Elias Cornelius Boudinot (August 1, 1835September 27, 1890) was an American politician, lawyer, newspaper editor, and co-founder of the Arkansan who served as the delegate to the Confederate States House of Representatives representing the Cherokee Nation. Prior to this he served as an officer of the Confederate States Army in the Trans-Mississippi Theater of the American Civil War. He was the first Native American lawyer permitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court.
He was the mixed-race son of Elias and Harriet Ruggles (née Gold) Boudinot, who was from Connecticut. His father was editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, the first Native American newspaper, which was published in Cherokee and English. In 1839 his father and three other leaders were assassinated by opponents in the tribe as retaliation for having ceded their homeland in the 1835 Treaty of New Echota. The Boudinot children were orphaned by their father's murder, as their mother had died in 1836. They were sent for their safety to their mother's family in Connecticut, where they were educated.
Following the Civil War, Boudinot participated in negotiations of the Southern Cherokee with the United States before the tribe was reunited; he was part of the Cherokee delegation to the US. In 1868 he and his uncle Stand Watie opened a tobacco factory, to take advantage of provisions under the nation's new 1866 treaty with the United States. It was confiscated for non-payment of taxes, and their case went to the United States Supreme Court, which ruled against them. Boudinot began to lobby for Native Americans to be granted United States citizenship in order to be protected by the Constitution.
He was active in politics and society in the Indian Territory and Washington, D.C., supporting construction of railroads in the territory. Boudinot also worked for two Arkansas politicians. He supported proposals for termination of Cherokee sovereignty and the allotment of communal land to tribal members, as was passed under the Dawes Act. As this would extinguish tribal land rights, Boudinot also worked to establish the state of Oklahoma and have it admitted to the Union. In his 2011 history of America's transcontinental railroads, historian Richard White writes of Boudinot: "[He] became a willing tool of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad.... If the competition were not so stiff, Boudinot might be ranked among the great scoundrels of the Gilded Age."
Early life and education
Born August 1, 1835, at New Echota, Cherokee Nation (present-day Gordon County, Georgia); Elias Cornelius Boudinot was the son of Elias, a Cherokee National leader, and his wife Harriet Ruggles (née Gold) Boudinot (1805–1836), a young woman of English-American descent from a prominent family in Cornwall, Connecticut. They had met there when his father was a student at a local school for Native Americans. The senior Elias Boudinot became editor of the Cherokee Phoenix from 1828 to 1832; it was the first newspaper founded by a Native American nation and published in their language. He published articles in English and Cherokee, and had type cast for the syllabary created by Sequoyah. The newspaper was distributed across the United States and internationally.
His parents named this son Elias Cornelius Boudinot, after the missionary Elias Cornelius, who had selected his father to attend the Foreign Mission School in Connecticut. Elias was the fifth of six children. The year the boy was born, his father and other leaders had signed the Treaty of New Echota, ceding the remainder of Cherokee lands in the Southeast in exchange for removal to Indian Territory and lands west of the Mississippi River. Boudinot's mother Harriet died in 1836, several months after her seventh child was stillborn. The family moved to Indian Territory prior to the forced removal of 1838.
In 1839, when Boudinot was four years old, his father and other Treaty Party leaders were assassinated by Cherokee opponents for having given up the communal tribal lands, which was considered a capital offense. His uncle Stand Watie survived an attack the same day. For their safety, Boudinot and his siblings were sent back to Connecticut to their mother's family. The Golds ensured the children received good educations. As a youth, Boudinot studied engineering in Manchester, Vermont.
American Civil War
The following year Boudinot was chosen as the chairman of the Arkansas Democratic State Central Committee and monitored rising tensions in the country. In 1861, he served as the secretary of the Secession Convention as Arkansas determined whether it would leave the Union. He also served in the 2d Cherokee Mounted Rifles under his uncle Stand Watie. Boudinot was elected major of the regiment. In 1862, he was elected a delegate to the Confederate States House of Representatives, representing the majority faction of the Cherokee who supported the Confederacy. (A minority supported the Union.) Beginning in 1874, Boudinot served as private secretary to Congressman Thomas M. Gunter (D-Arkansas). He also was appointed to some paid committee clerkships. After Gunter left Congress, Boudinot became the secretary to U.S. Senator James David Walker of Arkansas. In 1885, he tried to gain appointment as Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Although supported by Arkansas politicians, he was unsuccessful.
He also practiced law in Arkansas with the politician Robert Ward Johnson (1814–1879), who had been elected to both houses of Congress before the Civil War. Boudinot was active politically on issues related to the Indian Territory. He frequently spoke on the lecture circuit about Cherokee issues and development in the West, and was considered a prominent orator.