Indians & Laws 1829-33
Jackson’s Speech on Indians December 1830
President Jackson & Indians 1834-36
Appeal of the Cherokees
On 23 March 1829 President Jackson sent a letter
to the Creeks who called him “Sharp Knife.”
He asked them to surrender the murderer of Elijah Wells in Georgia to preserve peace.
He addressed them as Friends & Brothers and also wrote,
By permission of the Great Spirit above,
and the voice of the people.
I have been made a President of the United States,
and now speak to you as your father
and friend, and request you to listen.
Your warriors have known me long.
You know I love my white and red children,
and always speak straight, and not with a forked tongue;
that I have always told you the truth.
I now speak to you, as to my children,
in the language of truth—listen.
Your bad men have made my heart sicken and bleed,
by the murder of one of my white children in Georgia.
Our peaceful mother earth has been stained by the
blood of the white man and calls for the punishment
of his murderers, whose surrender is now demanded
under the solemn obligation of the treaty which
your chiefs and warriors in council have agreed to.
To prevent the spilling of more blood, you must surrender
the murderers, and restore the property they have taken.
To preserve peace, you must comply with your own treaty.
Friends & Brothers, listen: Where you now are,
you and my white children are too near to each other
to live in harmony and peace.
Your game is destroyed and many of your
people will not work and till the Earth.
Beyond the great river Mississippi, where a part of your
nation has gone, your father has provided a country large
enough for all of you, and he advises you to remove to it.
There your white brothers will not trouble you;
they will have no claim to the land, and you can live upon it,
you and all your children, as long as the
grass grows or the water runs, in peace and plenty.
It will be yours forever.
For the improvements in the country where you now live,
and for all the stock which you cannot take with you,
your father will pay you a fair price.
In my talk to you in the Creek nation, many years ago,
I told you of this new country, where you might be
preserved as a great nation, and where your
white brothers would not disturb you.
In that country, your father, the President,
now promises to protect you, to feed you,
and to shield you from all encroachment.
Where you now live your white brothers
have always claimed the land.
The land beyond the Mississippi belongs to the President,
and to none else; and he will give it to you forever.
My children, listen:
The late murder of one of my children in Georgia
shows you that you and they are too near to each other.
These bad men must now be delivered up, and suffer
the penalties of the law for the blood they have shed.
I have sent my agent. and your friend, Colonel Crowell,
to demand the surrender of the murderers, and to consult
with you upon the subject of your removing to the land
I have provided for you west of the Mississippi, in order that
my white and red children may live in peace, and that the
land may not be stained with the blood of my children again.
I have instructed Colonel Crowell to speak the truth to you.
and to assure you that your father, the President, will deal
fairly and justly with you, and while he feels a father’s
love for you, he advises your whole nation to go to
the place where he can protect and foster you.
Should any incline to remain and come
under the laws of Alabama, land will be
laid off for them, and their families in fee.
My children, listen: My white children in Alabama
have extended their law over your country.
If you remain in it, you must be subject to that law.
If you remove across the Mississippi, you will be subject
to your own laws, and the care of your father, the President.
You will be treated with kindness,
and the lands will be yours forever.
Where you now are, you and my white children are
too near to each other to live in harmony and peace.
Your game is destroyed,
and many of your people will not work and till the Earth.
Beyond the great river Mississippi, where a part
of your nation has gone, your father has provided
a country large enough for all of you,
and he advises you to remove to it.
There your white brothers will not trouble you;
they will have no claim to the land, and you can live upon it,
you and all your children, as long as the grass grows
or the water runs, in peace and plenty.
It will be yours forever.
For the improvements in the country where you now live,
and for all the stock which you cannot take with you,
your father will pay you a fair price.1
About 1,200 Creeks emigrated to the Arkansas River
by the mouth of the Verdigris River in 1829.
Eleazar Lord had organized a large public meeting in New York in December 1829
that started a campaign to petition the United States Congress on behalf of the Indians,
and he printed 300 copies of the petition as a pamphlet.
He sent 250 copies of the New York American,
which printed it, to supporters around the country.
New York Senator Nathan Sanford presented the petition in Congress on 4 January 1830,
and it was referred to the Committee on Indian Affairs.
Georgia Senator John Forsyth helped block the printing of the memorial.
The petition argued that the Cherokees had the right to live on their land
and that removal to useless lands would cause misery.
Creek delegates went to Washington in January 1830.
Unsuccessful with President Jackson, they presented
their petition to the Congress on February 9.
Jackson in June ordered the annuities to be divided and
given to individuals instead of all of it to the leaders.
Senator Thomas Benton chaired the committee on Indian affairs and investigated.
The trader Col. A. P. Chouteau reported that the Western Creeks
were producing
50 bushels of corn per acre and 19 bushels of wheat on the prairies.
Most Creeks had no money and lacked traps, guns, clothing, and food.
The Indian Removal bill was to move about 60,000
Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles from the states of
North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi
to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River, and it was reported
out of the Senate and House Committees by 24 February 1830.
On April 6 New Jersey Senator Theodore Frelinghuysen, who had been influenced
by Jeremiah Evarts, gave a six-hour speech over three days
against moving the Cherokees from Georgia.
He argued against unilateral expropriation violating the Hopewell Treaty of 1785, and
he suggested that the United States Army could protect the Cherokees from intrusions.
He concluded by asking,
Mr. President,
if we abandon these aboriginal proprietors of our soil—
these early allies and adopted children of our forefathers,
how shall we justify it to our country,
to all the glory of the past and the promise of the future?...
How shall we justify this trespass to ourselves?2
On May 15 the Cherokee Phoenix promised that
they would be firm and united in demanding justice.
David Crockett considered the bill “oppression with a vengeance.”
The Senate passed the bill easily 28-19.
Yet the House vote on May 26 was 102-98 with the southern states
voting in favor 61-16 and others against 82-41.
President Jackson signed it two days later, giving Cherokees “perpetual title” to land
in United States territory west of the Mississippi
that was not “in any state or organized territory.”
It also authorized “the President to exchange any or all of such districts,”
and to act “to cause such tribe or nation to be protected.”
Jackson apparently believed that he could not protect the Cherokees from
greedy whites in the state of Georgia, but he could in a federal territory.
Pennsylvanian Joseph Hemphill in the House tried to delay the removal with a commission
to examine the new Cherokee territory and give responsibility to Congress;
but this would take more than a year, and southerners defeated it in the House.
The Indian Removal Act appropriated $500,000 for provisions,
but this would not provide enough funds for the tribes moving west over several years.
Jackson was not able to prevent speculators from buying about 85% of the land
from the Cherokees who wanted to stay in Georgia.
Quakers and other religious groups were outraged by the removal of natives.
Van Buren praised Jackson’s policy, and the misery of the removal on the Trail of Tears
would be in 1838 when Martin Van Buren was President.
The Cherokees refused to leave Georgia.
In July the Legislative Council resolved not to exchange land or move,
and they asked the President for protection.
They challenged Jackson’s right to discontinue their $6,000 annuity
by paying each person which would have been 50 cents each.
Chief John Ross retained a Georgia law firm, William Wirt, and Associates of Baltimore.
The lawyer Jeremiah Evarts supported the right of the Cherokees to stay in Georgia,
and he believed the federal government should protect their rights.
Evarts opposed President Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830,
and using the name “William Penn” he wrote a series of essays between August 5
to December 19 that were printed in the Washington National Intelligencer,
giving the legal case for the rights of the Indians and against removal.
In #1 he asked the following simple question:
Have the Indian tribes, residing as separate communities
in the neighborhood of the whites,
a permanent title to the territory,
which they inherited from their fathers,
which they have neither forfeited nor sold,
and which they now occupy?3
On August 8 in #2 he wrote,
The Cherokees are human beings, endowed by their Creator
with the same natural rights as other men.
They are in peaceable possession of a territory
which they have always regarded as their own.
This territory was in possession of their ancestors,
through an unknown series of generations,
and has come down to them with a title
absolutely unencumbered in every respect.4
Evarts analyzed the treaties between the United States and Cherokees’ recognition
of them as a nation especially the Hopewell Treaty of 1785 and the compact
between Georgia and the U. S. in 1802 when the state demanded
that the U. S. remove all the Indians from its territory.
He presented and discussed 16 treaties from 1785 to 1819 that were ratified by the U. S.
In Essay #20 he noted that the spurious Indian Spring Treaty made with Georgia
on 12 February 1825 was considered a fraud by the highest authorities,
and he explained how Governor Troup claimed that the treaty which Georgia made
with the Creeks gave the United States “the whole territory within the limits of Georgia.”
Evarts urged following the immutable Christian principles of morality in Essay #23.
In #24 he wrote that the plan was to be distrusted because its advocates
talked of “future generosity and kindness” instead of “honor, truth, and justice.”
He also predicted that “the constrained migration
of 60,000” poor people would cause much suffering.
He warned the United States not to incur the guilt of violating treaties.
The Penn essays were published and circulated by many periodicals
that reached about a half million citizens.
Evarts died of tuberculosis on 10 May 1831.
President Jackson from Franklin, Tennessee on 25 August 1830 wrote in this letter
to Major William B. Lewis about his efforts to move tribes west of the Mississippi River:
No appointment will be made until I reach the City to
which place I will set out the moment after I know
whether a delegation from the Choctaws will come in.
By the mail of this morning we expect to
receive the result of their council which was
to have been held on the 16th instant.
The Chickasaws are now here, and on this day we
expect their answer on the subject of their election to cross
the Mississippi River, or to remain where they now are.
If they agree to remove, we will make a treaty with them.
The Choctaws not being here in whose boundary
we wish to settle them will produce some difficulties,
as the Chickasaws, are not acquainted with the land
adjoining the Choctaws on their north boundary,
which is the only point where we can place them
without interfering with other tribes, I have a
sanguine hope the Choctaws will be in today.
I will keep this open until the Southern mail arrives
and by a P. S. give you the news.
I have received and noted the letter enclosed from the
Gentleman in South Carolina I was aware of the
hostility of the influential character alluded to.
I sincerely regret the course taken by Hamilton and Hayne.
The people of South Carolina will not, nay
cannot sustain such nullifying Doctrines.
The Carolinians are a patriotic and high-minded people,
and they prize their liberty too high to jeopardize it
at the shrine of an ambitious demagogue, whether
a native of Carolina or of any other country.
This influential character in this heat has led
Hamilton and Hayne astray, and it will, I fear,
lead to the injury of Hamilton and lose him his election.
But the ambitious Demagogue alluded to would sacrifice
friends and country, and move heaven and earth,
if he had the power, to gratify his unholy ambition.
His course says he will abandon him unless he can satisfy
him that he has used his influence to put down this nullifying
doctrine, which threatens to dissolve our happy union.
The Creeks have officially informed us,
that they will not meet us.
We have answered, that we leave them to themselves,
and to the protection of their friend Mr. Wirt, to whose
protection they look, and to whom they have given a large
fee to protect them in their rights as an independent Nation;
and when they find at their own expense
and by their means, a country and a home.
The course of Wirt has been truly wicked.
It has been wielded as an engine to prevent the
Indians from moving across the Mississippi and will
lead to the destruction of the poor ignorant Indians.
It must be so; I have used all the
persuasive means in my power.
I have exonerated the national character from all
imputation, and now leave the poor deluded Creeks
and Cherokees to their fate and their annihilation,
which their wicked advisers have induced.
I am sure the stand the Executive has taken was
not anticipated by their wicked advisers.
It was expected that the more the Indians
would hold out and oppose the views of the
Government, the greater would be the offers made
by the Executive, and all the missionary and speculating
tribe would make fortunes out of the United States.
The answer sent has blasted these hopes,
and if I mistake not, the Indians will now think for
themselves and send to the City a delegation prepared
to cede their country and move across the Mississippi.
I have just discovered that Major Haley has been
acting the double part with the view to obtain large
reserves for the Indians, and to participate in them.
He is the tool of Lafleur and has advised him not to
meet us here, expecting that we would send commissioners
into the Nation, when he would become the contractor
for their supplies and when we would be so anxious
to treat that we would yield to any terms demanded of us.
If the eastern and southern section of the Choctaw Nation
send in a full delegation, being two thirds of the whole
Nation, we will treat with them and leave the half-breeds
and wicked white men disappointed and at leisure
to comment upon their own folly.5
Secretary of War Eaton and General Coffee met with Choctaw chiefs
at Dancing Rabbit Creek on 15 September 1830,
and they signed a treaty on September 27.
The Choctaws agreed to leave their land in the state of Mississippi
and emigrate across the Mississippi River into the Arkansas Territory.
They ceded their 10.5 million acres and promised to emigrate in three groups,
the first in autumn 1831, the second in 1832, and the third in 1833.
President Jackson submitted the treaty to the United States Senate on 20 December 1830,
and the Senate ratified it by a vote of 35 to 12 on 25 February 1831.
The Choctaws’ request to be guided on the migration
by General George Gibson was rejected.
President Jackson did not learn of their suffering on the journey until it was over.
On 19 September 1829 Sam Houston from the Cherokee Nation in Arkansas
wrote this letter to his friend Andrew Jackson:
I am very feeble from a long spell of fever,
which lasted me some 38 days and had nigh
closed the scene of all my mortal health.
I would not write at this time but that I cannot deny
myself the pleasure of tendering to you my heartfelt
acknowledgement for your kind favor, which reached
me when I was barely able to peruse its contents.
It was a cordial to my spirits and
cheered me in my sickness.
From the course which I had pursued in relation to
the cause of my abandonment of society, my absolute
refusal to gratify the inquiring world, my entire silence,
because it comported with my notions of honor and a
willingness to sacrifice myself, rather than do violence
to my principles, I had a right to suppose that the
world would acquiesce in the sacrifice, nor could I
of right claim to you a departure from what
I supposed the general influence of my destiny.
