He then continued his work by making legal moves for the Cherokees as president of the constitutional convention. The Cherokee National Council advised the United States that it would refuse future cession requests and enacted a law prohibiting the sale of national land upon penalty of death. In the Cherokees adopted a written constitution, an act that further antagonized removal proponents in Georgia.

Print by Charles Bird King. McKenney and J. In Andrew Jackson was elected president of the United States, and he immediately declared the removal of eastern tribes a national objective. In Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, which authorized the president to negotiate removal treaties. In Cherokee Nation v. A year later, in Worcester v. President Jackson, however, refused to enforce the decision and continued to pressure the Cherokees to leave the Southeast.

This parcel, set aside by Congress in , was located in what is now Oklahoma. Even though it was completed without the sanction of the Cherokee national government, the U.

Senate ratified the treaty by a margin of one vote. After Major Ridge signed away Cherokee land, Chief Ross gathered 16, Cherokee signatures against the treaty, proving that the majority of the tribe was not in agreement.

The Cherokee government protested the legality of the treaty until , when U. Army into the Cherokee Nation. The soldiers rounded up as many Cherokees as they could into temporary stockades and subsequently marched the captives, led by John Ross, to the Indian Territory. Once in the Indian Territory, a group of men who had opposed removal attacked and killed the two Ridges and Boudinot for violating the law that prohibited the sale of Cherokee lands.

The Cherokees revived their national institutions in the Indian Territory and continued as an independent, self-sufficient nation. Garrison, Tim. Garrison, T. Cherokee Removal. Many among the Cherokees, Creeks , Choctaws , and other southeastern tribes accepted aspects of the civilization plan such as English literacy, Christianity, slaveholding, and male-dominated households. But they retained many of their own cultural traditions, including women's rights to property, ceremonial and social dances, the ball game and its rituals, and reliance on medicine men and women.

Missionaries and federal agents considered the Cherokees especially successful in adopting mainstream white culture. Benjamin Hawkins and the Creek Indians An official removal policy began to take shape in when President Thomas Jefferson's administration signed the Georgia Compact, an agreement to buy all Indian land in Georgia as soon as possible.

At the time, Georgia's land claims extended to the Mississippi River and included the present-day states of Alabama and Mississippi. Creeks and Cherokees occupied much of the area claimed by Georgia. In , Jefferson completed the Louisiana Purchase, which provided western land for Indian resettlement. Identifying the area as Indian Territory, all federal administrations thereafter encouraged Indians to emigrate west.

Because Indian nations were considered sovereign, that is, not under the authority of any state or nation, their lands could be acquired only by treaty with the federal government. In the early s, the federal government repeatedly pressured and bribed southeastern Indian nations, including the Cherokees, into signing land cession treaties.

Under these treaties the Indians typically sold some of their land and were guaranteed sovereignty and the right to keep all their remaining territory. They believed that their sovereignty and the federal treaties protected their remaining land from further incursions.

Pressure to cede intensified for those Indian nations with rich agricultural lands in present-day Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee. White farmers in those states clamored for more acreage to grow cotton. When Alabama became a state in , its white residents eagerly anticipated the eventual expulsion of Indians. As white populations increased across the South in the s, they began to argue that Indians were racially inferior and incapable of land management because they viewed land holding very differently from European Americans.

State leaders began to insist that Indian nations were not really sovereign and that they occupied land rightfully owned by the states. Georgia officials increasingly demanded that the federal government fulfill its agreement by removing the Creek and Cherokee nations. To encourage Indian emigration, the federal government began offering western territory in exchange for Indian homelands.

In , the Cherokee Nation made its first land exchange, accepting a western tract in present-day Arkansas for one in present-day Georgia.

Most Cherokees refused to emigrate, however, and by the s the Cherokee Nation had vowed it would not give up one more foot of land. At that time, the boundaries of the Cherokee Nation still extended into parts of Tennessee, Georgia, and the new state of Alabama. John Ross Between and , Cherokees took determined steps to avoid removal.

They established a national capitol at New Echota, Georgia, and a governing system with legislative, judicial, and executive branches. They codified their laws, drafted a constitution modeled after that of the United States, and elected John Ross as principal chief.

