The Cunning of Misrecognition: Indigenous Politics and the Five Tribes’ Capitols

This article examines Native American political strategies that were leveraged in the design, construction, and eventual preservation of the mid-nineteenth-century civic architectures of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminole Nations. Predating a turn toward the “politics of recognition,” these architectures advanced what could be described as “cultural misrecognition,” as they presented an appearance of assimilation to U.S. cultural and political norms while nonetheless supporting the Five Tribes’ resistance to one of the most fundamental operations of U.S. governance: the treatment of land as a privately owned exploitable resource. In the absence of detailed historical records attesting to the architectural choices made by the Five Tribes’ leaders, this article reads architecture through the political histories of the Five Tribes in order to understand how these buildings served the nations in their struggles to maintain sovereignty.