You have acted upon the great scale which
prescribes no limits to true greatness, but
boundless benevolence and universal philanthropy.
Had a scepter been dashed at my feet, it would
not have afforded the same pleasure, which I derived
from the proud consciousness, not only that I deserved,
but that I possessed your confidence!
The elevation of your Station and your renown, which
could acquire no additional luster from official distinction,
contrasted with that of a man, who had ceased to be all
that he ever had been in the world’s eye; was such as
would have justified you in any inference, the most damning
to his character and prejudicial to his integrity of heart!
You disregarded the standard calculations of mankind,
and acted from an impulse peculiar to yourself!
The solicitude which you have so kindly manifested
for my future welfare cannot fail to inspire me with
a proper sense of additional obligation to you.
To become a missionary among the Indians is rendered
impossible for a want of that Evangelical change of heart,
so absolutely necessary to a man who assumes the
all-important character of proclaiming to a lost world
the meditation of a blessed Savior!
To meliorate the condition of the Indians, to suggest
improvements to their growing institutions, to prevent
fraud and peculation on part of the Government’s Agents
among them, and to direct the feelings of the Indians
in kindness to the Government and inspire them with
confidence in its justice, and magnanimity towards the
Red People; have been objects of my constant solicitude
and attention, since I have been among them!
Your suggestion on the subject of my location in Arkansas
has received my serious attention, and I have concluded
that it would be best for me to adopt the course.
In that Territory there is no field for distinction—
it is fraught with factions; and if my object were
to obtain wealth, it must be done by fraud and
peculation upon the Government, and many
perjuries would be necessary to its effectuation!
Were I disposed to abandon my present seclusion,
I would submit to you if it would not be more
advantageous for me to locate in Natchez.
I am well known to the first men of that state.
I was presented there under your kind auspices
on your last visit to that country, and I would rally around
me very many Tennesseans who have migrated thither!
You can think of all the advantages presented by me, and
the many more, which will present themselves to your mind!
When I left the world, I had persuaded myself that I would
lose all care about the passing events of the world as well
as those of my own country, but it is not so, for as often as
I visit Canton Gibson, where I can obtain News Papers,
I find that my interest is rather increased than diminished.
It is hard for an old Trooper to forget the note of the Bugle!
Having been so actively engaged for years past in politics,
it is impossible to lose all interest in them for some time
to come, should I remain in my present situation!
I am not so vain as to suppose myself so important to the
world or to my own country as to believe that my location
on earth can have any important influence upon its
destinies, and therefore the claims of Patriotism
and duty to the land of my birth rest easy!
If we are to judge of the future by the past, it might
so happen, were I settled in a state; that I might render my
aid in some future political struggle between usurpation and
the rights of the people in wresting power from the hands
of a corrupt Usurper, and deposing it where the spirit of the
constitution and the will of the people would wish it placed.
These considerations are not without their influence,
for I must ever love that country and its institutions, which
give Liberty and happiness to my kindred and friends!
And these blessings can only be
preserved by vigilance and virtue!
I am rejoiced that you have cleaned
the stalls of Washington as well as others!
Get rid of all the wolves, and the barking of
Puppies can never destroy the fold!
It amuses me to see the leaden-pointed arrows
shot at you by Gales and Co.
I trust in God, the Edifice which you have so nobly
reared and are now finishing, will receive your
own peculiar impress and be worthy of your renown!
I pray you to salute your family for me and be
assured of my sincere devotion and friendship.
P. S. I hope to take and send you between this and
Christmas some fine Buffalo meat for your Christmas
dinner or at furthest by the 8th of January.6
Eleazar Lord organized a large public meeting in New York in December
that started a campaign to petition the U. S. Congress on behalf of the Indians,
and he printed 300 copies of the petition as a pamphlet.
He sent 250 copies of the New York American
which printed it for supporters around the country.
New York Senator Nathan Sanford presented the petition in Congress on 4 January 1830,
and it was referred to the Committee on Indian Affairs.
Georgia Senator John Forsyth helped block the printing of the memorial.
The petition argued that the Cherokees had the right to live on their land
and that removal to useless lands would cause misery.
Another petition was disseminated at a Boston meeting on February 22,
and Washington soon got many petitions from New England.
Andrew Jackson in addition to his Annual Message to Congress
on December 6, 1830 also presented this Speech to Congress “On Indian Removal.”
“It gives me pleasure to announce to Congress
that the benevolent policy of the Government,
steadily pursued for nearly thirty years, in relation
to the removal of the Indians beyond the white
settlements is approaching to a happy consummation.
Two important tribes have accepted the provision made
for their removal at the last session of Congress,
and it is believed that their example will induce the
remaining tribes also to seek the same obvious advantages.
The consequences of a speedy removal will be
important to the United States, to individual
States, and to the Indians themselves.
The pecuniary advantages which it promises to the
Government are the least of its recommendations.
It puts an end to all possible danger of collision
between the authorities of the General and
State Governments on account of the Indians.
It will place a dense and civilized population in large
tracts of country now occupied by a few savage hunters.
By opening the whole territory between Tennessee on
the north and Louisiana on the south to the settlement
of the whites it will incalculably strengthen the
southwestern frontier and render the adjacent States
strong enough to repel future invasions without remote aid.
It will relieve the whole State of Mississippi and the western
part of Alabama of Indian occupancy, and enable those
States to advance rapidly in population, wealth, and power.
It will separate the Indians from immediate contact with
settlements of whites; free them from the power of the
States; enable them to pursue happiness in their own way
and under their own rude institutions; will retard the
progress of decay, which is lessening their numbers,
and perhaps cause them gradually, under the protection
of the Government and through the influence of good
counsels, to cast off their savage habits and become
an interesting, civilized, and Christian community.
What good man would prefer a country covered with
forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our
extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and
prosperous farms embellished with all the improvements
which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by
more than 12,000,000 happy people, and filled with
all the blessings of liberty, civilization and religion?
The present policy of the Government is but a continuation
of the same progressive change by a milder process.
The tribes which occupied the countries now
constituting the Eastern States were annihilated
or have melted away to make room for the whites.
The waves of population and civilization are rolling
to the westward, and we now propose to acquire the
countries occupied by the red men of the South and West
by a fair exchange, and at the expense of the United States,
to send them to land where their existence may
be prolonged and perhaps made perpetual.
Doubtless it will be painful to leave the graves
of their fathers; but what do they more than our
ancestors did or than our children are now doing?
To better their condition in an unknown land our
forefathers left all that was dear in earthly objects.
Our children by thousands yearly leave the land
of their birth to seek new homes in distant regions.
Does Humanity weep at these painful separations
from everything, animate and inanimate, with
which the young heart has become entwined?
Far from it.
It is rather a source of joy that our country affords
scope where our young population may range
unconstrained in body or in mind, developing the
power and facilities of man in their highest perfection.
