The United States and the Cherokee Indians
The debate over the legality of sovereignty and acquired lands from the native Americans, specifically the Cherokee, has long been debated. The issues involved have included treaties, land sold, and the right of the Government to physically enforce their rules on Indian land "sovereignty". This paper will examine the strategy used by the Federal Governments, the State Governments as well as those of the Cherokee Indians. The three-way relationship as well as the issues will examine how the interpretation of the Constitution changed society prior to the year of 1840.
The Cherokee Nation was the largest of Five Civilized Tribes of the southeast. They are a people of Iroquois descent. The Cherokee who were known as "Ani'-Yun'wiya" or "principal people" migrated to the southeast from the Great Lakes region. They held more than 40,000 square miles of land in the south by 1650 with a population estimated at well over 30,000. Similar to other Native Americans of the southeast, their nation was a confederacy of towns each under the rule of a supreme chief. In short, the Cherokee culture and society thrived and prospered in the Americas prior to contact with the Europeans. No society has ever made a more dramatic cultural shift then that of the Cherokee. This, a culture that had suffered pronounced side effects of Europe even prior to the introduction to European man. With the introduction of man onto the Americas also came something unknown to them, disease. Unable to counter these viruses many of the Cherokee were wiped out. Reports state that between 40 and 50% of their culture died from diseases such as: smallpox, typhus, and measles. With the sudden lose of population, there is no doubt that this population also lost leadership and knowledge through these deaths. Once the obstacle of disease had been passed came the addition of a new opponent: the European man.
In 1783 after a long fought American Revolution the Americans and the British signed the Peace of Paris to officially end the war. The United States approach to dealing with the problems of the Cherokee rested on the theories formulated in Europe. According to international law, England had owned the American colonies by "right of discovery" which also gave right to the claiming of land currently occupied by non-Christian...
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...ates of Tennessee, North Carolina, and South Carolina and east of the boundary line described here" . To summarize this point the United States obtained by treaty, the power to legislate over the Cherokee Nation, and then transferred that right to the state of Georgia. The State of Georgia is recognized as legally acquiring lands from the Cherokee people. The reason for this legality is that this addition was necessary because the Constitution of the United States states that: "Congress shall have power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, between states and with the Indian tribes" . This power was in-turn transferred to the individual states with the ideal to form and make treaties of their own.
The relationship between the United States Government and the Cherokee Nation had a great impact on today's Constitution. The Cherokee tried to keep their people from being removed from their own land by going to court. The decisions by the Supreme Court of the United States highlight the struggles and triumphs of the Cherokee Nation. Both the relationship and separate tribal sovereignty set forth in these decisions have helped further Native Americans independence.
The case Worcester v. Georgia (1832) was a basis for the discussion of the issue of states' rights versus the federal government as played out in the administration of President Andrew Jackson and its battle with the Supreme Court. In addition to the constitutional issues involved, the momentum of the westward movement and popular support for Indian resettlement pitted white man against Indian. All of these factors came together in the Worcester case, which alarmed the independence of the Cherokee Nation, but which was not enforced. This examines the legal issues and tragic consequences of Indian resettlement.
For several hundred years people have sought answers to the Indian problems, who are the Indians, and what rights do they have? These questions may seem simple, but the answers themselves present a difficult number of further questions and answers. State and Federal governments have tried to provide some order with a number of laws and policies, sometimes resulting in state and federal conflicts. The Federal Government's attempt to deal with Indian tribes can be easily understood by following the history of Federal Indian Policy. Indians all over the United States fought policies which threatened to destroy their familial bonds and traditions. The Passamaquoddy Indian Tribe of Maine, resisted no less than these other tribes, however, thereby also suffering a hostile anti-Indian environment from the Federal Government and their own State, Maine. But because the Passamaquoddy Tribe was located in such a remote area, they escaped many federal Indian policies.
