moments and argues that recalling Cherokee Removal offers white Americans an opportunity for redemptive reflection, but not in a way that challenges current political realities. By framing Removal as an "abberation" or "mistake" rather than as a fundamental part of American settler-colonialism, white Americans can relegate it to the past while claiming the future for themselves. Recent work by Cherokee people to interpret their own histories may change this, but Denson does well to make us consider what stories we choose to tell and the meanings--explicit or implicit--that we assign to them.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. This book blew me away. It’s academic, at times dry, and at time repetitive, but the information is worldview-altering.

Andrew Denson (professor at Western Carolina University) evaluates American public memory of the Trail of Tears. Why do Americans only remember the expulsion of the Cherokees and not the dozens of other eastern Indian tribes? Why do “monuments to [the] absence” of Indians pop up throughout the south during the Jim Crow era? Who benefits from these narratives? Who tells the stories? How did the Cherokees benefit or suffer from these memorials, historic sites, and tourist attractions. Denson answers all of these questions and more.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative and really gave me a new perspective on the appropriation of Native American History for white gain.

[Mills College Library]

975.00497 D413 2017