Newspaperman and Novelist

Idylls and The Trail of Tears.

John Rollin Ridge was born in the Cherokee Nation in Georgia to a Cherokee father, John Ridge, and a white mother, Sara Bird Northrup. He recalled his early childhood years as a pleasant idyll, straying along the "summershaded shores" of the Oostanaula River near his grandfather's home in Rome, Georgia, gliding along "in a light canoe" and lolling beneath the river's "overhanging willows." His life changed when the federal government passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830, legislation that allowed the federal government to resettle Indians in lands west of the Mississippi River. Ridge's grandfather, Major Ridge; his father; and other Cherokees challenged the legality of the Indian Removal Act. When their protests failed, the Ridges came to terms with the federal government and voluntarily moved to Indian Country (Oklahoma). During the late 1830s the Cherokees...