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THE REMOVAL OF THE CHEROKEE NATION

A Documentary Source Problem

Long before the United States government was set up by the Constitution in 1787, individual states claimed lands west of their original borders. In 1802 the U.S. (federal) government established federal ownership of the lands west of the State of Georgia, by signing an agreement with Georgia: Georgia gave up her western lands to the U.S. in return for a U.S. promise to do away with Indian titles to lands within Georgia. One tribe affected were the Cherokee, a tribe of about 25,000, who occupied a large territory from central Georgia into Tennessee and North Carolina.

By the Treaty of Hopewell in 1785, which had defined the boundaries of their territory, the Cherokees had placed themselves under the protection of the U.S. They believed that the treaty gave them permanent ownership of their territory. However, many (white) citizens of Georgia believed the treaty meant that the Cherokees had the right to occupy the land, not to own it.

After the War of 1812, the trickle of white settlers into the South and Midwest became a flood. Indian tribes were steadily pushed back. Land-hungry settlers now surrounded and demanded Indian lands, and treaty after treaty with the tribes was renegotiated by the U.S. In 1803 Thomas Jefferson had first suggested voluntary removal of the Indian tribes from their native homelands in the east in exchange for lands further west. As time passed most whites supported this idea.

To fit in with white culture and prevent being moved west, most Cherokees by the 1820s had become successful farmers and traders. They developed a republican (representative) government modeled on the U.S. government, adopted a written constitution, developed their own written language and established their own press.

But also in the 1820s many white Georgians had become upset that the U.S. government had ignored its agreement of 1802 to open Indian lands to them. They interpreted Cherokee "progress" to mean "permanence", and wanted them out. In 1828 Andrew Jackson was running for president. He made Indian removal one of his campaign promises, gaining heavy support in the South and Midwest. He won the election. In 1829 Indian removal, especially of the Cherokees, entered a new stage. In 1830 Congress passed an Indian Removal Bill which provided financial support for a policy that had already been in progress for a decade.

Your goal is to write an interpretive narrative explaining this new stage of Indian removal, which resulted in the Cherokee Removal of the "trail of tears" of 1838 and 1839. You have only 600-800 words in which to describe the Cherokee experience as a dramatic example of the Indian policy of the U.S. government and its motivations. Explain to the reader what happened, why, and what general lessons we can draw from it about American society and cultural conflict. Carefully evaluate and select your evidence from the documents. Then write your account as accurately and as gracefully as possible. Use the questions below as a guide.

1. Did the federal government follow Jackson's demand that "the emigration should be voluntary"? Did he change his mind?

2. Were the Cherokees given an opportunity to make a "democratic decision" on removal -- by the federal government? By the State of Georgia? By their own leaders?

3. How did supporters of removal understand the relation between the Indians and a larger American destiny (future)? Was there a role for the Indians in that future? Or, did national leaders see a connection between Indian removal and a broader national purpose?

4. What did "civilization" mean to the whites? To the Indians? Did the Cherokees' efforts to become "civilized" help them?

5. What was the effect of the major Supreme Court decision?

6. What was the turning point -- or turning points -- in the process of Cherokee removal?

7. How did the War Department respond to the messages it received back from its officers and agents in the field?

Cherokee National Council pronouncement, 1823.

"It is the fixed and unalterable determination of this nation never again to cede one foot more of our land."

Letter from Governor Troup of Georgia to John Forsyth, Congressman from Georgia, April 1825.

"The Cherokees must be told, in plain language, that the lands they occupy belong to Georgia..."

A popular Georgia song in the 1820s.

All I ask in this creation

Is a pretty little wife and a big plantation

Way up yonder in the Cherokee Nation.

President Andrew Jackson, first annual message to Congress, Dec. 8, 1829.

"I suggest....setting apart an ample district west of the Mississippi [River]...to be guaranteed to the Indian tribes as long as they shall occupy it...The emigration should be voluntary, for it would be cruel [and] unjust to compel the aborigines to abandon the graves of their fathers and to seek a home in a distant land..."

