Cherokee Tribe Quotes
In 1832 the Supreme Court held that the state of Georgia could not remove Creek and Cherokee Indians from lands that had been guaranteed to them by a federal treaty. The president disagreed with the court, then headed by John Marshall:. Marshall could not do so without the executive. The Indians were illegally removed to Western lands.
Commenting on the status of the Cherokee Indians.
His negative predictions were tragically prescient.
In the 1830's a few Cherokee Indians were found who would sign a "treaty" agreeing to their removal westward.
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.
The Indian allies of the French scalped some American colonists which for some whites was akin to the modern reaction to terrorist atrocities. The British and Americans then justified the scalping of their Indian allies as simple retaliation. While Indians had scalped before the whites ever came, the whites accelerated the practice. There was an economic element to scalping. The French “paid” their Indian allies in arms, blankets, trinkets and alcohol by the scalp as it was a crude way of “performance measurement.” Not to be outdone, the English adopted the same custom with the French allied Indians as targets. In North Carolina, for example, the “volunteer” rangers were paid the enormous rate of 10 pounds a scalp.
The slavery issue also split the Cherokee. A number of the wealthier old families had and worked Black Slaves and they supported the South officially and militarily. Waite, the recipient of the letter, was a Confederate General.
The Cherokee's had fallen under the control of the Confederate military and Ross had urged Federal military protection for the tribe.
His Indian Removal Policy forced Native American to leave their lands which were theirs by treaties signed by the United States and marched to the poorest land in Oklahoma where they were "resettled". This is often referred to as the "Trail of Tears". What made his actions evern wors was the fact that The Supreme Court had already ruled that such land belinged to the Cherokee Indian Tribe and the government of the United States may not force them from it. Jackson was the only President in Amrican History to defy a Supreme Court order.
Actually the Iroquois had a very sophisticated system of regular laws and government some of which was incorporated into our Constitution. However, the Iroquois sided with the British in the American Revolution and at its conclusion, most were driven out of their New York lands and became refugees in British Canada. So by 1816, the Iroquois, the most sophisticated, powerful and affluent of all the American Indian tribes were no longer consequential in America.
During the Seminole War, Ross, as a very respected Cherokee Chief and leader, had been asked to persuade some if the Seminole Chief’s to come to a conference to discuss and negotiate a settlement to the conflict. Ross was successful . Seminole Chief Micanopy, twelve other chieftains, and a number of Seminole warriors accompanied the Cherokee deputation to the headquarters of the United States Army at Fort Mellon, where they were to discuss the matter. When they arrived General Thomas Jesup arrested the Seminoles instead of negotiating. Ross, a very educated man who was literate in English, o the Secretary of War. Jesup in retrospect was one of the disgraces in the history of the U. S. Army was admired, not for his fighting or his lack of ethics, but for his management and logistics as the Quartermaster General. For more quotations showing Jesup’s character, see quotations 643611 and 643612.
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.
Cass was negotiating with the Shawnees and Cherokees to persuade them to move to land west of the Mississippi. See John Henry Eaton for similar unkept promises.
This was one of Jackson’s official major justifications for his controversial Indian Removal policy. The logic was that since there had been some Indian raids on whites with whites being killed, the whites had a right to retaliate and a good way of doing that was by taking their land and removing them to lands far away. He saw a Christian virtue to the policy as they whites did not raid and kill the Indians. The “logic” such as it was, of course, ignored the fact that there had been white raids and massacres of Indians as well, but in both cases, they were done by a small minority of the Indians and Whites, Jackson’s view was that all Indians should be held responsible for the act of some violent Native Americans. However Jackson had used this guilt generalization before and even used the term “retaliatory vengeance” when he vowed revenge on the British for his treatment as a Prisoner of War in the American Revolution — See Quotation 621975.
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.
The quotation is actually combined from two different speeches, July 28 and August 21, 1725. The dependency on guns and gunpowder was one of the key elements that was creating the dependency. See {613048}.
