The Poems of John Rollin Ridge
by Jeff Ward

Originally Published by Henry Payot & Company, Publishers.

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Biography

     When John Rollin Ridge was born on March 19, 1827, in the Cherokee Nation, his people were in a state of turmoil. Like other American Indian groups in the Southeast at the time, the Cherokees were being pressured by white settlers and the federal government to leave their lands and emigrate to territories in the West that had not as yet been reached by the advancing frontier. Ridge was born into an important Cherokee family; both his father and grandfather, John and Major Ridge, were leaders in the tribe, and they, like the majority of the Nation, at first opposed leaving their lands in Georgia and moving to the wilds of the West. As time went on, however, they and other educated Cherokees began to regard resistance to removal as futile. They entered into negotiations with the federal government, made the best bargain they thought they could, and, in 1835, signed a treaty that ceded their lands in the East for land in what is now Oklahoma. This began the time in Cherokee history known as the Trail of Tears (1838-1839), during which U.S. troops forcibly removed the majority of the tribe, most of whom did not agree with the treaty the Ridges had signed. In 1839, Ridge's father was dragged from his bed and brutally assassinated in front of Rollin and the rest of the family. His grandfather was killed on the same day. These events were to influence young Ridge's life from that time forward.

     John Rollin Ridge was educated in Arkansas, where the family fled after the assassinations, and later in Massachusetts. His education was a rich one, especially in literature and history. He began writing poetry and essays as a young man, even as he settled down to a life as a farmer and rancher on the border between Arkansas and the Cherokee Nation. He married a white woman, Elizabeth Wilson, and looked forward to a life in which he would rebuild the social and economic prominence his family had lost since his father's death. In 1849, however, Cherokee affairs again intruded. He was involved in a fight over a horse with David Kell, a man from the Cherokee faction still hostile to his family. Ridge shot and killed his adversary and was forced to flee. Early the next year, he joined a wagon train for California, never to return to the Cherokee Nation.

     In California, Ridge at first tried gold mining. Finding this hard and unprofitable work, he soon found employment as a writer. He was first a reporter from the Gold Rush towns, then editor of several of the newspapers springing up in northern California. All the time, he was writing poetry and publishing it in newspapers and in San Francisco literary journals. His reputation as a writer grew and was greatly enhanced when in 1854 he published The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit. Ridge's book is considered to be the first novel written in California. This romance was read widely, as were subsequent pirated editions. In the years immediately preceding and during the Civil War, he allied himself with the anti-Abolitionist Democrats and editorialized in his party's favor. After the war, he participated in the peace settlement between the Cherokee Nation and the United States. Ridge died in 1867.

     The largest part of Ridge's poetry was written in Arkansas and during the early years in California. In later years, his writing consisted mainly of news and editorials as well as essays, although he did write some poetry during the late 1850s and 1860s. The earlier poetry is romantic, often autobiographical and personal. The later verse tends to reflect Ridge's journalistic and political interests, for it is almost wholly based on historical subjects.

     Many of Ridge's early works deal with nature and his reaction to the natural environment. Ridge's experiences with the environment often take on the spiritual or transcendental qualities seen in the works of other writers of the time. These special or enlightening encounters with nature are most often the result of the poet's imaginative powers.

     In his later years, Ridge wrote little verse, but what he did write was decidedly different from his early work. His significant later works include two called simply "Poem," "The Atlantic Cable," and "California." All deal with Ridge's view of history and his belief in the nineteenth-century view of progress. Inherent in this widely-held idea is that civilization is an evolutionary process. Societies, races, and nations are caught up in the inevitable march of progress and are constantly evolving toward higher and higher levels. The march is not merely technological; human intelligence and even human spirituality move upward. Implicit in this belief is the idea that the various contemporary societies, races, and nations have reached different plateaus on the evolutionary scale because of environment and other factors. Some of the hunter-gatherer societies, indeed, have barely begun the climb of progress. The Western nations, on the other hand, including the United States, have reached the highest levels and are at the cutting edge of the evolutionary process. And the theory supposedly could be supported empirically; one could look around and see the advances being made every day in the developed countries--the Atlantic Cable was a notable example--and compare this activity with the antique stagnation of less advanced societies. Among the many implications of such a system is the premise that the "advanced" nationals are morally obligated to spread their ideas and methods to the "benighted" peoples of the world. A corollary of this idea is that less advanced people should accept these offerings wholeheartedly and learn to live like their more civilized counterparts. The message for American Indians is obvious. By the time Ridge wrote these poems, he believed his family had made the transition in only three generations from a primitive aboriginal existence to a modern civilized one. His own experience and success as a writer helped to encourage this view.