These remove hundreds and almost thousands of miles
at their own expense, purchase the lands they occupy,
and support themselves at their new homes
from the moment of their arrival.
Can it be cruel in this Government when, by events
which it cannot control, the Indian is made discontented
in his ancient home to purchase his lands, to give him
a new and extensive territory, to pay the expense of
his removal, and support him a year in his new abode?
How many thousands of our own people
would gladly embrace the opportunity of
removing to the West on such conditions!
If the offers made to the Indians were extended to them,
they would be hailed with gratitude and joy.
And is it supposed that the wandering savage has a stronger
attachment to his home than the settled, civilized Christian?
Is it more afflicting to him to leave the graves of his fathers
than it is to our brothers and children?
Rightly considered, the policy of the General Government
toward the red man is not only liberal, but generous.
He is unwilling to submit to the laws of the States
and mingle with their population.
To save him from this alternative, or perhaps
utter annihilation, the General Government kindly
offers him a new home, and proposes to pay the
whole expense of his removal and settlement.”
National Park Service, Park Museum Management
Program Teaching with Museum Collections the
opportunity of removing to the West on such conditions!
If the offers made to the Indians were extended to them,
they would be hailed with gratitude and joy.
And is it supposed that the wandering savage
has a stronger attachment to his home
than the settled, civilized Christian?
Is it more afflicting to him to leave the graves
of his fathers than it is to our brothers and children?
Rightly considered, the policy of the General Government
toward the red man is not only liberal, but generous.
He is unwilling to submit to the laws of the States
and mingle with their population.
To save him from this alternative, or perhaps
utter annihilation, the General Government kindly
offers him a new home, and proposes to pay the
whole expense of his removal and settlement.7
Georgia passed a law at the end of 1830 prohibiting whites
from entering Cherokee land as of March 1831.
President Jackson informed the Senate in February that he would no longer enforce
the Indian Intercourse Act of 1802 that protected their lands from intruders.
Cherokees wanted to keep gold prospectors off their land,
and Wirt appealed their case to the U. S. Supreme Court.
On 18 March 1831 in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia Chief Justice Marshall declared
that Cherokees were neither a sovereign nation nor subject to state laws but were
“domestic dependent nations” and a ward of the United States
which
claimed the exclusive right to regulate trade with them and respect their rights.
Marshall concluded that the U. S. Supreme Court was not the tribunal
to redress the rights of the Cherokee nation that had been wronged.
The Cherokees accepted this as the U. S. Government having to protect their rights.
President Jackson wrote this letter to his Secretary of State John H. Eaton
and Secretary of War Lewis Cass in 1831:
The case of Johnston and McIntosh (and Wheaton) has
settled, that the North American Indian tribes east of the
Mississippi are a conquered and dependent people—that
their hunting grounds were subject to be granted and that
the Indian tribes had no right to grant to Individuals.
Then they are dependent; not on the Federal power in
exclusion to the state authority, when they reside within
the limits of a state, but to the sovereign power of the
state within whose sovereign limits they reside.
No feature in the Federal constitution is more prominent
than that the general powers conferred on Congress, can
only be enforced and executed upon the people of the union.
This is a government of the people.
1st The House of Representatives are their
immediate representative or agent.
2nd The Senate is their agent elected by their
agents in the sovereign state assemblies.
3rd The President is their agent elected
by their immediate agents the electors.
Who do these represent? the people of the Union.
As law makers over whom does their jurisdiction extend?
Over the people of the union.
Who are the people of the union?
All those subject to the jurisdiction
of the sovereign states, none else.
And it is an idle feeling that can advocate any other doctrine,
or a total ignorance of the real principles upon which our
federal union is based—an absolute independence of the
Indian tribes from state authority can never bear an
intelligent investigation, and a quasi independence of state
authority when located within its Territorial limits is absurd.
If the Indians were not subjects of the states within
whose Territorial limits they were, what right had the
General Government to accept cessions of Territory
that the states had no right to?
What right had Virginia, North Carolina, etc. to pay
part of the claims which were incurred in the revolution
struggle by grants of land within her territorial limits
and in the actual occupancy of the Indians and
afterwards cede the same country to the United States.
If the Indians were an independent people, then
these grants are void, and the titles granted in
Kentucky, Tennessee and parts of Ohio are void.
Such a doctrine would not be well relished in the west,
by those who suffered and bled so freely by being the
first pioneers to enjoy the land so dearly bought
by their privations in the revolutionary struggle.
I have risen from my couch to give you these crude
and undigested thoughts, that if you see Mr. Bell,
you may give him the ideas.
Though crude, he can digest them.
We have acted upon these principles; they are sound,
and are such, upon which our confederated union rests.
I cannot abandon them.
I will thank you to preserve this and return it to me.
It may be of use hereafter to guard my consistency.8
On 7 July 1831 Samuel Worcester and ten other missionaries were
arrested and then convicted of living on Indian land without a permit,
and on September 15 they were sentenced to four years hard labor.
Governor Gilmer granted them clemency,
which only Worcester and Dr. Elizur Butler refused.
Wirt also appealed their case, and on 23 March 1832 the U. S. Supreme Court
in Worcester v. Georgia struck down the Georgia law as unconstitutional.
Georgia refused to appear in court on this case and did not accept the court’s mandate.
Worcester and Butler declined a pardon until after the law was repealed in December.
Georgia’s government used a lottery to raffle off the unoccupied Cherokee land to whites.
President Jackson refused to enforce the court’s judgment and was believed to have said,
“John Marshall has rendered his decision; now let him enforce it.”
On 3 December 1832 Jackson noted that
since the end of the Black Hawk War relations with Indians were peaceful.
He believed that their removal west of the Mississippi River had prevented their destruction.
President Jackson ordered Black Hawk and the others to Washington in April 1833,
and he met with them on the 26th.
Black Hawk was released in July, and Jackson persuaded him
to go on a tour of the East to learn about civilization.
Jackson amazed people by attending the Front Street Theater with them.
He encouraged Black Hawk to “bury the tomahawk and live in peace with the frontiers,”
and the chief said he would do so.
After the brief tour they were imprisoned at Norfolk, Virginia,
and then in June they were sent by steamboat to major cities as far as Detroit.
After the Black Hawk War many settlers began to move into the
Michigan and Wisconsin territories in 1833, and the population of Chicago grew quickly.
On 24 December 1833 Jackson submitted these seven treaties:
I transmit herewith, for the consideration of the
Senate as to the ratification thereof, the following
Indian treaties that have been received since the
adjustment of the last session of Congress, viz:
No. 1. Treaty with the Seminole Indians made
May 9, 1832.
No. 2. Treaty with the Cherokees west of the
Mississippi made 14th February 1833.
No. 3. Treaty with the Creeks west of the
Mississippi made 14th February 1833.
No. 4. Assignment to the Seminoles of a tract
of land for their residence west of the Mississippi
made 28th March 1833.
