Cities, buildings, named for Lewis Cass a wrong to Native Americans that must be corrected

Gerry Congleton, guest writer

Lansing State Journal
Sun, December 5, 2021

Cities, roads and bodies of water all across Michigan are named to honor Lewis Cass, appointed governor of the Michigan Territory in 1813 when most of the land belonged primarily to the Native Americans. Cass negotiated 20 different treaties with Native tribes, coercing them to hand over thousands of acres of land to the United States.

Gerry Congleton

President Andrew Jackson and Lewis Cass orchestrated and implemented their "Humane Plan" for the Indian Removal Act. The rationalization for the Indian Removal Act was to save "Indians" from becoming extinct — to become civilized, to become assimilated. The obvious intent was to take the fertile land being in control of the Native Americans east of the Mississippi River.

Cass expressed his attitude about Native Americans in an essay he wrote in 1826. Cass said, "the Indians were inherently savage and incapable of assimilating."

Rationalizing Removal: Anti-Indianism in Lewis Cass's North American Review Essays on JSTOR

In an 1827 essay, Cass wrote, "The Indians are compelled to war of passions, they have not only no principles of religion or morality to repress their passions, but they are urged forward in their career of blood by all around them."

Lewis Cass, excerpts from "Removal of the Indians," North American Review, January, 1830 (nationalhumanitiescenter.org)

American Expansion Turns to Official Indian Removal (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)

cherokeeremoval.pdf (scpronet.com)

Cass was not only a major orchestrator of the Indian Removal Act, but an advocate of "Popular Sovereignty," the doctrine of allowing states to vote whether or not to allow slavery.

This was not an honorable man and we need to do something to remove the Cass name from areas that were named to honor him. Fortunately, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has already started this by removing the Cass name from a government building in Lansing.

We can further correct these wrongs by removing his name from all locations in Michigan, which would include:

Cass Technical High School, Detroit

Cass Avenue, Detroit

Cass Park Historic District, Detroit

Cass County, in southwest Michigan

Cassopolis, a city and county seat of Cass County

Cass City, in Tuscola County

Cass Lake, in Oakland County

Cass Avenue, in Macomb County

Cass River, in Michigan's Thumb region

Cass Cliff on Mackinac Island

Gerry Congleton is a resident of Haslett and is a retired social studies teacher with a masters degree from Michigan State University with an emphasis in Native American Culture.

THE DEBATE OVER INDIAN REMOVAL IN THE 1830’s 

June 2011 

MA THESIS

 George W. Goss, BA, University of Texas 

 MAT, Emmanuel College 

The US in the 1830s debated the relationship between the US and Indian communities of
North America. The principles calling for equal rights and political democracy of the
people in America were in contradiction with the principles calling for the US to follow
colonial principles of the European empires that had begun to invade North America in
the late 1400s.

 The colonies that had revolted against British rule in the late 1700s had
continued the expansion of settlements and political incorporation that had been practiced since the founding of colonies at Jamestown and Plymouth. The proposal of Indian Removal debated in the US Congress was a straightforward expression of that
expansionism, which dispensed with the past policies of the US that had combined
expansion with treaty negotiations that had the form of a meeting and agreements of
equals, and proclamations of Indian rights and sovereignty.

 There was a national campaign developed in support of the Indian resistance, particularly from the Cherokee, that involved polemics and petitions, pubic meetings and Congressional debates. The opposition to Removal was advancing principles that in effect called for the US to develop practical policy that was in line with its past proclamations that upheld its treaty commitments to the Indian communities. The proponents of Removal, supporting a campaign of the state of Georgia to dispossess and expel Indian communities within its drawn borders, advanced principles that favored the prerogatives of US states. The US treaty commitments to the Indians were argued to be invalid; because the Indians were an inferior race the agreements with them could be annulled by a superior race. The arguments for Georgia’s superior rights and US expansion, based on principles of white supremacy and colonial rights of discovery and conquest, won the day.