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First Place – Senior Division
Cherokee Removal from Georgia: The Unfair Choice
Sarah Klevorn
Kirkwood High School
The removal of the Cherokee to the west of the Mississippi River is most often regarded
as a black mark in American history. It is easy, as modern people, to glance back to the
Jacksonian era and judge the citizens of that period as selfish stealers of Cherokee lands and
rights. However, in the early 1800s, the question of what to do with the Cherokee became a
serious political issue that could have easily produced a more violent confrontation had the
government not quickly found and enforced a solution.
Although removal as a policy had significant drawbacks, including the loss of ancient
ancestral lands for the Cherokee, it was the most considerate way to preserve their culture. The
Cherokee who remained in Georgia were surrounded by a white population that would have
possibly exterminated them, especially since the white greed for land was insatiable and
prejudices against Native Americans ran rampant in white society. Furthermore, the Cherokee
were in no position to handle the pressure put on them to leave because they split into two
political parties that President Andrew Jackson played against each other for his advantage.
Because the Jacksonians were unrelenting in their attempts to remove the Cherokee, the
West was the only place left where any pieces of the Cherokee identity could be maintained.
Thus, removal was the best course of action for the Cherokee because it provided the sole chance
for them to maintain their traditional identity without being crushed by white culture.
White society would have destroyed the Cherokee had they remained in the East. By the
end of Jackson’s first term in 1833, his administration had relocated each of the Five Civilized
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Tribes except the Cherokee. 1 The stage was set for final battle of a conflict that had been
simmering for decades, and the fate of the Cherokee was sealed as the removal of each
successive tribe provided momentum for the Jackson administration.
Adding to the momentum, tension quickly built between the state of Georgia and the
Federal government over the Cherokee. In July 1827, the tribe presented their Constitution of
the Cherokee Nation, in which they proclaimed their sovereignty as an independent people, free
from the state’s jurisdiction. Enraged by this brazen assertion and the failure of the Federal
government to enforce its 1802 promise to extinguish all Indian land titles within the state,
Georgia passed a law on 20 December 1828 ruling that all Indian residents within the state
boundaries would be under its jurisdiction after six months. 2
Once this happened, serious oppression for the Cherokee was inevitable, and Mississippi
and Alabama were certain to follow Georgia’s example in dealing with the Choctaws,
Chickasaws, and Creeks living within their borders. 3 Georgia’s actions put increasing pressure
on the Federal government to take their side and eliminate the Cherokee problem.
The dispute between the national and state governments was not the only factor that made
removal of the Cherokee necessary for their survival. A sheet of racism and prejudice coated all
facets of the American white population, not just in Georgia and the South. The Cherokee
Phoenix, an independent newspaper, often discussed the
maxim, so well established … that the Indian cannot work … that improvidence and
spirituous liquors attends him … that the condition of the common Indian is perceptibly
declining…and that, upon the whole, the mass population of the Southern Indian tribes
are a less respectable order of human beings now, than they were ten years ago. 4
Americans would not be willing to allow a people they thought lazy to occupy the fertile lands of
northern Georgia.
These feelings intensified with the discovery of gold on Cherokee land in 1829.
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Squatters came from all corners of the state to sit on the land and have a chance to strike it rich. 5
The tribe desperately wrote to the president, complaining that
There are hundreds of whitemen searching and digging for gold within the limits of our
nation … which we cannot but consider as depriving us of our property for which the
faith of the Gov’t is pledged for our protection … We humbly request that you consider
the subject … and if possible grant the wishes of our people. 6
Unfortunately, their efforts were in vain because the President was intently focused on forcing
the Chrokee to leave.
Jackson’s resolve was unshakeable, and the squatters were the exact kind of indirect
pressure he wanted on the Cherokee. The Indians could not go to the state of Georgia for help,
and any attempts violently to force the squatters off the land would be met tenfold by the state
militia. Even more astonishing was the fact that U.S. annuities to the tribe were being given by
government agents to white creditors to pay off the agents’ personal debts. 7 The Cherokee were
being cheated out of control over their own money, further entrapping them and cutting off
precious resources.
Making use of the Cherokees’ obviously grave prospects, Jackson tried to speed removal
through discriminatory legislation. In 1830, Jackson pushed his Indian Removal Act through
Congress. Although at first the bill provoked more dissent than expected, the opposition was
mostly based on the fact that Americans might look heartless if they simply thrust the Native
Americans into what was thought at the time to be a great barren desert, unfit for civilization.
