While the horrific facts of the Trail of Tears are widely known, little has been written about the pressures brought to bear by the Southern states in which the Cherokee and other tribes lived prior to their forced removal. No other state agitated for the expulsion of the Indians more than Georgia. Georgia’s governor, legislators, congressional deligatation, and citizens lobbied the American government to force the Cherokee to vacate their native lands in exchange for land west of the Mississippi River. Georgians saw the Cherokee as their inferiors, despite the tribe’s many efforts at civilization, such as laws, a court system, a bicammeral legislature, a constitution, a written language, and a newspaper. More than racial prejudice, however, Georgians wanted Cherokee land because the population of the state was growing exponentially, and settlers wanted the rich Cherokee land for farms and plantations. Additionally, gold was discovered in the heart of the Cherokee Nation, and gold fever added to the desire of Georgians to move into the land belonging to the Cherokee.
When Andrew Jackson was elected President of the United States in 1828, he and his administration supported Georgia’s efforts to claim jurisdiction over Cherokee land and people, despite the fact that the Cherokee Nation had long been considered a soverign nation with which the U.S. and foreign governments had made treaties, one nation with another. Since the Cherokee had become so civilized, neither the U.S. government nor the Georgia authorities could very well attack the Indians and drive them out with military force. That being the case, President Jackson instructed the Georgians, “You must clear them (the Cherokee) by legislation. Take judicial jurisdiction over their country; build fires around them, and do indirectly what you cannot effect directly.”
Georgians took Jackson’s advice as gospel. By 1829, they had passed resolutions and laws which made life miserable for the Cherokee. The laws were designed to warn the Cherokee that their lands “belong to Georgia. She must and will have them.” Toward that end, Georgia law nulified all Cherokee laws. Cherokee law enforcement was thus paralyzed.
According to one of Georgia’s new laws, a Cherokee was not a competent witness against a white man in court. Therefore, Cherokees could not bring legal charges against whites, no matter what outrages occurred. Georgians invaded Cherokee property, stole Cherokee livestock, and assalted Cherokee women with impunity, knowing that they could not be held responsible for their actions unless white witnesses testified against them in court.
Georgia laws stripped the Cherokee of its richest sources of income. It was against the law for Cherokees to mine gold on their own land, and nothing could be done to prevent thousands of prospectors from flooding into their territory. Cherokees caught mining gold were beaten and jailed. Cherokees had made a great deal of money through operating ferries across their streams, and their toll roads crisscrossed the Cherokee Nation. Cherokees were forbidden to collect road tolls or ferry fees, according to Georgia law.
The CHEROKEE PHOENIX, the newspaper printed in both English and the Cherokee language syllabary created by Sequoyah, printed articles detailing the mistreatment of the Cherokee by Georgia’s laws. Since the paper was distributed throughout the U.S., it generated considerable sympathy for the plight of the Cherokee. Thus, the Georgia Guard was sent to the print shop at New Echota to confiscate the printing press and costly syllabary type. (When archeologists “dug” at New Echota in 1952, they found over a thousand pieces of the syllabary type in a well at the home site of Elias Boudinot, editor of the newspaper. Aparently, the type had been placed in the well to protect it from the invading Georgia Guard.)
A number of wealthy Cherokees employed white overseers, blacksmiths, and other skilled craftsmen. One of Georgia’s new laws forbade Cherokees to hire white men. Joseph Vann, owner of a beautiful brick home at Spring Place, mistakenly hired a white overseer for his 800-acre plantation, not knowing that he was violating the law. Despite Vann’s dismissing his employee as soon as he learned about the law, the commander of the Georgia Guard evicted Vann, his wife, and children, driving them out into a snowy winter night, causing them to walk through the snow in their thin “night clothes” to seek refuge in a dirt-floor cabin in Tennessee.
The Joseph Vann family was evicted from their home for hiring a white overseer.
Cherokees were not allowed to hold court proceedings in either their district courts or the Cherokee Supreme Court at New Echota. On December 30, 1830, the Georgia General Assembly made it illegal for the Cherokee government to meet and pass laws within the state. Branches of the Cherokee governing body began to hold public meetings and sessions of their legislature across the Tennessee state line at Red Clay.
It was against Georgia law for whites to live in the Cherokee Nation without swearing an oath of allegiance to the state of Georgia. Failure to sign this oath resulted in considerable prison time. Especially affected by this law were the missionaries who had built mission stations in the Cherokee Nation, where they held religious services and taught Cherokee children in their mission schools. A number of missionaries and their families moved away from Cherokee land, rather than sign the oath; but two missionaries, Dr. Elizur Butler and Rev. Samuel Worchester, neither signed the oath nor left the Nation. The men were arrested by the Georgia Guard and marched 90 miles to Lawrenceville, where they were tried and sentenced to four years at hard labor. The circumstances surrounding their arrest were cruel and demeaning. According to one source, “These unoffending and guileless men were ignominiously received like felons. They were chained with horses’ trace-chains around their necks and fastened, one to the neck of a horse, the other to the tail of a cart, and thus dragged with bleeding feet, through rough and tangled forest, over brake and brush and bog and fen, at the point of a bayonet, and even in sickness, with wounded feet, they were refused the privilege of riding their own horses.”
The Cherokee Nation and their attorneys used the plight of the two missionaries as the basis of Worchester v. Georgia, a case which went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1832. The decision authored by Chief Justice John Marshall found in favor of Worchester (and by extension Butler) and decreed that Georgia law was not valid in the Cherokee Nation, which was a sovereign nation. The decision read in part, “The Cherokee Nation is a distinct community occupying its own territory…in which the law of Georgia can have no right to enter but with the assent of the Cherokee.” President Jackson refused to recognize the opinion of the Supreme Court and reportedly stated, “John Marshall has made his decision; let him enforce it now if he can.” Georgia kept the two missionaries imprisoned for ten months after the Supreme Court decision.
A group of Cherokee women petitioned the Cherokee government to act on their behalf, but to no effect. A portion of their petition read thusly, “We believe the present plan of the General Government to affect our removal West of the Mississippi and thus obtain our lands for the use of the State of Georgia to be highly oppressive, cruel and unjust. And we sincerely hope there is no consideration which can induce our citizens to forsake the land of our fathers of which they have been in possession from time immemorial, and thus compel us, against our will, to undergo the toils and difficulties of removing with our helpless families hundreds of mils to unhealthy and unproductive country.” But the Cherokee government was helpless in the face of Georgia’s laws.
Georgia authorities achieved their goal of making the Cherokee miserable; however, the punishing laws were not sufficient to cause the Cherokee people to sell their homeland and move West. Cherokee Chief John Ross assured his people that his efforts on their behalf in Washington, D.C., would prevail, and the Cherokee Nation would stay in the land of their ancestors. Unfortunately, the Indian Removal Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830, authorizing the president to remove “any tribe within the limits of any state ….. and extinguish the Indians’ claim thereto.” The next eight years were tumultuous for the Cherokee, and their legal and diplomatic maneuvers fell on deaf ears. After years of struggle, the Cherokee were evicted from their lands and driven West of the Mississippi on the infamous Trail of Tears.
(The repressive laws directed at the Cherokee were not repealed by the General Assembly of Georgia until 1962. House bill 1129 finally repealed most of the laws which were passed in 1829-1835. Principal Chief Chad Smith of the Cherokee Nation (an attorney) was finally responsible for revoking the “incompetent witness” law in 1983. )