I wish I could forget it all, but the picture of six-hundred and forty-five wagons lumbering over the frozen ground with their cargo of suffering humanity still lingers in my memory.” He says that he wishes he had not seen what he saw on this trip and he wishes it did not happen. When the Cherokees appealed to the U.S. to protect their land, the Court, led by Chief Justice John Marshall, ruled that the states were not allowed to make laws that govern the Cherokees, only the federal government can. This meant that Georgia laws don’t involve the Cherokees. Many religious groups, like the Quakers, didn’t want to force Native Americans against their will to move from their homelands.
In order to understand the lack of morality on the part of the United States, the actions taken by the group in favor of removing the Indians and their opponents needs examining. The seeds of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 are rooted in colonial times and continued to grow during the early years of the American republic. To comprehend this momentous tragedy we must first examine the historical background of the Indian '"'problem'"' and seek rationale for the American government"'"s actions. This includes looking at the men who politically justified the expulsion of the Cherokee nation and those who argued against it.
Democracy can be traced back before the coming of Christ. Throughout Greece during the sixth century democracy was in its earliest stages and as the millenniums would pass the power of government by the people would show distinct alterations. This is evident when analyzing The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears by Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green. These authors illustrate how the U.S government adjusts policies from that of assimilating the Native American Indians to that of removing them from their homelands and forcibly causing the Cherokee nation to relocate themselves west of the Mississippi. In further depth Perdue and Green portray though vivid description how the government would show disloyalty and how that caused division between the tribal members of the Cherokee people. This endeavor of travel and animosity of the Indians would become known as the Trail of Tears.
Prior to 1830 the Cherokee people in the Southern states were land and business owners, many owned plantations and kept slaves to work the land, others were hunters and fishermen who ran businesses and blended in well with their white neighbors, but after Andrew Jackson took office as President, the government adopted a strict policy of Indian removal, which Jackson aggressively pursued by eliminating native American land titles and relocating American Indians west of the Mississippi. That same year, Congress passed the Indian R...
The article analyses the effect of the Indian Removal Act, which was approved by Jackson, on various native tribes. “The Cherokee, on the other hand, were tricked into an illegitimate treaty. In 1833, a small faction agreed to sign a removal agreement: the Treaty of New Echota. The leaders of this group were not the recognized leaders of the Cherokee nation, and over 15,000 Cherokees -- led by Chief John Ross -- signed a petition in protest. The Supreme Court ignored their demands and ratified the treaty in 1836.
The Cherokee Indians, the most cooperative and accommodating to the political institutions of the united states, suffered the worst fate of all Native Americans when voluntarily or forcibly moved west. In 1827 the Cherokees attempted to claim themselves as an independent nation within the state of Georgia. When the legislature of the state extended jurisdiction over this ‘nation,’ the Cherokees sought legal actions, not subject to Georgia laws and petitioned the United States Supreme Court. The case became known as Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia in 1831. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall denied their claim as a republic within Georgia, he then deemed the Cherokee as a ‘domestic dependent nation’. One year later through the case of Worcester vs. Georgia, the Cherokee’s were granted federal protection from the molestation by the state of Georgia. Through the Indian Removal act in 1830 President Andrew Jackson appropriated planning and funding for the removal of Native Americans, Marshall’s rulings delayed this for the Cherokee Nation, and infuriated President Jackson. Marshall’s decision had little effect on Jackson and ignoring this action the president was anxious to see him enforce it.
The Native Americans of the southeast live in a variety of environments. The environments range from the southern Appalachian Mountains, to the Mississippi River valley, to the Louisiana and Alabama swamps, and the Florida wetlands. These environments were bountiful with various species of plant and animal life, enabling the Native American peoples to flourish. “Most of the Native Americans adopted large-scale agriculture after 900 A.D, and some also developed large towns and highly centralized social and political structures.” In the first half of the 1600s Europeans encountered these native peoples. Both cultures encountered new plants, animals, and diseases. However, the Indians received more diseases compared to the few new diseases to the Europeans. The new diseases resulted in a massive loss of Native Americans, including the Southeast Indians which had never encountered the new diseases. Three of the main tribes in the southeast were the Cherokee and the Creek. They were part of a group of southeast tribes that were removed from their lands. These tribes later became known as “The Five Civilized Tribes because of their progress and achievements.”