The other small percentage of the opposition consisted of humanitarian church groups — such as
the Quakers — and politicians who thought Jackson had taken the powers of the executive
branch too far. 8
Henry R. Storrs, a congressman from New York, angrily charged that “If these
encroachments of the Executive Department are not met and repelled in these halls, they will be
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resisted nowhere.” 9 In spite of these arguments, the bill passed on 28 May 28, 1830. Contrary
to its title, the bill did not push immediate removal of the Indians. What it did was force them
either to move or give up their culture. They would only have to move if they signed a treaty
binding them to do so, and the president would provide
assistance to be furnished to the emigrants as may be necessary and proper to enable
them to remove to, and settle in, the country for which they may have exchanged, and to
give them such aid and assistance as may be necessary for their support and subsistence
for the first year.
Nevertheless, the Cherokee would no longer be allowed to govern themselves and be exempt
from local, state or United States laws. 10 As a result, the act further cornered the Cherokee. If
they chose to stay, their culture would inevitably be crushed under their need instantly and
completely to assimilate to white culture.
With the legislative and executive branches already standing against them, the Cherokee
had nowhere to turn but the United States Supreme Court. As a last resort before appealing to
the Supreme Court, the Cherokee wrote a formal request to American citizens in July 1830,
hoping to find a friend in their isolation. The Cherokees, in their appeal, asked,
Shall we be compelled by a civilized Christian people, with whom we have lived in
perfect peace for the last forty years, and for whom we have willingly bled in war, to bid
a final adieu to our homes, our farms, our streams, and our beautiful forests? No…we are
sure [the American people] will not fail to sympathize with us. 11
The Cherokee’s faith in the American people turned out to be misplaced. As with any
opportunities to aid the Cherokee before, most white citizens felt apathetic toward, and
disconnected from the tribe’s cause. So the Cherokee took the next step and in 1831 hired
William Wirt, who had been U.S. Attorney General from 1817-1829, to represent them in the
case of Cherokee Nation v. Georgia. They argued that under their constitution they were an
independent nation within the United States, had been treated so during the signing of treaties,
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and that as such the United States had no business imposing laws upon them. 12 The Court ruled
that the relationship the Cherokee had with the United States did not constitute them as an
independent nation, but rather that, “Their relation to the United States resembles that of a ward
to his guardian.” However, as such “wards”, the Court ruled that state laws had no jurisdiction
over the Cherokee. 13
This ruling bought the Cherokee a little time, but Georgia was quick to pass a law,
effective in March 1831, that prohibited white men from entering Indian country without a
license from the state. 14 On the surface, this looked like an ideal solution to the squatter
problem, but really it was an underhanded attempt to cut off all white support for the Cherokee
by keeping white missionaries from getting into the territory.
It was under the refusal to leave of two such men, Samuel A. Worcester and Dr. Elizur
Butler, that the Nation came into its second confrontation with the Supreme Court. Butler and
Worcester were sentenced to a four-year term of hard labor by Georgia courts for breaking the
law, but they quickly appealed their case to the Supreme Court. 15 Chief Justice John Marshall
again delivered the opinion of the Court that,
The Cherokee Nation … is a distinct community, occupying its own territory, with
boundaries accurately described, in which the laws of Georgia can have no force, and
which the citizens of Georgia have no right to enter but with the consent of the Cherokees
themselves or in conformity with treaties and with the acts of Congress.
For the second time, the Supreme Court had done what it could to help the Cherokee, but its
decision could not be enforced until Georgia’s Supreme Court responded — which it never did
— or until the U.S. Supreme Court reconvened — which it did after an adjournment of more
than a year. 16 Jackson and Georgia had asserted their own power over the Court’s by
significantly slowing the enforcement of its decision, further reiterating that the Cherokee had
nowhere to go but to the West.
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Unfortunately, the Cherokees’ campaign to stay was soon undermined when the tribe
became divided into two political parties. Some leaders of the Cherokee Nation saw that what
the Supreme Court ruled really had no effect; the pressure from Jackson and Georgia would
never cease until the tribe gave up their culture or moved. Rather than acquiesce to the former of
these options, the well-respected men Major Ridge, his son John Ridge, Elias Boudinott Stand
Watie, John A. Bell, James Starr, and George W. Adair formed the Treaty Party. These men
were tired of fighting a losing battle with the government and sought to negotiate the best
possible compromise for the Cherokee for their move west.
