Removal from North
Georgia
Matt Shirley
One thing that is often times overlooked during discussions
of American history is the fact that this country originally belonged to Native
Americans and it was taken by white settlers.
This nation that has been so prosperous and supposedly founded on
Christian principles was forcefully taken from a group of people who did
nothing wrong. The Native Americans that
lived on this land consisted of many different tribes located all over North
America. The white men who
founded the new nation felt as though they had to find a way to go about
getting these savages off of their land.
These men would come up with treaties and force Indian leaders to agree
to the terms. As Ronald Satz stated in
the Georgia Historical Quarterly, United States “treaty commissioners used
force, bribery, deception, and threats to cajole Indian leaders into signing
land cession treaties calling for the emigration of their people to the
trans-Mississippi West.” [1]
There were many Native Americans who would refuse to leave
their land and they would fight the white men for what they felt was inherently
theirs. Some of them resisted by simply
refusing to move off of their land and some would resist by fighting the court
system but eventually all Native Americans would lose. Just like lawmakers today make laws that are
self-beneficial, the treaties that were created by the United States leaders
were beneficial to Americans, in particular the southern expansionists. The Native Americans who tried to resist
removal through fighting the court system had little success. It would be nearly impossible to defeat these
white men in their own courthouses.
It is very rare for American education systems to teach how
this land actually came to be theirs.
Seldom are children taught about how their ancestors wanted this land so
they decided they would take it from a group of people that they felt were
inferior. They took it by “force,
bribery, deception, and threats.” Perhaps
this is not taught because people of this generation are ashamed of their
ancestors or possibly because it simply does not go along with the Christian
principles this nation was supposed to be founded on. For whatever reason, we rarely look at the
injustice that was done to the Native American people. As Americans it is easy to deny the brutality
and cruelty of this event but in order to really study history one must ignore
the false stories they have heard about past events and take an in-depth look
at the truth.
While many states and groups of people had a part in the
removal of Indians in the 1830s, the state of Georgia
played a particularly large role in this affair. What kick started the actual movement of
southern tribes off of their land can be traced directly to the state of
Georgia’s surrender of its western territory to the national government during
Thomas Jefferson’s first administration.
This turns out to be the spark that lit the fire that would burn for the
next forty years in the southeastern United
States and the effects of this fire would be
forever felt by Native American people.
This fire would eventually engulf the homes of every Native American and
leave them with nothing. It would cost
them the land on which they lived, the land they had always called home. While this would be the death of the Cherokee
in the southeast, it would mean good things for the white men. [2]
This new nation waged war on the Native American
people. The war they waged may have not
had United States
soldiers attacking tribes and killing hundreds at a time but it would be a
political war. This was a war that was
completely one-sided and where one party never had a chance. Though there are not many famous battlefields
where United States
troops would claim the lives of Native Americans, many Native American lives
were lost. As many as 4,000 Cherokees
died as a result of being driven off of their homeland in Georgia. 4,000 Cherokees equates to twenty-five
percent of the tribal population. One out
of every four Cherokees died as a result of decisions made by self-serving
Americans. These decisions should not be
overlooked or swept under the rug. They
led to the crippling of a culture and the altering of a region of the world
forever.
The leaders of the United
States during this time period would act in
a way that was so selfish that it would cause the future generations to be so
ashamed of them that they would hide the truth behind a large number of
fictional stories. Much of what American
children are taught about early nineteenth century American history are
sugar-coated in such a way as to not shed a bad light on this Christian
nation. The United
States claims to be a country that is
founded on Christian principles such as loving your neighbor. If one looks back at the history of this
nation it would seem to be founded on principles such as only the strong
survive.
When white settlers arrived in America
they saw this incredible amount of land that had so much untapped
potential. They thought the Indians were
ignorant for not using the land the same way they thought they should. The Native Americans simply used what they
needed and nothing more. They were not interested
in living these prosperous lives. White
men saw this as being lazy. These white
settlers thought the Native Americans were barbaric simply because they were
different than themselves. When
examining any two different cultures, hundreds of differences would be noticed
but these settlers saw cultural differences as reasons Indians were inferior to
them. This is the same way in which
Americans would look at African-Americans into the nineteenth century. The settlers thought these savages were too
stupid and lazy to be worthy of the land they lived on. These negative ideas of Native Americans
would be passed on from generation to generation and eventually lead to the
Indian Removal of the 1830s.