Bill of the Georgia Legislature, Dec. 1829, to go into effect by June 1830.

"...All laws...and regulations...enacted by the Cherokee Indians...are hereby declared to be null and void and of no effect, as if the same had never existed...

"...No Indian...residing within the Creek or Cherokee nations...shall be deemed a competent witness in any court of this state to which a white person may be a party..."

James Mooney, "Myths of the Cherokee" in the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1897-98.

"Every Cherokee head of family was allowed...160 acres, but no deed was given, and his continuance depended solely on the pleasure of the [Georgia] legislature...the Cherokee were forbidden to hold councils or to assemble for any public purpose, or to dig for gold upon their own lands."

Letter from President Andrew Jackson to Major Wm. B. Lewis, Aug. 1830.

"I...now leave the poor deluded Creeks and Cherokees to their fate, and their annihilation, which their wicked advisers have induced...If I mistake not, the Indians will now think for themselves, and...cede their country and move [across the Mississippi River]."

Chief Justice John Marshall, U.S. Supreme Court, majority opinion in Worcester v. State of Georgia, 1832.

"...From the commencement of our government, Congress has passed acts to regulate trade...with the Indians...All these acts...consider the several Indian nations as distinct political communities, having territorial boundaries, within which their authority is exclusive...

"The Cherokee nation, then, is a distinct community, occupying its own territory...in which the laws of Georgia can have no force, and which the citizens of Georgia have no right to enter, but with the assent of the Cherokees themselves..."

(Ed. note: President Jackson, upon hearing of this Supreme Court decision remarked, "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it".)

Letter from J.F. Schermerhorn, U.S. Commissioner, to the Principal Chief of the eastern Cherokees, Oct. 1835.

"You are hereby notified that the commissioners will meet the Cherokee people...on the third Monday in December...for the purpose of negotiation and concluding a treaty with the United States.

"...If the Cherokee people refuse the terms of a treaty the commissioners will then offer them, it will be the last [effort] the President of the U.S. will make..."

Treaty concluded Dec. 1835 between [U.S. commissioners] General Carroll and J.F. Schermerhorn, and the Cherokee tribe. (Ratified by the U.S. Senate, May 1836.)

"The Cherokee Nation cedes to the United States all the land claimed by said Nation east of the Mississippi River...7,000,000 acres of land [is] guaranteed to the Cherokees west of the Mississippi...

"The United States agree that the land herein guaranteed to the Cherokees shall never, without their consent, be included within...any State or Territory.

"The United States agree to remove the Cherokees to their new home and to provide them with one year's subsistence thereafter..."

Major Wm. M. Davis to the Secretary of War, March 1836.

(Ed. note: Major Davis was appointed by the Sec. of War to assist in Cherokee removal.)

"...Sir, that paper...called a treaty is no treaty at all because [it was] not sanctioned by the great body of the Cherokees and made without their participation or assent. I solemnly declare to you that...it would be instantly rejected by nine-tenths of them...There were not present at the conclusion of the treaty more than one hundred Cherokee voters...[and their] delegation had no more authority to make a treaty than any other dozen Cherokees accidentally picked up for that purpose."

Lewis Cass, Sec. of War, to General J.E. Wool, June 1836.

"Sir: You will repair to the Cherokee country without delay...Should the conduct of the Cherokees require the application of force, you will proceed to subdue them...When this is effected, their arms will be immediately taken from them, and they will be kept together, under proper guards, till you can complete your arrangements for their removal west."

Letter from President Jackson to General Wool, Sept. 1836.

"You will caution [the Principal Chief] from calling any council of the Cherokee people with the view of opposing or altering the treaty. He knows that there will be no further negotiation on the subject; that the Cherokees are to emigrate in two years...and will be obliged to go within that time..."

From John Ross, Principal Chief, to General Wool, Sept. 1836.