As white settlers poured across the mountains, the Cherokee tried once again to compensate themselves with territory taken by war with a neighboring tribe. This time their intended victim was the Chickasaw, but this was a mistake. Anyone who tried to take something from the Chickasaw regretted it, if he survived. After eleven years of sporadic warfare ended with a major defeat at Chickasaw Oldfields (1769), the Cherokee gave up and began to explore the possibility of new alliances to resist the whites. Both the Cherokee and Creek attended the 1770 and 1771 meetings with the Ohio tribes at Sciota but did not participate in Lord Dunnmore's War (1773-74) because the disputed territory was not theirs. On the eve of the American Revolution, the British government scrambled to appease the colonists and negotiate treaties with the Cherokee ceding land already taken from them by white settlers. To this end, all means, including outright bribery and extortion, were employed: Lochaber Treaty (1770); and the Augusta Treaty (1773) ceding 2 million acres in Georgia to pay for debts to white traders. For the same reasons as the Iroquois cession of Ohio in 1768, the Cherokee tried to protect their homeland from white settlement by selling land they did not really control. In the Watonga Treaty (1774) and the Overhill Cherokee Treaty (Sycamore Shoals) (1775), they sold all of eastern and central Kentucky to the Transylvania Land Company (Henderson Purchase).
As the West of the Appalachian Mountains became known as the “Indian Land” proclaimed by the King of England in 1763, as properly known as the Proclamation Line of 1763, the U. S. government believed it to be part of their land after their gain of independence from Britain. The reason for this happening was due to the fact that the Indians lost to the French in the French and Indian war which was also known as the brutal Seven Years’ War from 1754-1763. As a result, The U.S. took advantage of the situation and insisted on acquiring the land of the Indians in the West through three different policies (Chris ...
advantage of the rich black soil for farming. Corn was their main source of food,
The Cherokee lived in the present day United States of America hundreds of years before its occupation by the Europeans. History proclaims that members of this community migrated from the Great Lakes and settled in the Southern Appalachians. When the Europeans started settling down in America, the Cherokee decided to co-exist peacefully with her foreign neighbors. The Cherokee lands consisted of Alabama, parts of Virginia, Kentucky, North and South Carolina and Georgia.
In 1783, the American Revolution ended. Since most of the Cherokees helped the British in the Revolutionary War, the Americans needed to make peace with them. Then in1785, the treaty of Hopewell was signed (Perdue 8). This was a peace treaty between the Cherokee and the Americans. This treaty defined the Cherokees’ boundaries and it gave them the right to get rid of unwanted settlers. The states of Georgia and North Carolina ignored this treaty. The people of these states expanded into Cherokee land, and the Cherokees continued to resist.
Natives were forcefully removed from their land in the 1800’s by America. In the 1820’s and 30’s Georgia issued a campaign to remove the Cherokees from their land. The Cherokee Indians were one of the largest tribes in America at the time. Originally the Cherokee’s were settled near the great lakes, but overtime they moved to the eastern portion of North America. After being threatened by American expansion, Cherokee leaders re-organized their government and adopted a constitution written by a convention, led by Chief John Ross (Cherokee Removal). In 1828 gold was discovered in their land. This made the Cherokee’s land even more desirable. During the spring and winter of 1838- 1839, 20,000 Cherokees were removed and began their journey to Oklahoma. Even if natives wished to assimilate into America, by law they were neither citizens nor could they hold property in the state they were in. Principal Chief, John Ross and Major Ridge were leaders of the Cherokee Nation. The Eastern band of Cherokee Indians lost many due to smallpox. It was a year later that a Treaty was signed for cession of Cherokee land in Texas. A small number of Cherokee Indians assimilated into Florida, in o...