“Where today are the Pequot? Where today are the Narrangansett, the Mohican,
the Pakanoket, and many other once powerful tribes of our people? They have
vanished before the avarice and the oppression of the White Man, as snow
before a summer sun.”
-- Tecumseh
Early in the 19th century, while the rapidly growing United States expanded into the lower South,
white settlers faced what they considered an obstacle. This area was home to the Five Civilized Tribes; the
Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chicasaw and Seminole nations. These Indian nations, in the view of the settlers
and many other white Americans, were standing in the way of progress.
From 1814 to 1824, Andrew Jackson was instrumental in negotiating nine out of eleven treaties,
which divested the southern tribes of their eastern lands in exchange for lands in the west. As a result of the
treaties, the United States gained control over three-quarters of Alabama and Florida, as well as parts of
Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky and North Carolina. This was a period of voluntary Indian
migration, however, and only a small number of Creeks, Cherokee and Choctaws actually moved to the new
lands. (WGBH, 1998)
Indian removal to west of the Mississippi had been suggested as early as 1802 by Thomas
Jefferson and recommended by James Monroe in his final address to Congress in 1825. (Sultzman, 1996)
The Cherokee used legal means in their attempt to safeguard their rights. In 1827 they adopted a
written constitution declaring themselves to be a sovereign nation. They based this on United States policy.
In former treaties, Indian nations had been declared sovereign so they would be legally capable of ceding
their lands. Now the Cherokee hoped to use this status to their advantage. The state of Georgia, however,
did not recognize their sovereign status, but saw them as tenants living on state land. (WGBH, 1998)
Gold was discovered in 1828 on Cherokee land in northern Georgia, and miners began swarming
in. In 1829 Georgia enacted a measure providing for the extension of the laws of the state over the
Cherokee Nation and abolishing the tribal government of the Cherokees. It was also provided that no
Indian's testimony was valid in court and that two white witnesses were necessary to prove any contract
between a white man and an Indian. The Georgia legislature also provided that no white person should
reside in the Indian country who was not a citizen of Georgia and holding a license signed by the governor.
The same law forbade the Cherokee council to meet for any purpose except the cession of land, and fixed a
penalty of four years' imprisonment for any Indian who held court or acted as judge. (Maloney, 1998)
With Jackson's full support, the Indian Removal Act was introduced in Congress in 1829. There it
met serious opposition from Senators Daniel Webster and Henry Clay who were able to delay passage until
1830. Meanwhile, Jackson refused to enforce the treaties which protected the Cherokee homeland from
encroachment. (Sultzman, 1996)
“Toward the aborigines of the country no one can indulge a more friendly feeling
than myself, or would go further in attempting to reclaim them from their
wandering habits and make them a happy, prosperous people.”
-- President Andrew Jackson's Case for the Removal Act
First Annual Message to Congress, 8 December 1830
The effect of these measures was virtually to loose the lawless whites of the state to prey upon the
helpless Indians. Since the latter's testimony could not be accepted in court, thieves might steal Indian
livestock or other property with impunity. Other Indians might easily do the same, since Cherokee courts
were abolished and no Indian was permitted to hold court or act as judge. (Maloney, 1998) Without federal
interference, Georgia and Tennessee began a reign of terror using arrest, murder and arson against the
Cherokee. (Sultzman, 1996)
The conviction and execution of a Native American by the state for the murder of a Cherokee on
tribal land in 1830 resulted in an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1831. In Cherokee
Nation vs. Georgia Chief Justice John Marshall denied the right of the Cherokee to bring a suit against the
state. (Editors, 1994-2000) Chief Justice John Marshall, writing for the majority, held that the Cherokee
Nation was a "domestic dependent nation," and therefore Georgia state law applied to them.
That decision, however, was reversed the following year in Worcester v. Georgia. Under an 1830
law Georgia required all white residents in Cherokee country to secure a license from the governor and to
take an oath of allegiance to the state. Missionaries Samuel A. Worcester and Elizur Butler refused and
were convicted and imprisoned. Worcester appealed to the Supreme Court. This time the court found that
Indian nations are capable of making treaties that under the Constitution treaties are the supreme law of the
land, that the federal government had exclusive jurisdiction within the boundaries of the Cherokee Nation,
and that state law had no force within the Cherokee boundaries.
