Cherokee Nation

“ Six years later, in the conclusion of the second treaty with them, it was agreed, in order "that the Cherokee Nation may be led to a greater degree of civilization, and to become herdsmen and cultivators instead of remaining in a state of hunters, the United States will from time to time furnish gratuitously the said nation with useful implements of husbandry." ”

“ At this time the Cherokee Nation numbered something over 25,000 Indian, white, and negro citizens; the total citizen population of the three races in the five civilized tribes numbered about 70,000, while the noncitizens had increased to 250,000 and their number was being rapidly augmented.401 Realizing that the swift, inevitable end must be the destruction of their national governments, the Cherokee began once more to consider the question of removal from the United States. ”

“ It should be observed that the term 'Cherokee Nation' has been used as representing the people themselves; the government of the Cherokees; and the government as trustee for all of its people, or for some of them, as their rights might appear.
In the treaty of July 2, 1791, the 'Cherokee Nation' was described as 'all the individuals composing the whole Cherokee Nation of Indians.' [7 Stat. at L. 39.] ”

“ Writing about transcription can be a bit dry, so I want to tell the story from the perspective of one of Wiksource’s newest documents. In 1829, the Cherokee Nation was at a crossroads. Settlers from Georgia had been steadily encroaching on their lands for years, despite past cessions, and the state government was becoming more strident in its demands for their removal from their traditional lands. The Cherokee, as a people and as a political society, were also in the midst of a great transformation. ”

“ He Cherokee National Council had passed a law in 1825 enabling the descendants of Cherokee fathers and white mothers to be full citizens of the Cherokee. Each Cherokee village had two governments: a white government which governed when the village was at peace, and a red government which governed during times of war. ”

“ Thus the nation is stripped of its territory and individuals of their property without the least color of right, and in open violation of the guarantee of treaties. At the same time the Cherokees, deprived of the protection of their own government and laws, are left without the protection of any other laws, outlawed as it were and exposed to indignities, imprisonment, persecution, and even to death, though they have committed no offense whatever, save and except that of seeking to enjoy what belongs to them, and refusing to yield it up to those who have no pretense of title to it. ”

“ Southern Cherokees want a division of territory.—They had already proffered and were willing again to proffer the olive-branch of peace and reconciliation to their brethren of the so called loyal portion of the nation, but respectfully urged that after all the blood that had been shed and the intense bitterness that seemed to fill the bosoms of their brethren they ought not to be expected to live in an undivided country. ”

“ The English, indeed, found it convenient to recognize certain chiefs as supreme in the tribe, but the only real attempt to weld the whole Cherokee Nation into a political unit was that made by the French agent, Priber, about 1736, which failed from its premature discovery by the English. We frequently find their kingdom divided against itself, their very number preventing unity of action, while still giving them an importance above that of neighboring tribes. ”

“ In this view of their situation, there is as full and complete recognition of their sovereignty, as if they were the absolute owners of the soil. The progress made in civilization by the Cherokee Indians cannot surely be considered as in any measure destroying their national or foreign character, so long as they are permitted to maintain a separate and distinct government; it is their political condition that constitutes their foreign character, and in that sense must the term foreign, be understood as used in the constitution. ”

“ Such action had resulted in much injury to the improvement of the nation in the arts of civilized life by unsettling the minds and prospects of its citizens. Their nation had reached the decisive and unalterable conclusion to cede no more lands, the limits preserved to them by the treaty of 1819 being not more than adequate to their comfort and convenience. It was represented as a gratifying truth that the Cherokees were rapidly increasing in number, rendering it a duty incumbent upon the nation to preserve, unimpaired to posterity, the lands of their ancestors. ”

“ From the examination which I have made into the actual state of things in the Cherokee Nation I am satisfied that there is no probability that the different bands or parties into which it is divided can ever again live together in peace and harmony, and that the well-being of the whole requires that they should be separated and live under separate governments as distinct tribes. ”

