Elias Cornelius Boudinot
| Elias Boudinot | |
|---|---|
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| Member of the C.S. House of Representatives from the Cherokee's At-large district |
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In office February 18, 1862 – May 10, 1865 |
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| Preceded by | Constituency established |
| Succeeded by | Constituency abolished |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
August 1, 1835 Rome, Georgia, U.S. |
| Died | September 27, 1890 (aged 55) Fort Smith, Arkansas, U.S. |
| Political party | Democratic |
Elias Cornelius Boudinot (Cherokee) (August 1, 1835 – September 27, 1890) was an attorney, politician and military officer in the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. Chosen as a delegate to the Arkansas secession convention, Boudinot served as a colonel in the Confederate States Army, and as an Arkansas representative in the Confederate Congress.
He was the son of Elias Boudinot, editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, the first Native American newspaper, and Harriet R. Gold Boudinot from Connecticut. His father and three other leaders were assassinated in 1839 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 received their educations.
Following the Civil War, Boudinot participated in negotiations of the Southern Cherokee with the United States (US) 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 Indian Territory and Washington, DC, supporting construction of railroads. He worked for two Arkansas politicians. He advocated termination of Cherokee sovereignty and allotment of land to tribal members, as was passed under the Dawes Act, and worked for the formation of the state of Oklahoma. In his 2011 history of America's transcontinental railroads, the 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."
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Wikipedia