The fate of the Cherokee seemed to be in the hands of the federal government. Even though the
Cherokee people had adopted many practices of the white culture, and had used the court system in two
major Supreme Court cases, they were unable to halt the removal process. (Cherokee of California, Inc.)
"John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it."
-- President Andrew Jackson re: Worcester v. Georgia
Georgia proceeded with the land lottery of 1832 and gave Cherokee land to whites who began to
move in.
Principal Chief John Ross was arrested, and the offices of the Cherokee newspaper, the Phoenix,
burned in May, 1834. The mansion of the wealthiest Cherokee, Joseph Vann, was confiscated by the
Georgia militia, and the Moravian mission and school was converted into a militia headquarters. (Sultzman,
1996)
Observing their people suffering from the harsh, unjust acts of Georgia and forced daily to endure
insults, oppression, and humiliation, their youth debauched by liquor, and their property stolen without
hindrance, a Ridge-Boudinot faction of the Cherokee came to believe in removal as the only hope for the
future. No doubt he envisioned in a distant land a Cherokee people happy, prosperous, and free to move
forward in civilization and culture unhampered by the evil influences surrounding them in this--their native
land. But, though a definite treaty party was thus formed, its membership remained small. Better to suffer at
home, they thought, better to further conform to the ways of the whites, than to go into exile. (Maloney,
1998)
When John Ross traveled to Washington, Jackson refused to see him. Instead overtures were made
to Major Ridge, his son John Ridge, and nephew Elias Boudinot. The hopelessness of the situation finally
convinced the group led by Major Ridge to sign a treaty at New Echota in 1835. Despite the majority
opposition to this treaty, the eastern lands were sold for $5 million, and the Cherokees agreed to move
beyond the Mississippi River to Indian Territory. Known as the Treaty Party (Ridgites), only 350 of 17,000
Cherokee actually endorsed the agreement. Threatened by violence from their own people, they and 2,000
family members quickly gathered their property and left for Indian Territory. A petition of protest with
16,000 Cherokee signatures was dispatched to Washington to halt ratification. After violent debate, Jackson
succeeded in pushing it through the Senate during May by the margin of a single vote, despite knowledge
that only a minority of Cherokees had accepted it. For the next two years, Ross tried every political and
legal means to stop the removal, but failed. The Cherokee found that their reward for 'taking the white
man¹s road' was to be driven from their homes at gunpoint. It was the beginning of the Nunadautsun't or 'the
trail where we cried.' History would call it the Trail of Tears. (Sultzman, 1996)
When the deadline arrived in May, 1838, President Martin Van Buren ordered the implementation
of the Treaty of New Echota in 1838, and 7000 U.S. Army troops under the command of Gen. Winfield
Scott began rounding up the Cherokees and moving them into stockades in North Carolina, Georgia,
Alabama, and Tennessee. As soon as practical, the Indians were transferred from the removal forts to 11
internment camps. By late July 1838, with the exception of the Oconaluftee Citizen Indians, the fugitives
hiding in the mountains, and some scattered families, virtually all other Cherokees remaining in the East
were in the internment camps. (Cherokee of California, Inc.)
"One by one Indian peoples were removed to the West. The Delaware, the
Ottawa, Shawnee, Pawnee and Potawatomi, the Sauk and Fox, Miami and
Kickapoo, the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole. In all some 90
thousand Indians were relocated. The Cherokee were among the last to go. Some
reluctantly agreed to move. Others were driven from their homes at bayonet
point. Almost two thousand of them died along the route they remembered as the
Trail of Tears."
-- Documentary: The West (Ken Burns/Stephen Ives)
But what if the decision of the Supreme Court in 1831 had been abided by? What if the Eastern
Cherokee nation had remained sovereign over its‟ own territory and Georgia had been forced by the
government to recall its‟ citizens from Cherokee land? Was territory in North Georgia worth battling federal
troops for? Would the U.S. have defended the Cherokee against the Georgia state militia?
