Trail of Tears

[Ed Weick]

Over the years, I've collected quite a lot of material while working on issues affecting Canadian Indians, Inuit and Metis.  I used some of this in a recent posting on Canadian Indian claims.  The following excerpt on the eastern US may give you a better idea of what Ray Evans Harrell is talking about in some of his postings to the list. It is based on John Collier's Indians of the Americas, first published in 1947.  Collier was US Commissioner of Indian Affairs from 1933 to 1945.   Ed Weick     1830s-1840s - Trail of Tears and United States (Marshall) concept of Indian Nationhood: Five Civilized Tribes removed beyond the Mississippi.  Collier (Mentor edition, 1948) focuses on the Cherokee, an Iroquoian people, and the largest of the "civilized tribes".  Prior to the American Revolution, the British had repeatedly prevented incursions into Cherokee lands by "borderers" and the Cherokee allied themselves with the British during the revolution.  They continued to fight the Americans until 1794, when the signed a treaty with the US Government.  This was breached in the letter and spirit repeatedly by the US Government in the subsequent years.  In 1828 Andrew Jackson, who had been a famous Indian fighter and borderer and who had beaten the British in the battle for New Orleans, was elected President.  Almost immediately, he persuaded Congress to pass the Indian Removal Act, 1830, which enabled him to remove all Indian tribes to west of the Mississippi (the Mississippi had become the new line between the colonized lands and Indian Territory, replacing the Appalachians of the Royal Proclamation).  At about the same time, gold was discovered in the remaining Cherokee country, and the Georgia legislature passed an act confiscating all Cherokee land within the state, declaring all laws of the Cherokee Nation null and void, and forbidding Indians to testify in any state court against white men.  The Cherokee lands were to be distributed to whites through a lottery system.   An appeal from John Ross, the Cherokee Chief, to President Jackson got nowhere.  An appeal to the Supreme Court also failed, as the court refused to take jurisdiction on grounds that the tribe was not a foreign nation (and therefore within the legal jurisdiction of Georgia?).  Two years later, the arrest of some missionaries who refused to swear allegiance to Georgia while resident in Cherokee territory brought about the famous (Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) John Marshall decision that: The Cherokee nation, then, is a distinct community, occupying its own territory, with boundaries accurately described, in which the laws of Georgia can have no force, and which the  citizens of Georgia have no right to enter, but with the assent of the Cherokees themselves, or in conformity with treaties and with acts of Congress. (Collier, p.123) This decision was based on Marshall's concept that Indian tribes or nations ...had always been considered as distinct, independent, political communities, retaining their original natural rights...and the settled doctrine of the law of nations is, that a weaker power does not surrender its independence -- its right of self-government -- by associating with a stronger, and taking its protection. (ibid.) Jackson reacted with contempt: "John Marshall has rendered his decision; now let him enforce it." (ibid.)  The destructive policies toward the Cherokees continued.  A "fictional treaty" which assigned the remaining 7 million acres of land still held by the Cherokees to the US government for $4.5 million which was to be deposited in the US Treasury to the credit of the Cherokees was signed at a set-up meeting.  Three years later, US troops and "a non-military rabble of followers", invaded the Cherokee lands and removed the Cherokees to concentration camps.  "Livestock, household goods, farm implements, everything went to the white camp-followers; the homes were usually burned." (Collier, p124) 14,000 were forced to trek to Arkansas.  Of these, 4,000 reportedly died on the way.  A great lie was woven around the exodus: In addressing Congress on December 3, 1838, President Van Buren said: The measures [for Cherokee removal] authorized by Congress at its last session have had the happiest effects...The Cherokees have emigrated without any apparent reluctance. (Quoted in Collier, p.124) Like the Cherokees, the others of the Five Civilized Tribes, the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks and Seminoles were also removed to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma.