Cherokee Nation Vs Georgia Case Analysis

In the 1820s and 1830s, Georgia ordered a cruel battle to remove the Cherokees, who held dominion within the borders of Georgia, North Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee at the time. In 1827 the Cherokees fixed an basic government. The Cherokees were not only reshuffling their government but also declaring to the American public that they were a free nation that could not be removed without their permission. An angry Georgia legislature responded by intending to extend its authority over the Cherokees living in the states declared boundaries. The state took over the Cherokee lands; overthrew their government, courts, and laws; and settled a process for snatching Cherokee land and distributing it to the state's white citizens. In 1830 reps from Georgia and the other southern states pushed through Congress the Indian Removal Act, which gave U.S. president Andrew Jackson the ability to debate removal treaties with the Native American tribes.

The Treaty of Hopewell in 1785 established borders between the United States and the Cherokee Nation offered the Cherokees the right to send a “deputy” to Congress, and made American settlers in Cherokee territory subject to Cherokee law. With help from John Ross they helped protect the national territory. In 1825 the Cherokees capital was established, near present day Calhoun Georgia. The Cherokee National Council advised the United States that it would refuse future cession request and enacted a law prohibiting the sale of national land upon penalty of death. In 1827 the Cherokees adopted a written constitution, an act further removed by Georgia. But between the years of 1827 and 1831 the Georgia legislature extended the state’s jurisdiction over the Cherokee territory, passed laws purporting to abolish the Cherokees’ laws and government, and set in motion a process to seize the Cherokees’ lands, divide it into parcels, and other offer some to the lottery to the white Georgians.

This was time of “Jacksonian Democracy” which was beneficial and appealed to the “common man.” The Election of 1828 is known as the dirtiest election of time because of the tactics used and the outcome. Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams were both running for a second time, last time being 1824. Those who favored John Quincy Adams were called National Republicans while those who favored Andrew Jackson were called Democratic Republicans.

The Cherokee Nation v. Georgia case is also important to talk about when trying to explain the thoughts the Supreme Court had on the status of Native American’s. This case can be seen as one of the most hateful towards an Indian tribe, as it stripped away the basic human rights of the Cherokee nation held within their own legal tribal boundaries. Not only was the state of Georgia against the tribe but it seems as though the Supreme Court was as well. As they ruled that the Cherokee Nation was a dependent nation of the United States and that Indian tribes were not sovereign nations according to article three of the constitution. Again justice Marshall delivered the opinion of the court stating that ‘Their (Their meaning Native Americans) relation

In this act Jackson had removed the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole. Later, in 1831, the Court had a case known as the Cherokee v. Georgia. In this court cases, the Court had came to the decision that the case lacked jurisdiction and could not resolve it. After this case, in 1832 the Court case Worcester v. Georgia had arisen. Then in 1835, the Trail of Tears came into action. Few self-appointed representative of the cherokee nation negotiated the Treaty of New Echota. This treaty traded all Cherokee land east of the Mississippi for $5 million. However, most 17,000 Cherokee indians had denied the treaty and John Ross, son of a scottish father and a cherokee mother, had wrote a letter to the government. This explained that those who had signed the treaty did no longer represent the Cherokee nation. The Cherokee nation had been moved over to the east. Thousands of Cherokee had died on this forced journey to the

Around the 1830s, the Indian removal act was created. This act gave the “American man” the right to come into Indiana territory and move them to another area to claim the land as their own. The trail started in Northern Georgia in 1831 and ended in Oklahoma in 1840. At the beginning, they gathered all Indians, mainly Cherokee into stock holds for months at a time. When summer hit, sicknesses started to outbreak. Many of the Cherokee were becoming very ill. When they began moving the Cherokee, they made they walk a minimum of ten miles a day before rest. At the beginning of the move, there were around five thousand Cherokee Indians. Due to the illnesses, lack of food and clothing, and terrible weather conditions one fourth of the Cherokee tribe, mainly

The glistening and seemingly useless plains west of the Mississippi did not compare to the nutritious lands east of the Mississippi - ideal for farming. Jackson desired the land for prospective colonists but knew that it was inhabited by the five civilized tribes: the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole. According to Jackson, he respected the natives but viewed them as “lower than that of whites.” Therefore, he had every right , in his mind, to move the natives - by treaty or by force. Most of the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole subsided to the government and moved westward “safely”; Many died to exhaustion, starvation, dehydration, and sickness during and after walk to their permanent lands. The Cherokee, however, opposed of the removal because they had made an effort to blend in to the colonists culture. Jackson still demanded they move westward; Again the Cherokee refused and military force was used. The walk is now known as the Trail of Tears. During the eighteen-thirties, many colonists viewed the removal as a positive economic change but in present day America, the removal has inadvertently costed the government billions of dollars. If Jackson were to predict that the government would pay the Native Americans billions for their troubles, he would still have followed through with the Indian Removal Act because his actions were not controlled by any external source of information; If Jackson was determined, then he was unstoppable.