The opposing party was the National Party, which continued to push for the keeping of
the native lands free from the involvement of the U.S. government. The National Party had the
most support because it was led by the Principal Chief of the Cherokee, John Ross. It was the
split into parties that finally broke the Cherokee defense once and for all. 17
Risking their lives, the delegation from the Treaty Party met with Jackson’s
representatives, General William Carroll and John F. Schermerhorn, on 29 December 1835 in
New Echota, Georgia to negotiate a treaty. The Treaty of New Echota guaranteed $5 million for
all Cherokee lands east of the Mississippi, government aid during removal, protection of
property until removal, and allowance of two years’ time for all the Cherokee to remove
voluntarily before government troops acted. 18 The deal Jackson had been waiting so long for
had finally been struck, and it was irrevocable.
The Senate’s approval of this treaty further injured the tribe. Only a small percentage of
their population had signed the treaty, and that small percentage created a serious political
dilemma for the National Party. Whether the treaty was fair to the majority of the Cherokee was
not a concern for the Federal government; they wanted the tribe gone. Even the humanitarian
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groups and politicians who opposed Jackson had not raised the firestorm they brought with the
Indian Removal Act in defense of the Cherokee. The treaty passed thirty-one to fifteen. 19
Principal Chief Ross would have an uphill battle trying to stop the consequences of this
treaty, but he was bound to try. On 28 September 1836, he sent a petition with over 2,000
signatures proclaiming,
We are overwhelmed! Our hearts are sickened, our utterance is paralyzed, when we
reflect on the condition in which we are placed, by the audacious practices of
unprincipled men, who have managed their stratagems with so much dexterity as to
impose on the Government of the United States, in the face of our earnest, solemn, and
reiterated protestations … and, therefore, we … appeal with confidence to the justice, the
magnanimity, the compassion, of your honorable bodies, against the enforcement, on us,
of the provisions of a compact, in the formation of which we have had no agency. 20
The petitioners’ plea was in vain. The fate of the Cherokee was sealed.
Although the Cherokee considered the treaty void because it had not met their approval,
the United States had no qualms about its validity. About two thousand Cherokee who had
supported the Treaty Party and knew Jackson’s determined nature packed up and migrated west
during the two years after the signing of the treaty. 21 Meanwhile, Ross and the remaining
majority of the tribe fought the document on every day they had left.
Ross stood firm in saying, “We will not recognize the forgery palmed off upon the world
as a treaty by a knot of individuals, nor stir one step with reference to that false paper.” 22
Although Ross’ intentions were honorable, his unyielding position perhaps made removal even
worse when it came because so many in the tribe were anticipating a miracle instead of being
forced to leave all possessions behind at gunpoint and watching the destruction of their homes.
In the end, Principal Chief Ross had chosen to save face rather than yield to the inevitable,
inadequately preparing his people for the rough journey westward.
The Trail of Tears was the worst consequence of removal. When it started in the spring
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of 1838 under the administration of President Martin Van Buren, all 17,000 Georgia Cherokees
were evacuated within a week. During the journey, 4,000 individuals died of disease, starvation,
and exposure – approximately a quarter of the Cherokee population. One unnamed Cherokee
man recalled, “Long time we travel on way to new land. People feel bad… Women cry and make
sad wails. Children cry and many men cry, and all look sad like when friends die, but they say
nothing and keep on go toward west.” 23
The trip was a grueling and cruel affair. Private John G. Burnett, who accompanied the
march, described how he saw the Cherokees
arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven at the bayonet point into the
stockades. And in the chill of a drizzling rain on an October morning I saw them loaded
like cattle or sheep into six hundred and forty-five wagons and started toward the west. ...