In , however, Andrew Jackson was elected president and declared Indian removal a national priority. Two years later, Congress and Jackson approved the Indian Removal Act, which gave the president authority and funds to negotiate voluntary removal treaties. Confident of Jackson's support, legislators in southern states enacted harsh laws restricting Indian rights and liberties.

Alabama authorized state-built roads, bridges, and ferries in Cherokee territory and criminalized Cherokee laws and customs. Georgia required all whites working among the Cherokees to sign a loyalty oath to the state. Supreme Court. In , the court affirmed Cherokee sovereignty and ruled that Georgia and therefore Alabama and Tennessee had no right to extend state laws over the Cherokee Nation.

Jackson would not enforce the court decision, however, and several Cherokee leaders who reluctantly decided that removal was inevitable negotiated with the government for the best possible treaty. He was even hesitant to confide in his father, believing Major Ridge would be ashamed of him. But the son underestimated his father.

Forbidden to meet by Georgia law, the Cherokees had abandoned New Echota in Settlers were confiscating their homesteads and livestock. By sharing his thoughts on Jackson, John Ridge helped his father come to the conclusion that the tribe had to at least consider going west. But Major Ridge kept his feelings private, believing he needed to buy time to persuade his people to think about uprooting. At the same time, he began to wonder how Ross could remain so strident in his resistance.

Ross met twice with Jackson at the White House, to no avail. By spring , the Cherokees were split between a National Party, opposed to removal, and a Treaty Party, in favor of it. In signing the letter, Ridge acknowledged that he had softened on removal. In a closed meeting, the chiefs gave Ross until fall to resolve the impasse with the government before they made the letter public. Under so much pressure—from the state of Georgia, the federal government and a stream of settlers—the tribe began to disintegrate.

John Ridge quietly continued to recruit members to the Treaty Party and make overtures to Jackson. When Ross learned of these efforts, he tried to pre-empt them, proposing to cede Cherokee land in Georgia and to have Cherokees in other states become U. Without the blessing of the other chiefs, Ridge said, Ross had no more power to make a treaty than his traitorous brother.

The majority of the tribe members remained opposed to removal, but the Ridges began advocating the idea more openly—and when they broached it at a council meeting in Red Clay, Tennessee, in August , one Cherokee spoke of shooting them.

Father and son slipped away unharmed, but by the end of the summer the Cherokees were trading rumors—false—that Ross and Major Ridge had each hired someone to kill the other. In September , Ridge visited Ross at his home to put the rumors to rest.

They tried to talk as they once had, but the only thing they could agree on was that all talk of murder had to stop. Ross thought his oldest friend had become soft, unduly influenced by his son. By January , the council had sent Ross back to Washington with instructions to again seek federal protection, and the Treaty Party had sent John Ridge to broker a deal.

He was stalling; he knew the federal government would never pay that much. When Jackson rejected him, Ross proposed that the Senate come up with an offer. By then Jackson had lost his patience. In late , he dispatched a commissioner to Georgia to seal an agreement with the Treaty Party leaders.

They met in New Echota, the deserted Cherokee capital. The government would help them move and promise never to take their new land or incorporate it into the United States. The Cherokees would have two years to leave. It was Major Ridge who outlined the final argument to those present. We can never forget these homes, I know, but an unbending, iron necessity tells us we must leave them.

I would willingly die to preserve them, but any forcible effort to keep them will cost us our lands, our lives and the lives of our children. There is but one path to safety, one road to future existence as a Nation. John Ross tried to overturn the treaty for two years but failed. In May , U. Indians who tried to flee were shot, while those who waited in the camps suffered from malnutrition, dysentery and even sexual assault by the troops guarding them.

Within a month, the first Cherokees were moved out in detachments of around a thousand, with the first groups leaving in the summer heat and a severe drought.

So many died that the Army delayed further removal until the fall, which meant the Cherokees would be on the trail in winter. At least a quarter of them—4,—would perish during the relocation. Ridge headed west ahead of his tribesmen and survived the journey, but on the morning of June 22, , separate groups of vengeful Cherokees murdered him, John Ridge and Boudinot.

Ross, appalled, publicly mourned the deaths. John Ross served as principal chief for 27 more years. Even as his health failed, Ross would not quit.

In , he was in Washington to sign yet another treaty—one that would extend Cherokee citizenship to freed Cherokee slaves—when he died on August 1, two months shy of his 76th birthday.