No. 5. Agreement with the Apalachicola
band of Indians made 18th June 1833.
No. 6. Treaty with the united bands of Ottoes
and Missourians made 21st September 1833.
No. 7. Treaty with the four confederated
bands of Pawnees residing on the Platt and
Loup Fork made 9th October 1833.9
On 20 June 1834 the U. S. Congress declared “Indian Country” west
of the
Mississippi River excluding the states of Missouri and Louisiana and the Arkansas Territory.
Ten days later the Department of Indian Affairs was started to administer the Indian lan
in the western portion of what had been the Arkansas Territory
and that later became the Oklahoma Territory.
Congress passed a law replacing the Bureau of Indian Affairs
with the Office of Indian Affairs under an Indian Commissioner in June 1834.
That year Congress created new Indian Territory
west of Arkansas, Missouri, and the Iowa Territory.
Wealthy John Ross who owned slaves and was only one-eighth Cherokee, was elected
as the Principal Chief of the Cherokees, and he tried to negotiate with Jackson,
asking for $20 million; but Jackson did not like him.
Some Cherokee chiefs who wanted a treaty included the Speaker of the
Cherokee National Council, Major Ridge, his son John, and Elias Boudinot,
and in February 1835 they ceded the Cherokees’ land to the U. .S for $4.5 million.
Jackson explained the treaty in a letter to the Cherokee Tribe on March 16,
and it was published in newspapers on April 7.
Some Cherokee leaders secretly signed a treaty on March 29.
Ross led those refusing removal, and that summer he persuaded the Cherokees
to vote against the treaty 2,225 to 114.
On 11 September 1835 Sam Houston wrote to his friend Jackson, asking him
to keep the Creek Indians out of Texas by sending them to the Indian Territory.
Georgia’s Governor Lumpkin had Ross and others at his home arrested on November 7,
but Ross was released in December and went to Washington.
While he was gone, Jackson’s envoy, Rev. John Schermerhorn, at New Echota, Georgia
on 29 December 1835 managed to get some Cherokee chiefs to sign a treaty
trading their land in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee
for $5 million and 7 million acres by the Red River.
Yet soon about 12,000 Cherokees signed a resolution denouncing it,
and 3,250 Cherokees in North Carolina signed a petition asking the Senate to reject the treaty.
The U. S. Senate ratified the treaty 31-15 on 23 May 1836,
and the remaining 16,542 Cherokees had two years
from that date to leave the states for the western territory.
Soon after the Senate ratification, President Jackson
sent Brigadier General John E. Wool to the Cherokee Nation.
The United States Army was currently fighting a war against the Seminoles in Florida,
and others were attempting to drive the Creeks out of Alabama.
General Wool recruited a thousand volunteers
in East Tennessee to combat the local Cherokees.
Wool attempted to mediate between President Jackson and the Cherokee leader John Ross.
Wool in August sent this report to the United States Department of War:
For three weeks after my arrival at Athens (Tennessee),
from the daily reports made to me, I was induced to
believe that a large proportion of the nation was
prepared to submit to the Treaty and remove west
at the proper time; a few days at the mouth of
Valley river convinced me I was mistaken.
A few white men and some few half-breeds only
could be found to advocate a submission to the treaty.
This is not fiction but truth.10
On 7 December 1835 the Democrats in the House of Representatives
elected James K. Polk speaker 132-84 over the incumbent John Bell,
and on that day Jackson sent another long annual message to the Congress
which included the following plea to rectify the government’s treatment of the Indians
who had been removed outside the states into Indian Territory:
Some general legislation seems necessary for the
regulation of the relations which will exist in this new
state of things between the government and people
of the United States and these transplanted Indian tribes,
and for the establishment among the latter,
and with their own consent, of some principles of
intercommunication which their juxtaposition will call for;
that moral may be substituted for physical force,
the authority of a few and simple laws for the tomahawk,
and that an end may be put to those bloody wars whose
prosecution seems to have made part of their social system.
After further details of this arrangement are completed
with a very general supervision over them,
they ought to be left to the progress of events.
These, I indulge the hope, will secure their prosperity
and improvement, and a large portion of the
moral debt we owe to them will then be paid.11
This paternalistic rhetoric typical of Jackson shows that he did have good intentions
and hopes for helping the tribes, but in fact he did not live up to his promises.
This message also condemned the “unconstitutional and wicked attempts”
by Abolitionists to “instigate the slaves to insurrection.”
On December 26 in a letter the Abolitionists
responded with a protest of the President’s remarks.
They criticized Jackson for assuming a power beyond his office
and argued that the charges he made were vague and untrue.
On 29 December 1835 a controversial treaty was signed at New Echota, Georgia.
President Jackson appointed Mississippi’s Senator Powhatan Ellis the Chargé to Mexic
in January 1836, and he reached Mexico City in April.
Stephen Austin on April 15 in this letter from New York
asked President Jackson for American aid against Mexico’s army:
Pardon me for this intrusion upon your valuable time.
I address you as individuals, as men,
as Americans, as my country men.
I obey an honest, though perhaps excited impulse.
We have recent dates from Mexico by the packet.
It appears that Santana has succeeded in uniting the
whole of the Mexicans against Texas by making it a
national war against heretics, that an additional Army
of 8000 men is organizing under General Cortazar in Mexico
to march to Texas and exterminate the heretic Americans.
Santana is now in Texas, as we all know, with about
7000 men fighting under the bloody flag of a pirate,
he is exciting the Comanches and other Indians,
who know nothing of lines or political divisions of territory;
massacres have been committed
on Red River within the U. S.
This is a war of barbarism against civilization, of despotism
against liberty, of Mexicans against Americans.
Ah my countrymen, the warmhearted,
chivalrous impulsive west and south
are up and moving in favor of Texas.
The calculating and more prudent,
though not less noble-minded north are accused.
The sympathies of the whole American people
in mass are with the Texians.
This people look to you, the guardians of their rights
and interests and principles; will you, can you turn
a deaf ear to the appeals of your fellow citizens
in favor of their and your countrymen and friends,
who are massacred, butchered,
outraged in Texas at your very doors?
Are not we, the Texians, obeying the dictates of an
education received here from you, the American people,
from our fathers, from the patriots of “76,”
the republicans of 1836?
Have not we, been stimulated to obey the dictates
of this noble education by the expression of opinions
all over these United States and by all parties,
that we ought to resist and throw off the yoke of
Mexican usurpation, and are we now to be
abandoned or suffered to struggle alone and
single-handed, because the cold calculations
of policy or of party have first to be consulted?
Well, you reply, what can we do?
In answer I say, let the President and cabinet and
Congress come out openly and at once and proclaim
to the public their opinions; let Texas have some of the
$37,000,000 now in the national treasury; let the war
in Texas become a national war above board, and thus
respond to the noble feelings of the American people.
Who can deny that it is a national war in reality?
A war in which every free American, who is not
a fanatic abolitionist or a cold-hearted recreant
to the interest and honor and principles of his country
and countrymen, who is not an icicle in soul and
in practice, is deeply, warmly, ardently interested.