On the morning of November the 17th we encountered a terrific sleet and snow storm
with freezing temperatures and from that day until we reached the end of the fateful
journey on March the 26th 1839, the sufferings of the Cherokees were awful. The trail of
the exiles was a trail of death. They had to sleep in the wagons and on the ground
without fire. And I have known as many as twenty-two of them to die in one night of
pneumonia due to ill treatment, cold and exposure. 24
Amazingly, the Cherokees went on to have a growing economy, and most of them
“enjoyed a standard of living as high as, if not higher than” neighboring white settlers. 25 The
price was a hard one to pay, but the Cherokees were able to do what Jackson had promised. By
1840 they were settled in a place where their cultural heritage could be maintained, and they
could freely exercise their rights. 26
The Trail of Tears was a tragic misfortune for the once powerful eastern Cherokee tribe,
but even more tragic would have been the permanent destruction of their culture. If the world
was perfect in the 1800s, of course the Cherokee could have remained in the east and all citizens
would have lived happily ever after in peace and harmony. But this was not the reality of the
era, and the world was neither perfect nor fair. Too many white people wanted the Cherokee to
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leave for the tribe to be allowed to stay.
The United States government held power over the tribe, and its first priorities were
serving the needs of the white majority. Greedy neighbors and gold miners wanted the Cherokee
land for its natural riches. These groups pressured the government to choose between their
interests and those of the Cherokee, and the government naturally chose the former. From that
decisive moment, the Cherokees had lost the fight to stay.
The government gave them a choice through legislation and indirect pressure: Either the
tribe could stay and completely assimilate to white culture, or they could relocate to the West
and retain their traditional lives. Following from these options, if the Cherokee had stayed, they
would have been swallowed up by American society. True, they could have lived on their
ancestral lands, but they would have lost the culture that made them appreciate it. Therefore, the
best alternative for the Cherokee was to move to the West and keep their unique identity alive.
Logically, they had no other choice.
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NOTES
1
Indian Removal 1814-1858, WGBH Foundation,
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2959>.
2
Ronald N. Satz, Rhetoric vs. Reality: The Indian Policy of Andrew Jackson (Athens:
University of Georgia Press, 1991), 20.
3
Satz, 21.
4
The Cherokee Phoenix ,21 April 1830. Hunter Library.
5
“Cherokee Removal.", Georgia Humanities Council, 5 Nov. 2004.
<http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article-jsp?id=h-2722>.
6
Cherokees to Andrew Jackson, 26 March 1830, Office of Indian Affairs, microfilm, National
Archives.
7
AJ to [secretary of war], 5 October 1831, Office of Indian Affairs, microfilm, National
Archives.
8
Ronald N. Satz, American Indian Policy in the Jacksonian Era (Lincoln, Neb.: University of
Nebraska Press, 1975), 3, 9.
9
Register of Debates, 21st Congress, 1st Session 1145-46.
10
The Indian Removal Act of 1830, <http://www.civics-online/library/formatted/texts/indian
act.html>.
11
“Address of Cherokee Nation to the people of the United States,” 17 July 1830, in Niles’
Weekly Register, 21 Aug. 1830.
12
Joseph C. Burke, “The Cherokee Cases: A Study in Law, Politics and Morality”, in Stanford
Law Review (February 1969), 500-531.
13
Cherokee Nation v. The State of Georgia, 1831.
<http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/cherokee.htm>.
14
John Hutchins, “The Trial of Reverend Samuel A. Worcester.” Journal of Cherokee Studies
(Fall 1977), 356-374.
15
Ibid.
16
Edwin Miles, “After John Marshall’s Decision: Worcester v. Georgia and the Nullification
Crisis.” Journal of Southern History (1973), 519-544.
17
Robert Remini, Andrew Jackson and his Indian Wars. (New York: Penguin Group, 2001),
226-272.
18
“Articles of a Treaty Concluded At New Echota in the State of Georgia on December 29, 1835
by General William Carroll and John F. Schermerhorn,” in Charles Royce, The Cherokee Nation
of Indians. (Chicago: Smithsonian Institution, 1975), 100-110.
19
Senate Documents, 24th Congress, 1st session, No. 120.
20
“Cherokee Letter Protesting the Treaty of New Echota, 1836”,
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h3083t.html>.
21
Thomas V. Parker, The Cherokee Indians. (New York: The Grafton Press, 1907), 8-50.
22
“John Ross to the Cherokee, 1836,” in Remini, 268.
23
Paula Mitchell Marks, In a Barren Land: American Indian Dispossession and Survival. (New
York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1998), 90.
24
“John G. Burnett quote”, <http://www.powersource.com/cocinc/history/trail.htm>.
25
Mitchell Marks, 111.
26
Ibid.