Even if they had retained possession of their homeland, the cards were stacked against the
Cherokee in several different ways. Georgia wanted the land. The U.S. government certainly claimed
jurisdiction, it was only a question of who the government wanted to administrate it. They could always
change their minds later. The gold miners didn‟t care whose land it was as long as there was gold in it. And
it would have been a difficult task to retain possession of this prime real estate through the approaching
American Civil War. General Sherman‟s path of destruction would have pierced the heart of the Eastern
Cherokee nation in 1864.
By getting to the relative safety of the Indian Territory before most of the other exiled American
Indian tribes, the Cherokee fared better than most. Tribes that fought the U.S. during the more than 50 years
of warfare that followed the Trail of Tears sometimes sent only their most pathetic survivors into the federal
reservation system. And sometimes they sent no one. By dodging the bullets in 1838, the Cherokee are now
the second most populous tribe in the U.S. Would the alternative have been worse or would the 20 th century
have seen an independent Eastern Cherokee nation if the Supreme Court‟s ruling had been upheld?
Maybe Georgia could have been bought off by the federal government. Maybe the miners would
have gone home when the gold ran out.
Some Cherokee sided with and fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. If they had done the
same when General Sherman came their way, there might be far fewer of them today. Their independence
would have also been on shaky ground after the war. Independent states within the confines of the Union
would not have been welcomed in the late 1860s. 50,000 Americans had just died to settle the question of
whether or not any territory within the confines of the U.S. could act independently. The Eastern Cherokee
nation would have been just another casualty in the War. But suppose they could have survived this, too.
What if the year 1870 had arrived and found an independent Eastern Cherokee nation in the hills
north of Georgia. It might even have escaped the retaliation that befell other “reservation” Indians when
their lands came under martial law after the annihilation of Custer‟s Seventh in 1876.
The last free American Indians were massacred at Wounded Knee in 1890. If the Eastern Cherokee
nation had survived until then, it would have been the last refuge of Indians in the U.S. How long would it
have escaped the attention of the ravenously land-hungry Americans, and their soldiers and their lawyers
and their politicians?
But maybe it could still have survived. After all, there‟s nowhere else to send the Cherokees now
that the U.S. has conquered all of the remaining Indian land.
If the Eastern Cherokee nation had survived until the 20th century, would the World War II
paranoia have spared them from the fate of the Japanese that lived in this country? Would McCarthyism
have seen the Cherokees as a threat to democracy?
It‟s hard to imagine how the Eastern Cherokee nation would have survived until the present era.
Maybe their fate would have been a little different if the Supreme Court decision had been upheld. But
when I read Dee Brown‟s history of Indians in the West, I find no record of a fair or honorable treatment of
any Indian nation. The Trail of Tears is an embarrassing chapter in American History but it may have been
the only way to avoid an even worse chapter with a storyline similar to Sand Creek, Wounded Knee,
Mystic, or Taos. It‟s hard to believe that the U.S. would have made an exception of the Cherokee and just
left them alone. It‟s far easier to imagine that there would have been yet another broken treaty, deportation,
or atrocity with their name on it.
It is far better that the Cherokee nation exists as it does today as a thriving culture in Oklahoma.
The Cherokee language can still be heard there. The sacred wampum belts are still read and the fire of the
Principal People is renewed. The traditional Cherokee is a stronger and more powerful influence in their
own affairs than at any time since removal. (Anderson, 1991) Their experience over the last few centuries
has been a story of unimaginable pain and suffering, but also of extraordinary adaptability and rebirth. I
hope that History can find them in their adopted home when it comes time to pay its‟ debt.
There are still hundreds of communities of people scattered across North
America who know that they are „Indian‟ and that they are caught in a grueling,
day-in-and-day-out battle for physical and spiritual survival. Their struggle, they
feel, remains the same as their ancestors‟: to hold on to what is left of their land
resources and to the vision which animates their relationship with each other and
with the world.
-- James Wilson, A History of Native America