The council at Broom Town
Throughout history, human societies have found various way to govern themselves. At different times, this governance has taken different forms; some take the form of written legal codes with prescribed rewards and punishments.
Others have chosen a social code relying on societal pressure to govern anti-social behavior. The relative superiority of one system over the other has been debated by philosophers and theologians since the dawn of time and will probably still be debated by the same people at the twilight of time.
Since ancient times, the Cherokee had governed themselves by a social code enforced by a strong clan system and a rigid sense of honor. This traditional law served the Cherokee quite well for a thousand years or more. The system was truly governance by the consent of the governed. The leaders had no coercive authority, no police, no jail; they maintained their position through oratory and persuasion. A Cherokee Chief or Headman achieved that position only when a majority of his people agreed that he was the right man for the job.
The same held true for female leaders. This system of tradition and honor served the Cherokee perfectly well for as long as anyone could remember, there seemed no reason to change.
And then the colonials arrived. Colonials, whether they were Spanish, French or English, brought with them a whole new set of problems which the Cherokee system was not designed to deal with. For one thing, the colonials by and large had no honor and no understanding of why they should. In place of honor, the white men had law.
The colonials also brought a new God, which would have been fine, except that the colonials only regarded their God when it was convenient or profitable to do so. And last but not least, the colonials brought another concept that the Cherokee system was not designed to deal with, and that was greed.
The collective results of colonial diseases, colonial ideas and colonial intermarriage forced Cherokee intellectuals and leaders to face the fact that if the Cherokee were to survive, they would have to adapt. The traditional Cherokee system was woefully inadequate for dealing with men who had no honor and for whom God was only an abstract concept. It was this realization that leads us to Broom Town.
Prior to the colonial era, the Cherokee were governed by local councils, Chiefs and Beloved Women. Issues were dealt with on a local level, and there was no national government as such. It was a good system for the people, but it was also terribly inefficient. The colonial era brought an existential threat to the Cherokee as a whole, as the local model was no longer sufficient. It was time for a national government and national leadership.
As Cherokee intellectuals and leaders spent more time considering what to do next, they noticed that their own makeup was changing. More and more Cherokee leaders were becoming more mixed. The high level of intermarriage between Cherokees and colonials had created and entirely new demographic; the so-called “Mixed-Blood Aristocracy.” The mixed bloods brought new concepts to the Cherokee leadership class and new ways of dealing with the existential threat that their people faced.
In the fall of 1808, all of the debates and ideas circulating through the various council houses of the Cherokee country came to fruition at the council house at Broom Town, when the “Chiefs and Warriors in National Council assembled,” brought the Cherokee into the era of the Nation State and enacted the first written national law. It was indeed a momentous occasion since never before had the Cherokee had, or needed, a national government.
Although Broom Town may have been the first, it certainly was not the last.
Within two decades, the Cherokee Nation was a fully functioning constitutional republic with a full written legal code, a court system and indeed even the language was written down, thanks to the genius of Sequoyah.
At the time of the Broom Town council, a man named Black Fox was the Principal Chief. Because of this some call him the law giver, or the Cherokee Moses. That is hyperbole in my opinion, but there can be little doubt that he was a great chief, leading his people during a time fraught with both minor dangers and existential threats.
No, Black Fox was not Moses, but he was a very wise Fox.