"...[After listening to] the expressions of sentiments...by upwards to twenty-one hundred male adults...the chiefs resolved that the instrument purporting to be a treaty...is a fraud upon the government of the United States and an act of oppression on the Cherokee people; that those who are represented as acting on the part of the Cherokees...hold [no] title or designation from the

Cherokees, nor have they received authority from the nation to form said...treaty..."

Letter from General Wool to Adjutant-General of the U.S., Feb. 1837.

"...[The Cherokees are] almost universally opposed to the treaty and maintain that they never made such a treaty. So determined are they in their opposition that not one..., however poor or destitute, would receive either rations or clothing from the United States, lest they might compromise themselves in regard to the treaty."

Letter from John Mason, Jr. to the Sec. of War, Sept. 1837.

(Ed. note: Mason was a confidential agent sent by the War Department to make observations in the Cherokee nation and report.)

"...The opposition to the treaty is unanimous...They say it cannot bind them because they did not make it; that it was made by a few unauthorized individuals...The influence of the principal chief is unbounded and unquestioned. The whole nation of eighteen thousand persons is with him, the few, about three hundred, who made the treaty, having left the country..."

General Winfield Scott, proclamation to Cherokees, May, 1838.

"The President of the United States has sent me with a powerful army to cause you, in obedience to the treaty of 1835, to join that part of your people who are already established in prosperity on the other side of the Mississippi...My troops already occupy many positions, and thousands and thousands are approaching from every quarter to render resistance and escape hopeless...Will you then by resistance compel us to resort to arms.. Or will you by flight seek to hide yourselves in mountains and forests and thus oblige us to hunt you down..."

Mooney, "Myths of the Cherokee".

"Under Scott's orders...[Cherokee] men were seized in their fields or along the road, women were taken from their [spinning] wheels and children from their play. In many cases, on turning for one last look as they crossed the ridge, they saw their homes in flames, fired by the lawless rabble that followed on the heels of the soldiers to loot and pillage...

"...In Oct. 1838 the long procession of exiles was set in motion...the sick, the old people, and the smaller children, with the blankets, cooking pots and other belongings in wagons, the rest on foot or on horses. The number of wagons was 645.

"...In the middle of winter, with the [Mississippi] river running full of ice...several [groups] were obliged to wait some time on the eastern bank...In talking with old men and women [60 years later]...the author found that the lapse of over half a century had not sufficed to wipe out the memory of the miseries of that halt beside the frozen river, with hundreds of sick and dying penned up in wagons or stretched upon the ground...

At last their destination was reached...It was now March, 1839, the journey having occupied...six months of the hardest part of the year."

President Martin Van Buren, message to Congress, Dec. 1838. (Note the date.)

"It affords me sincere pleasure to apprise the Congress of the entire removal of the Cherokee Nation of Indians to their new homes west of the Mississippi. The measures authorized by Congress...have had the happiest effect....they have emigrated without any apparent reluctance."

Account of a traveler who signed himself "A Native of Maine", The New York Observer, Jan. 1839.

"...On Tuesday evening we fell in with a detachment of the poor Cherokee Indians...about eleven hundred...We found them in the forest camped for the night...under a severe fall of rain...many of the aged Indians were suffering extremely from the fatigue of the journey, and ill health...

"We found the road literally filled with the procession for about three miles in length. The sick and feeble were carried in wagons...multitudes go on foot -- even aged females, apparently nearly ready to drop into the grave, were traveling with heavy burdens...on the sometimes frozen ground...with no covering for the feet....They buried fourteen or fifteen at every stopping place...Some carry a downcast dejected look...of despair; others a wild frantic appearance as if about to...pounce like a tiger upon their enemies...

"When I read in the President's Message that he was happy to inform the Senate that the Cherokees were peaceably and without reluctance removed -- and remember that it was on the third day of December when not one of the detachments had reached their destinations...I wished the President could have been there that very day..."