The removal of the Indians in the 1830s was the outcome of a
relentless-campaign by southern expansionists to seize control of Indian
land. This campaign dates back to the
Compact of 1802 where Georgia
ceded its land west of the Chattahoochee
River to the United
States.
The state of Georgia
would obviously not give up their land without some heavy incentives. The incentive was a federal promise to
extinguish the Indian title in the state as soon as it could be “peaceably
obtained, and on reasonable terms.” This
agreement between Georgia
and the United States
contradicted Indian policy that had been in place since the George Washington
administration. When the first president
of the United States
held office it was decided that the lands of Indian tribes would be recognized
as “Indian country” and they would not fall under jurisdiction of the United
States.
There was also a part of the federal Indian policy stating that the United
States could obtain Indian lands by treaty
with the consent of the tribal government and by a fair amount of financial
compensation. This part of the federal
Indian policy would be what the American leaders would focus on. They would use this part of the policy to
strip Native Americans of their land. [3]
When Andrew Jackson was elected president in 1828 he put the
removal of Indians at the top of his list of priorities. Between 1802 and 1819, federal treaties gave
twenty million acres of land to white settlers and left only five million to
the Cherokee. For years the Cherokee
refused to give the government anymore land but Georgia
would be persistent. The state of Georgia
would request the federal government to force removal so they could cease more
land but the federal government refused until the Andrew Jackson
administration. In an attempt to justify
removal Andrew Jackson pointed to two reasons he felt Indians should move west:
one, that having an independent nation within a state is a situation that could
lead to disaster and two, that southeastern Indians needed to move across the
Mississippi away from white encroachment for their own survival. Jackson
stated that he feared that if Indians were allowed to remain in Georgia
they would become extinct. It is
interesting to see how even in the early years of this country politicians had
dishonest ways of approaching something in which they wanted to make happen. While many Americans were shocked at the
policies of the Jackson
administration, Georgia
wasted no time in taking advantage of the new policies. The men who lived in Georgia
did not care whether or not Indians became extinct; they just saw removal as an
opportunity for them to own large amounts of land and eventually make a large
profit through slavery. The New Echota
Treaty was formed in 1835 and it was probably the most important treaty for the
state of Georgia. Under this treaty the Cherokee ceded all of
their holdings in Georgia
for a western inheritance of equal size and five million dollars. All Cherokee were to be removed from Georgia
within two years time. This treaty, like
many others, was extremely one-sided.
The terms of the New Echota Treaty were negotiated in the absence of all
of the important chiefs and tribal members.
The president turned a deaf ear to all of their pleas for mercy
though. This gives us a good indication
of how insensitive United States
leaders were to Native Americans. It
would not matter to the white men if the Indians agreed with their policies or
not they just simply wanted them removed from their land. [4]
The leaders of the United
States tried to act as though they were
being generous to Native Americans by giving them land out west. This is a good indication of just how
ignorant white men thought Native Americans were. The Indians who refused to accept the removal
policy would be blasted with threats of violence and poverty. Brigadier General John E. Wool addressed
Cherokee people in New Echota, Georgia on March 22, 1837.
In this address he reminds the Cherokee people that they have until May 25, 1838 to move or they will be
moved with force by the United States
military. He reminds them of the New
Echota Treaty that was signed in 1835. There
were many Cherokee who refused to accept the New Echota Treaty due to their
absence during negotiations. Wool speaks
of this in his address: “I told you, if you submit to the terms of the treaty I
would protect you in your persons and property, at the same time I would
furnish provisions and clothing to the poor and destitute of the Nation. You would not listen, but turned a deaf ear
to my advice. You preferred the counsel
of those who were opposed to the treaty.
They told you, what was not true, that your people had made no treaty
with the United States,
and that you would be able to retain your lands, and would not be obliged to
remove to the west, the place designated for your new homes. Be no longer deceived by such advice! It is not only untrue, but if listened to,
may lead to your utter ruin…Your fate is decided; and if you do not voluntarily
get ready and go by the time fixed in the treaty, you will then be forced from
this country by the soldiers of the United States.” In this address, one can see the bribery,
force, and deception used by the United States
government. Later, Wool states, “I have
not come among you to oppress you, but to protect you and to see that justice
is done you, as guarantied by the treaty.”
This portion of the address shows how deceptive Wool was being by
attempting to show the Native Americans that he is looking out for their best
interests. The same people that forced
the Indians from their land would attempt to appear as though they were doing
it for the good of the Native American people.