“ In 1802 and 1803, the U.S. Government set a dangerous precedent for the Cherokees. In return for Georgia’s abandonment of her claims to the Mississippi Territory, the United States agreed to extinguish all Indian titles for lands lying within Georgia. This indicated that the government was no longer prepared to defend the Cherokee Nation.
President Thomas Jefferson acted to alleviate some of the Cherokee loss. He suggested a program of removal west to a portion of the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase. ”

“ Having traced for three full centuries their gradual evolution from a savage tribe to a civilized Christian nation, with a national constitution and national press printed in their own national alphabet, we can afford to leave the rest to others, the principal materials being readily accessible in the Cherokee national archives at Tahlequah, in the files of the Cherokee Advocate and other newspapers published in the Nation, and in the annual reports and other documents of the Indian office. ”

“ I am clearly of the opinion that the rapid advancement of the Cherokees is owing in part to the fact of their being slaveholders, which has operated as an incentive to all industrial pursuits, and I believe if every family of the wild roving tribes of Indians were to own a negro man and woman, who would teach them to cultivate the soil and to properly prepare and cook their food, and could have a schoolmaster appointed for every district, it would tend more to civilize them than any plan that could be adopted. ”

“ The counsel for the plaintiffs have maintained the affirmative of this proposition with great earnestness and ability. So much of the argument as was intended to prove the character of the Cherokees as a state, as a distinct political society, separated from others, capable of managing its own affairs and governing itself, has, in the opinion of a majority of the judges, been completely successful. They have been uniformly treated as a state from the settlement of our country. ”

“ He had met their leading men at Newtown and had submitted a proposal for their removal which was peremptorily rejected. The advancement the Cherokees had made in religion, morality, general information, and agriculture had astonished him beyond measure. They had regular preachers in their churches, the use of spirituous liquors was in great degree prohibited, their farms were worked much after the manner of white people, and were generally in good order. Many families possessed all the comforts and some of the luxuries of life. ”

“ WAR WITH CHEROKEES.
This concession did not, however, in any large degree heal the differences and antagonisms existing between the Indians and the border settlers, with whom they were brought in constant contact. Even while the treaty of 1792 was being negotiated by the representatives of the Cherokees at the capital of the nation, a portion of their young warriors were consummating arrangements for the precipitation of a general war with the whites, and in September, 1792, a party of upwards of 700 Cherokee and Creek warriors attacked Buchanan's Station, Tenn., within 4 miles of Nashville. ”

“ The Ketoowah society in the Cherokee Nation west was organized shortly before the civil war by John B. Jones, son of the missionary, Evan Jones, and an adopted citizen of the Nation, as a secret society for the ostensible purpose of cultivating a national feeling among the full-bloods, in opposition to the innovating tendencies of the mixed-blood element. ”

“ Instead of ceremonials and peace councils we hear now of railroad deals and contracts with cattle syndicates, and instead of the old warrior chiefs who had made the Cherokee name a terror—Oconostota, Hanging-maw, Doublehead, and Pathkiller—we find the destinies of the [147] nation guided henceforth by shrewd mixed-blood politicians, bearing white men’s names and speaking the white man’s language, and frequently with hardly enough Indian blood to show itself in the features. ”

“ These instructions reached Colonel Hawkins at Fort Fidius, on the Oconee, on the 28th of February. Notice was at once sent to General Pickens at his residence at Hopewell, on the Keowee, and also to General Winchester, through Silas Dinsmoor, at that time temporary agent for the Cherokee Nation, to convene at Tellico, on Tennessee River, on the 1st of April following, for the purpose of determining and marking the Cherokee boundary line pursuant to the treaty of 1791. ”

“ It affords me sincere pleasure to be able to apprise you of the entire removal of the Cherokee Nation of Indians to their new homes west of the Mississippi. ”

“ Governor McMinn convened253 a council of the Cherokees, at which he presented to them in the strongest light the benefits that would accrue to their nation in the increasing happiness, prosperity, and population such as would attend their removal to the Arkansas, while, on the other hand, nothing but evil could follow their continued residence east of the Mississippi. Their lands would be constantly encroached upon by white settlers ”