To Marry an Indian : The Marriage of Harriett Gold and Elias Boudinot in Letters, 1823-1839

When nineteen-year-old Harriett Gold, from a prominent white family in Cornwall, Connecticut, announced in 1825 her intention to marry a Cherokee man, her shocked family initiated a spirited correspondence debating her decision to marry an Indian. Eventually, Gold's family members reconciled themselves to her wishes, and she married Elias Boudinot in 1826. After the marriage, she returned with Boudinot to the Cherokee Nation, where he went on to become a controversial political figure who was editor of the first Native American newspaper. Providing rare firsthand documentation of race relations in the early nineteenth-century United States, this volume collects the Gold family correspondence during the engagement period as well as letters the young couple sent to the family describing their experiences in New Echota (capital of the Cherokee Nation) during the years prior to the Cherokee Removal. In an introduction providing historical and social contexts, Theresa Strouth Gaul offers a literary reading of the correspondence, highlighting the value of the epistolary form and the gender and racial dynamics of the exchange. As Gaul demonstrates, the correspondence provides a factual accompaniment to the many fictionalized accounts of contacts between Native Americans and Euroamericans and supports an increasing recognition that letters form an important category of literature.

This volume collects nineteenth-century family letters regarding the relationship between Harriett Gold, a twenty-year-old white woman from a privileged Connecticut family, and Elias Boudinot, the prominent Cherokee statesman and journalist she married.

Library Journal

It might as well be a brief epistolary novel, this sad story told in letters of a star-cross'd early 19th-century affair between Harriet Gold, a young Connecticut white woman, and Elias Boudinot, a visiting Cherokee Indian. With different degrees of racism, both families stoutly opposed the union (Harriet's brother even burned her in effigy in protestation) but gradually and grudgingly came to accept it. Elias became a journalist, the editor of the first Native American newspaper, and a conscientious spokesman for Cherokee acculturation. He was assassinated in 1839, three years after Harriet's death at age 31, leaving behind their six children. The introduction accounts for almost one quarter of the book, and it's a good thing, too, as this allows editor Strauth Gaul (English, Texas Christian Univ.) to place the letters the couple exchanged and sent to family members in their complex historical context. Full of interesting information about middle-class American life in the 1820s and 1830s, the introduction includes such details as how married New England couples shared space on single sheets of writing paper. Because this slight volume is at once a lesson in American history, sociology, and psychology, it is highly recommended for all libraries.-Charles C. Nash, Cottey Coll., Nevada, MO Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

When nineteen-year-old Harriett Gold, from a prominent white family in Cornwall, Connecticut, announced in 1825 her intention to marry a Cherokee man, her shocked family initiated a spirited correspondence debating her decision to marry an Indian. Eventually, Gold's family members reconciled themselves to her wishes, and she married Elias Boudinot in 1826. After the marriage, she returned with Boudinot to the Cherokee Nation, where he went on to become a controversial political figure and editor of the first Native American newspaper. Providing rare firsthand documentation of race relations in the early nineteenth-century United States, this volume collects the Gold family correspondence during the engagement period as well as letters the young couple sent to the family describing their experiences in New Echota (capital of the Cherokee Nation) during the years prior to the Cherokee Removal. In an introduction providing historical and social contexts, Theresa Strouth Gaul offers a literary reading of the correspondence, highlighting the value of the epistolary form and the gender and racial dynamics of the exchange. As Gaul demonstrates, the correspondence provides a factual accompaniment to the many fictionalized accounts of contacts between Native Americans and Euroamericans and supports an increasing recognition that letters form an important category of literature. When 19-year-old Harriett Gold, from a prominent white family in Connecticut, announced in 1825 her intention to marry a Cherokee man, her shocked family initiated a correspondence debating her decision to marry an Indian. Providing firsthand documentation of race relations in the early 19th-century US, this volume collects this correspondence As I shall have an opp. to send to Ct next week, I can hardly refrain from dropping you a line.