In short it is now a national war sub-rosa.
This will not do.
This state of the matter cannot, ought not to continue;
make it at once, and above board and boldly,
what it is in fact, a national war in defense of
national interests and principles and of Americans.
Let the administration and Congress take this position
at once, and the butcheries in Texas will cease;
humanity will no longer be outraged by a war of
extermination against liberty and maintained on
the south western frontier of this nation, and the
government of the U. S. will then occupy that open
and elevated stand which is due to the American
people and worthy of Andrew Jackson, for it will occupy
above board the position, which this nation as a people
now occupy in heart and in feeling and in wishes;
a position which they are now defending in obedience
to the noblest impulses of the heart by acts and with
their blood, as warmhearted, noble spirits always do.12
President Jackson replied,
The writer does not reflect that we have a treaty with
Mexico, and our national faith is pledged to support it.
The Texans before they took the step to declare
themselves Independent, which has aroused and
united all Mexico against them, ought to have
pondered well, it was a rash and premature act;
our neutrality must be faithfully maintained.13
On 4 July 1836 Mexico’s General Santa Anna sent a letter
to President Jackson, and he concluded,
The Mexicans are magnanimous
when treated with consideration.
I will make known to them with purity of intentions
the reasons of convenience and humanity, which require
a frank and noble conduct, and I do not doubt they will
adopt it, when conviction has worked upon their minds.14
General Edmund Gaines commanded U. S. troops in western Louisiana,
and he sent Col. Whistler with a detachment to occupy Nacogdoches in July 1836.
That month President Jackson ordered Chargé Ellis to return to Washington,
and he closed the legation in December.
Mexican minister Gorostiza complained about the invasion of Mexico,
broke off relations in October and left Washington.
Jackson had sent Henry Morfit to see if the Texas republic was ready for independence,
and his reports reached Washington in October.
The Second Creek War broke out in 1836 in the Chattahoochee Valley.
After the burning of the town Lutcapoga by whites, hundreds of Creeks joined the
veteran Chief Neamathla, and on May 19 the United States Government sent in troops.
When the elderly chief was captured in early June,
thousands of his people surrendered and were imprisoned.
Attacks by white settlers increased during the summer,
and President Jackson ordered the remaining Creeks deported.
Secretary of War Cass sent General Winfield Scott
who was replaced by Edmund Shackelford and then Jesup.
Two more chiefs were defeated, and on July 2
hundreds of Creek rebels were put in manacles and chains.
On July 14 the 2,498 Creeks including 800 warriors were put on two riverboats
for New Orleans and were taken up the Mississippi to Little Rock.
On the way Yuchi Indians rolled the barrels of manacles and chains overboard.
In December more than 10,000 destitute Creeks
arrived at Fort Gibson in the Indian Territory.
President Jackson from his Hermitage on 4 September 1836 wrote this letter
to General Samuel Houston, commander in chief of the army of the Texian Republic:
I have duly examined the contents of your letter
and the other documents referred to, and regret
that Mexico by her Minister Mr. Gorrastisa has made
known to this Government, that Mexico does not nor
will not recognize any act of General Santa Anna as
President of Mexico, since he has been made Prisoner,
and that the agreement made by him with Texas
will not be recognized and agreed to by Mexico.
You will at once see that until the Government de facto of
Mexico asks the friendly interposition of our good offices to
put an end to the war I cannot interfere—if she does, it will
give us pleasure to become the mediator between you.
I shall set out in a few days for Washington and will there
make your note to me and that of General Santa Anna
the basis of an interview with the Mexican Minister.
In the meantime I would remark that I have seen
a report that General Santa Anna was to be brought
before a military court to be tried and shot.
Nothing now could tarnish the character of Texas
more than such an act at this late period.
It was good policy as well as humanity that spared him—
it has given you possession of Goliad and the Alamo
without blood, or loss of the strength of your army—
his person is still of much consequence to you;
he is the pride of the Mexican soldiers and the favorite
of the Priesthood, and while he is in your power,
the priests will not furnish the supplies necessary for
another campaign, nor will the regular soldier voluntarily
march when their reentering Texas may endanger
or cost their favorite General his life; therefore preserve
his life and the character you have won; and let not his
blood be shed unless it becomes necessary by an imperative
act of just retaliation for Mexican massacres hereafter.
This is what I think true wisdom and humanity dictates.
I enclose you a letter to General Santa Anna which you
will please seal and cause to be delivered to him.15
The following “Appeal of the Cherokee Nation” was published before 1 January 1930:
More than one year ago we were officially given
to understand by the secretary of war, that the president
could not protect us against the laws of Georgia.
This information was entirely unexpected; as it went
upon the principle, that treaties made between the
United States and the Cherokee nation have no power
to withstand the legislation of separate states;
and of course, that they have no efficacy whatever,
but leave our people to the mercy of the neighboring
whites, whose supposed interests would be
promoted by our expulsion, or extermination.
It would be impossible to describe the sorrow, which
affected our minds on learning that the chief magistrate
of the United States had come to this conclusion, that all
his illustrious predecessors had held intercourse with us
on principles which could not be sustained; that they had
made promises of vital importance to us, which could not
be fulfilled—promises made hundreds of times in almost
every conceivable manner, often in the form of solemn
treaties, sometimes in letters written by the chief
magistrate with his own hand, very often in letters
written by the secretary of war under his direction,
sometimes orally by the president and the secretary
to our chiefs, and frequently and always, both orally
and in writing by the agent of the United States residing
among us, whose most important business it was,
to see the guaranty of the United States faithfully executed.
Soon after the war of the revolution, as we have
learned from our fathers, the Cherokees looked upon
the promises of the whites with great distrust and suspicion;
but the frank and magnanimous conduct of
General Washington did much to allay these feelings.
The perseverance of successive presidents, and
especially of Mr. Jefferson, in the same course
of policy, and in the constant assurance that our
country should remain inviolate, except so far
as we voluntarily ceded it, nearly banished anxiety
in regard to encroachments from the whites.
To this result the aid which we received from the
United States in the attempts of our people to
become civilized, and the kind efforts of
benevolent societies, have greatly contributed.
Of late years, however, much solicitude was
occasioned among our people by the claims of Georgia.
This solicitude arose from the apprehension, that by
extreme importunity, threats, and other undue influence,
a treaty would be made, which should cede the territory,
and thus compel the inhabitants to remove.
But it never occurred to us for a moment that without any
new treaty, without any assent of our rulers and people,
without even a pretended compact, and against our
vehement and unanimous protestations, we should
be delivered over to the discretion of those,
who had declared by a legislative act, that they
wanted the Cherokee lands and would have them.
Finding that relief could not be obtained from the
chief magistrate, and not doubting that our claim to
protection was just, we made our application to congress.
