Major Ridge Quotes
They are strong and we are weak. We are few; the are many …. 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.
The Supreme Court had ruled that Georgia and the other Southern States and the Federal Government could not remove the Cherokee from their land. However, President Jackson was going to force them off their very well developed farms and estates despite the Supreme Court ruling. Ridge and a few others were bribed by the whites to get a self- appointed group of Cherokee to “sell” their land in the South East to white syndicates, Ridge and his fellows then were given the choicest land in Oklahoma which was far inferior to the land that they had left.
Major Ridge, 1771–1839, Cherokee Lawmaker, Warrior, and leader of the dissident Cherokee group favoring removal to Oklahoma, Speech to some Cherokee landowners, 1815
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Jackson was the only American President who disobeyed a Supreme Court Decision. See {635653}. In doing this, he killed tens of thousands of Indians, allowed the Southern Whites to steal most of the Cherokee land. His Indian Removal contrary to the Supreme Court decision, was the worst case of ethnic cleansing in the history of the United States.
The treaty turned over the Cherokee Tribal Lands and agreed that the tribe would relocate to Oklahoma and obtain new lands there. The vast majority of the Cherokee chose to reject this treaty and insist that the Federal Government adhere to the Previous Treaty that was in force and maintain the Cherokee on their traditional land in the East. Ridge and some of his group made a lot of money and obtained much attention from the whites pushing for removal—President Andrew Jackson for example. But Jackson, using soldiers and force, pushed the Cherokee on the “Trail of Tears” at gun and bayonet point. After the Cherokee had arrived in Oklahoma, and Ridge and his family had set up in rather elegant quarters, he was assassinated by the other Cherokee’s after having been found guilty under traditional Cherokee laws.
Islamic fundamentalist terrorists demanding an independent Islamic state in the middle of Russia had terrorized the people of the capital extorting money, beheading people and stealing property to fund their activities. The Russian military came in to attack the terrorists but with such a heavy hand that they did not distinguish very well between the terrorists and the regular civilian population, even torturing inhabitants suspected of aiding the terrorists when the suspects themselves had been tortured and threatened by the terrorists and they had seen many who did not cooperate killed. The people—and especially the women—were caught in the middle.
Major Ridge, The Ridge (and sometimes Pathkiller II) (also known as Nunnehidihi, and later Ganundalegi) was a Cherokee leader, a member of the tribal council, and a lawmaker. As a warrior, he fought in the Cherokee–American wars against American frontiersmen. Later, Major Ridge led the Cherokee in alliances with General Andrew Jackson and the United States in the Creek and Seminole wars of the early 19th century.
