Cherokee

One of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes the Cherokee were forcibly removed from Georgia in 1838. The Cherokee were an Iroquoian-speaking tribe who, at one point in their history, controlled large parts of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama. In their heyday they constituted a formidable body of warriors and an obstacle to white migration over the Appalachian

Mountains. In the 18th century, however, numerous wars with British and American forces dissipated their strength and resulted in several land cessions to the United States. By the dawn of the 19th century, tribal holdings had been reduced to swaths of land in Georgia and western North Carolina.

The Cherokee were also cognizant of the great military strength of their neighbor, the Creek, so during the War OF 1812 they fought on behalf of General Andrew Jackson in 1814 at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. After the war, white settlers continued to encroach on Cherokee lands and violence occasionally broke out. But the Cherokee were determined to demonstrate their ability to become “civilized” as a strategy to stave off further encroachment. Many tribesmen consequently abandoned traditional hunting in favor of farming, even acquiring several thousand African-American slaves. Missionaries were also prevalent on Cherokee land, operating 18 tribal schools. In 1826 Sequoyah (1770-1843) single-handedly invented a Cherokee alphabet in anticipation of the first tribal newsletter, the Cherokee Phoenix. The Cherokee also adopted many trappings of American-style governance, including a bicameral legislature with eight voting districts. Moreover, in 1829 their government declared that all Cherokee held the land in common and that only their government could sell it to the United States.

The turning point in Cherokee fortunes happened in 1829 with the discovery of GOLD. The government of Georgia began to apply pressure upon the tribesmen to sell their land and relocate across the Mississippi River. The administration of President Andrew Jackson intensified this pressure by signing the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Tribal leaders appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court for assistance, but the Court ruled it lacked jurisdiction. The following year Chief Justice John Marshall ruled in the case of Worcester v. Georgia that state authorities had acted unconstitutionally by imposing authority over the Cherokee people. When Jackson refused to intercede on behalf of the Indians, however, a small group of mixed-blood dissenters under John Ridge (1803-39) concluded it was better to sell their land for cash than have it forcibly taken, so they signed the Treaty of New Echota in 1834. Ridge and his followers then took their families and belongings to the Indian Territory (Oklahoma) to begin new lives, but the bulk of the tribe under Chief John Ross (1790-1866) resisted deportation to the very last moment. Jackson then ordered the army to evict the Indians over the winter of 1838-39. Thus began the infamous Trail of Tears, the forced migration along whose route some 4,000 Indians, representing one-fourth of the Cherokee people, perished.

No sooner had Ross and his followers arrived in Oklahoma than frictions and factions arose with Ridge’s followers, the so-called Old Settlers, who had arrived years before.

86 Chickasaw

On June 22, 1839, Ridge, his son, and Elias Boudinot (ca. 1803-39) were assassinated by Cherokee who felt that these men had betrayed their people. A bloody civil war loomed. Ross, however, managed to bring all parties together in an Act of Union the following year. For the next two decades the Cherokee rebuilt their society, introducing farms, schools, towns, and a new newspaper, the Cherokee Advocate. That the tribesmen succeeded and acquired considerable wealth is a tribute to Ross’s leadership and devotion to his people. The outbreak of the American Civil War (1861-65), however, rent the tribe apart again, opening old wounds and further decimating the population. The plight of the Cherokee has since come to symbolize the abuse that most Native Americans suffered at the hands of the U. S. government.

Further reading: Robert J. Conley, The Cherokee Nation: A History (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005); Theda Perdue, The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears (New York: Viking, 2007).

—John C. Fredriksen