[5]
In the summer of 1830, Georgia
officials arrested a Cherokee man named George Tassels for murdering another
Cherokee man within the boundaries of the Cherokee Nation. Before his trial, Tassels lawyers tried to
file an interlocutory appeal contending that Georgia’s
extension legislation was an unconstitutional encroachment on Cherokee
sovereignty and that the state therefore lacked jurisdiction in this case. In Georgia
v. Tassels, the Georgia
appeals tribunal said the state had jurisdiction over this case and remanded
the case for trial at the local level.
Tassels was convicted of murder in November in the Hall County Superior
Court and sentenced to hang on the coming Christmas Eve. John Ross, the Principal Chief of the Cherokee
Nation, tried to appeal to the United States Supreme Court but Georgia Governor
George Gilmer refused to let the Supreme Court make a ruling on this. He called the state legislature into
emergency session and on December 22, the assembly passed a resolution advising
Gilmer to ignore the Supreme Court’s summons and its implied stay of
execution. Near midnight, Gilmer sent a special messenger at high speed
to the local sheriff in Hall County
to order him to carry out Tassel’s sentence immediately. On December 24, Tassels hung from a tree in a
field outside of Gainesville, Georgia. The white men of North Georgia
were so set on removing the Indians that they did not want to take on letting
them get aid from the United States
federal government. They were not going
to let this decision get taken out of their hands. This shows just how difficult it would be for
Native Americans to get justice in a white man’s court system. [6]
John Ross was the leader among Indians and he refused to
accept the injustice being done to Native Americans. He would fight the Americans until the bitter
end. The Assistant Principal Chief,
George Lowrey, wrote a letter to John Ross on January 5, 1838.
By this time, most of the Cherokee people have accepted removal and gone
west but there were still many who stayed on the land that they felt was their
home. In the letter, Lowrey is telling
Ross how the Cherokees have been given an ultimatum for removal and are
threatened with violence if they refuse to leave. Here, Lowrey is telling Ross what a United
States leader told him about removal: “The
War Department authorized to approve the treaty and the Cherokees to get ready
to go down the river and what little property they have to sell it quick as
they can. They will have to leave. If they are not ready to leave in time to
leave May 25 I will have my soldiers and they may have to spill blood. That is what I have to do according to my
orders, although I don’t want one Indian’s single hair to fall to the
ground. Therefore I want you to notify
them to get ready to leave.” When he
speaks of the Cherokees going down the river he means leaving their land and
going west. That was the way in which
they went west, by the Mississippi River. [7]
Native Americans were treated with extreme hostility when
the United States
government felt it was necessary. The
fact that many Cherokee people stayed despite the constant threats that were
hurled at them shows just how important this was for their people. This was not simply a place they lived for a
few years, this had been their home for their entire lives and it was their
ancestors’ homes years before them. No
matter how much Native Americans resisted they would be forced to leave their
land in the end. Their refusal to remove
themselves voluntarily resulted in what we call the Trail of Tears. Many Indians were killed during the Trail of
Tears and for the ones who survived, a large part of them definitely died on
that same trail.
In the early years of this newly formed nation, no issue was
more important to Georgians than the removal of Indians from their land. The government leaders would relentlessly
attack this issue until every Cherokee person was on the Mississippi
en route to the west. The manner in
which the Indians were dealt with is embarrassing to people who call themselves
Americans today. The people of this
nation claimed to love their neighbor while they were actually waging war on
them. It was a war that would go on for
forty years and end with the bitter Trail of Tears. The Native Americans were guilty of nothing
but were treated like criminals. They
were different from the white men, that is certain and these differences are
what caused the white men to look down on them.
They could not live on the same land as these people they felt were
savages so they just decided to force them to leave by whatever means
necessary. The treatment of the Native
Americans during the early years of the United
States is something that does not get enough
attention. America
is now quick to stop other countries from being tyrants but that is how this
nation was formed. It was formed on a
principle that if you have something I want and you won’t give it to me then I
will just take it. It seems to me as
though that was the American way.
Other Sites of Interest
http://ngeorgia.com/history/nghisttt.html
http://www.studyworld.com/indian_removal_act_of_1830.htm
http://www.pinzler.com/ushistory/indremsupp.html
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/dwe/16338.htm
http://www.yvwiiusdinvnohii.net/history/jf-debat.txt
Endnotes