The government did nothing about it, allowing the situation to worsen. Georgia legislature then established a lottery and began distributing Cherokee land to its own citizens. In 1835, a small, unauthorized faction of the acculturated leaders signed a treaty selling all the tribal lands to the state, which rapidly resold the land to the whites (The American Promise, 287). In October of 1838, the forced migration on 18,000 Cherokees began, known as the Trail of Tears. Men were seized in their fields, women were taken from their wheels, and children from their play. In 1838-1839, they lost people in the stockades and they lost them on the cold walk in the dead of the winter. Around 4,000 died, and this atrocity separated families and broke apart communities. The historic patterns of villages and families were disturbed and destroyed. Survivors joined the fifteen thousand Creek, twelve thousand Choctaw, five thousand Chickasaw, and several thousand Seminole Indians also forcibly relocated to Indian Territory (The American Promise,

Indigenous people still burdened from their past! The effects of the Indian Removal Act and the Trail of tears still causes heartache among many Indigenous people. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was an act passed by Andrew Jackson where in which Andrew Jackson would discuss and negotiate a plan to remove the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole to land west of the Mississippi in exchange Europeans would get their homeland.Georgia and the government had no right treating indigenous people unfairly, evicting them from their homeland, and killing them in the process of it all. While this was all happening settlers were expanding into new territories, gaining many resources from the

In 1831, the Cherokee nation went to court against the state of Georgia. They were disputing the state’s attempt to hold jurisdiction over their territory. Unfortunately, because they are not under the laws of the constitution, the Indian’s right to court was denied. It was not until 1835 that the Cherokee finally agreed to sign the treaty, giving up their Georgia land for that of Oklahoma.

With help from the U.S. Army thousands of Cherokee Indians were loaded up into boats leaving behind everything they had. There homes were raided and livestock and crops were also taken by the federal government. The Cherokee Indians were now headed to Indian Territory so they thought. What they would later realize, they would be traveling “The Trail of Tears”. Most was shipped off to the territory located in Oklahoma but many were held in prison camps. There many would die from starvation and disease never to reach the new land. Others were sent out on foot between June and December 1838 for the nearly 1,000 mile journey through snow and mountains. The trip would take about 6 months to

On May 28, 1830 Andrew Jackson, the president at the time, signed the Indian Removal Act making it a law. The law gave the U.S. government the right to exchange land west of the Mississippi for Indian Territory in the state borders. Some tribes relocated peacefully, but most resisted the relocation. The United States government forced Cherokee Indians to move and 4,000 of them died being relocated giving the forced movement the name “Trail of Tears.”

On May 28, 1830, Jackson signed the Removal Act, which “authorized the president to grant unsettled lands west of the Mississippi River in exchange for Indian lands within existing state borders.” (Legends, 1) As incentives to the Indians to sign the Removal treaties, the government promised financial assistance for relocation and the protection of the United States government forever. (Indian, 2) In 1831, the Choctaw were the first to leave under threat of United States Army invasion. They were forced to leave on foot without any supplies or food with some in chains. Thousands of Choctaw died. (Trail, 3) In 1835, the Treaty of New Echota was signed which forced the Cherokee to be removed during the Fall and Winter of 1838 and 1839. Approximately 4,000 Cherokees died. (Legends, 2) In 1836, the Creeks were also forced from their land. 3,500 Creeks did not survive the journey. This forced march of more than 1,200 miles to the new Indian Territory became known as the Trail of Tears because of the thousands that died along the way from diseases and starvation. (Trail, 3-4) By 1837, President Andrew Jackson’s removal act had removed 46,000 Native Americans from their land, and he already had treaties in place for the removal of more. (Legends

Cherokee removal, part of the Trail of Tears, refers to the forced relocation between 1836 and 1839 of the Cherokee Nation from their lands in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Alabama to the Indian Territory in the then Western United States, and the resultant deaths along the way and at the end of the movement of an estimated 4000 Cherokee.

While we are currently experiencing tumultuous politics and increasing hate and oppression towards various religious or ethnic groups, I think it is of particular importance to think about immigration in the United States, a country founded by immigrants, where no one besides the original people who have long been oppressed actually have a right to the land. David Chang describes the oppression and colonization of the land and its people in his Enclosures of Land and Sovereignty (Chang). He explains that the Europeans stripped the control from the native people by re-distributing the power of the land to the government and then suggested that people believed race, not politics, is what differed the native people from the settlers (Chang). However, the difference in identity of the native people is simply an excuse as to why they were colonized. Like the slaves in the African slave trade, the motives of the conquerors were political and the differences in identity were an excuse to label a group people as inferior