During four long months our delegation waited, at the
doors of the national legislature of the United States,
and the people at home, in the most painful suspense, to
learn in what manner our application would be answered;
and, now that congress has adjourned, on the very day
before the date fixed by Georgia for the extension of
her oppressive laws over the greater part of our country,
the distressing intelligence has been received that
we have received no answer at all; and no
department of the government has assured us,
that we are to receive the desired protection.
But just at the close of the session, an act was passed,
by which a half a million of dollars was appropriated
towards effecting a removal of Indians; and we
have great reason to fear that the influence of this
act will be brought to bear most injuriously upon us.
The passage of this act was certainly understood
by the representatives of Georgia as abandoning us
to the oppressive and cruel measures of the state,
and as sanctioning the opinion that treaties with
Indians do not restrain state legislation.
We are informed by those, who are competent to judge,
that the recent act does not admit of such construction;
but that the passage of it, under the actual circumstances
of the controversy, will be considered as sanctioning the
pretensions of Georgia, there is too much reason to fear.
Thus have we realized, with heavy hearts, that our
supplication has not been heard; that the protection
heretofore experienced is now to be withheld;
that the guaranty, in consequence of which our fathers
laid aside their arms and ceded the best portions of their
country, means nothing; and that we must either emigrate
to an unknown region and leave the pleasant land to
which we have the strongest attachment, or submit
to the legislation of a state, which has already made
our people outlaws, and enacted that any Cherokee,
who shall endeavor to prevent the selling of his country,
shall be imprisoned in the penitentiary
of Georgia not less than four years.
To our countrymen this has been melancholy
intelligence, and with the most bitter
disappointment has it been received.
But in the midst of our sorrows, we do not forget
our obligations to our friends and benefactors.
It was with sensations of inexpressible joy that
we have learned that the voice of thousands,
in many parts of the United States, has been
raised in our behalf, and numerous memorials
offered in our favor, in both houses of congress.
To those numerous friends, who have thus
sympathized with us in our low estate,
we tender our grateful acknowledgements.
In pleading our cause, they have pleaded the cause
of the poor and defenseless throughout the world.
Our special thanks are due, however, to those
honorable men, who so ably and eloquently asserted
our rights, in both branches of the national legislature.
Their efforts will be appreciated wherever the merits
of this question shall be known; and we cannot but think,
that they have secured for themselves a permanent
reputation among the disinterested advocates
of humanity, equal rights, justice, and good faith.
We even cherish the hope, that these efforts,
seconded and followed by others of a similar character,
will yet be available, so far as to mitigate our sufferings,
if not to affect our entire deliverance.
Before we close this address, permit us to state what
we conceive to be our relations with the United States.
After the peace of 1783, the Cherokees were an
independent people; absolutely so,
as much as any people on earth.
They had been allies to Great Britain, and as a
faithful ally took a part in the colonial war on her side.
They had placed themselves under her protection,
and had they, without cause, declared hostility
against their protector, and had the colonies been
subdued, what might not have been their fate?
But her power on this continent was broken.
She acknowledged the independence
of the United States, and made peace.
The Cherokees therefore stood alone;
and in these circumstances continued the war.
They were then under no obligations to the United States
any more than to Great Britain, France or Spain.
The United States never subjugated the Cherokees;
on the contrary, our fathers remained in possession
of their country and with arms in their hands.
The people of the United States sought a peace;
and in 1785 the treaty of Hopewell was formed,
by which the Cherokees came under the protection
of the United States, and submitted to such limitations
of sovereignty as are mentioned in that instrument.
None of these limitations, however, affected
in the slightest degree, their rights of
self-government and inviolate territory.
The citizens of the United States had no right of passage
through the Cherokee country till the year 1791 and then
only in one direction and by an express treaty stipulation.
When the federal constitution was adopted,
the treaty of Hopewell was confirmed with all
other treaties as the supreme law of the land.
In 1791 the treaty of Holston was made by which the
sovereignty of the Cherokees was qualified as follows:
The Cherokees acknowledged themselves to be under the
protection of the United States and of no other sovereign.
They engaged that they would not hold any
treaty with a foreign power with any separate
state of the union or with individuals.
They agreed that the United States should have the
exclusive right of regulating their trade; that the citizens
of the United States should have a right of way in one
direction through the Cherokee country; and that if an
Indian should do injury to a citizen of the United States
he should be delivered up to be tried and punished.
A cession of lands was also made to the United States.
On the other hand the United States paid a sum of money;
offered protection; engaged to punish citizens of the
United States who should do any injury to the Cherokees;
abandoned white settlers on Cherokee lands to the
discretion of the Cherokees; stipulated that white men
should not hunt on these lands, nor even enter the
country without a passport; and gave a solemn
guaranty of all Cherokee lands not ceded.
This treaty is the basis of all subsequent compacts, and in
none of them are the relations of the parties at all changed.
The Cherokees have always fulfilled their engagements.
They have never reclaimed those portions of
sovereignty which they surrendered by the
treaties of Hopewell and Holston.
These portions were surrendered for the purpose
of obtaining the guaranty which was recommended
to them as the great equivalent.
Had they refused to comply with their
engagements, there is no doubt the
United States would have enforced a compliance.
Is the duty of fulfilling engagements on the other side
less binding than it would be, if the Cherokees
had the power of enforcing their just claims?
The people of the United States will have the fairness
to reflect, that all the treaties between them and the
Cherokees were made, at the solicitation, and for the
benefit of the whites; that valuable considerations were
given for every stipulation on the part of the United States;
that it is impossible to reinstate the parties in their
former situation, that there are now hundreds of
thousands of citizens of the United States residing upon
lands ceded by the Cherokees in these very treaties;
and that our people have trusted their country
to the guaranty of the United States.
If this guaranty fails them in what can they trust,
and where can they look for protection?
We are aware that some persons suppose it will be
for our advantage to remove beyond the Mississippi.
We think otherwise.
Our people universally think otherwise.
Thinking that it would be fatal to their interests,
they have almost to a man sent their memorial
to congress deprecating the necessity of a removal.
This question was distinctly before their minds
when they signed their memorial.
Not an adult person can be found, who has not an
opinion on the subject, and if the people were to
understand distinctly, that they could be protected against
the laws of the neighboring states, there is probably not
an adult person in the nation, who would think it best to
remove; though possibly a few might emigrate individually.
There are doubtless many, who would flee to an
unknown country, however beset with dangers,
privations and sufferings, rather than be sentenced
to spend six years in a Georgia prison for advising
one of their neighbors not to betray his country.
And there are others who could not think of living
as outlaws in their native land, exposed to numberless
vexations, and excluded from being parties
or witnesses in a court of justice.
It is incredible that Georgia should ever have enacted
the oppressive laws to which reference is here made,
unless she had supposed that something extremely
terrific in its character was necessary in order
to make the Cherokees willing to remove.
We are not willing to remove; and if we could be
brought to this extremity, it would be not by argument,
not because our judgment was satisfied,
not because our condition will be improved;
but only because we cannot endure to be
deprived of our national and individual rights
and subjected to a process of intolerable oppression.
We wish to remain on the land of our fathers.
We have a perfect and original right to
remain without interruption or molestation.
The treaties with us, and laws of the United States
made in pursuance of treaties, guaranty our residence
and our privileges, and secure us against intruders.
Our only request is, that these treaties
may be fulfilled, and these laws executed.
But if we are compelled to leave our country,
we see nothing but ruin before us.
The country west of the Arkansas
territory is unknown to us.
From what we can learn of it,
we have no prepossessions in its favor.
All the inviting parts of it, as we believe, are preoccupied
by various Indian nations, to which it has been assigned.
They would regard us as intruders,
and look upon us with an evil eye.
The far greater part of that region is, beyond all
controversy, badly supplied with wood and water; and no
Indian tribe can live as agriculturists without these articles.
All our neighbors, in case of our removal, though crowded
into our near vicinity; would speak a language totally
different from ours and practice different customs.
The original possessors of that region are now
wandering savages lurking for prey in the neighborhood.
They have always been at war, and would be easily
tempted to turn their arms against peaceful emigrants.
Were the country to which we are urged much better
than it is represented to be, and were it free from the
objections which we have made to it, still it is
not the land of our birth nor of our affections.
It contains neither the scenes of our
childhood nor the graves of our fathers.
The removal of families to a new country, even under
the most favorable auspices, and when the spirits are
sustained by pleasing visions of the future, is attended
with much depression of mind and sinking of heart.
This is the case when the removal is a matter of
decided preference, and when the persons concerned
are in early youth or vigorous manhood.
Judge, then, what must be the circumstances of a removal,
when a whole community, embracing persons of all classes
and every description, from the infant to the man of extreme
old age, the sick, the blind, the lame, the improvident,
the reckless, the desperate, as well as the prudent,
the considerate, the industrious, are compelled to remove
by odious and intolerable vexations and persecutions,
brought upon them in the forms of law, when all will
agree only in this, that they have been cruelly robbed
of their country, in violation of the most solemn compacts,
which it is possible for communities to form with each other;
and that, if they should make themselves comfortable
in their new residence, they have nothing to expect
hereafter but to be the victims of a future legalized robbery!
Such we deem and are absolutely certain will be
the feelings of the whole Cherokee people, if they are
forcibly compelled, by the laws of Georgia to remove;
and with these feelings how is it possible that we
should pursue our present course of improvement,
or avoid sinking into utter despondency?
We have been called a poor, ignorant and degraded people.
We certainly are not rich; nor have we ever boasted
of our knowledge or our moral or intellectual elevation.
But there is not a man within our limits so ignorant as not to
know that he has the right to live on the land of his fathers,
in the possession of his immemorial privileges,
and that this right has been acknowledged and
guaranteed by the United States; nor is there a man
so degraded as not to feel a keen sense of injury
on being deprived of this right and driven into exile.
It is under a sense of the most pungent feelings
that we make this, perhaps our last appeal
to the good people of the United States.
It cannot be that the community we are addressing,
remarkable for its intelligence and religious sensibilities,
and pre-eminent for its devotion to the rights of man,
will lay aside this appeal without considering that
we stand in need of its sympathy and commiseration.
We know that to the Christian and to the philanthropist
the voice of our multiplied sorrows and
fiery trials will not appear as an idle tale.
In our own land, on our own soil, and in our own dwellings,
which we reared for our wives and for our little ones,
when there was peace on our mountains and in our valleys,
we are encountering troubles
which cannot but try our very souls.
But shall we, on account of these troubles,
forsake our beloved country?
Shall we be compelled by a civilized and Christian people,
with whom we have lived in perfect peace for the last
forty years, and for whom we have willingly bled in war,
to bid a final adieu to our homes, our farms,
our streams and our beautiful forests?
No. We are still firm.
We intend still to cling with our wonted affection to the land
which gave us birth, and which every day of our lives
brings to us new and stronger ties of attachment.
We appeal to the judge of all the earth, who will finally
award us justice and to the good sense of the American
people, whether we are intruders upon the land of others.
Our consciences bear us witness that we are the invaders
of no man’s rights—we have robbed no man of his
territory—we have usurped no man’s authority,
nor have we deprived any one of his unalienable privileges.
How then shall we indirectly confess the right
of another people to our land by leaving it forever?
On the soil which contains the ashes of our beloved
men we wish to live—on this soil we wish to die.
We entreat those to whom the foregoing paragraphs
are addressed, to remember the great law of love.
“Do to others as ye would that others should do to you.”
Let them remember that of all nations on the earth,
they are under the greatest obligation to obey this law.
We pray them to remember that, for the sake of principle,
their forefathers were compelled to leave, therefore
driven from the old world, and that the winds of persecution
wafted them over the great waters and landed them
on the shores of the new world, when the Indian was
the sole lord and proprietor of these extensive domains.
Let them remember in what way they were received
by the savage of America, when power was in his hand,
and his ferocity could not be restrained by any human arm.
We urge them to bear in mind, that those who would
now ask of them a cup of cold water, and a spot of earth,
a portion of their own patrimonial possessions,
on which to live and die in peace, are the descendants
of those, whose origin as inhabitants of North America,
history and tradition are alike insufficient to reveal.
Let them bring to remembrance all these facts, and they
cannot, and we are sure, they will not fail to remember,
and sympathize with us in these our trials and sufferings.16
Notes
1. The Papers of Andrew Jackson ed. Daniel Feller et al, Volume VII, p. 112-113.
2. American Lion by Jon Meacham, p. 142.
3. Cherokee Removal: The “William Penn” Essays and Other Writings
by Jeremiah Evarts, p. 52.
4. Ibid., p. 53.
5. Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, Volume IV 1829-1832
ed. John Spencer Bassett, p. 176-178.
6. Ibid., p. 74-75.
7. Andrew Jackson's Speech to Congress on Indian Removal (Online)
8. Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, Volume IV 1829-1832, p. 219-220.
9. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908, Volume III,
ed. James D. Richardson, p. 37.
10. Quoted in Jacksonland: President Andrew Jackson, Cherokee Chief John Ross,
and a Great American Land Grab by Steve Inskeep, p. 301.
11. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908, Volume III, p. 173.
12. Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, Volume 1833-1838, p. 397-398.
13. Ibid., p. 398.
14. Ibid., p. 412.
15. Ibid., p. 424-425.
16. “Appeal of the Cherokee Nation” (Online)
Andrew Jackson to 1812
Andrew Jackson & Wars 1813-15
Andrew Jackson & Indian Wars 1816-20
Andrew Jackson 1821-24
Andrew Jackson 1825-28
President Jackson in 1829
President Jackson & Indians 1829-36
President Jackson in 1830
President Jackson in 1831
Jackson’s Veto & Banks in 1832
President Jackson in 1833
President Jackson in 1834
President Jackson in 1835
President Jackson in 1836
Andrew Jackson 1837-45
Andrew Jackson Summary & Evaluation
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