The Cherokee Indian Removal

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The Cherokee Indian Removal Throughout history, men have been greedy and self-seeking. Saul was told to annihilate the Amalekites, but disobeyed and decided to keep the best of everything he found. Spain discovered that the Indian empires held fortunes of unknown wealth, and they sent conquistadors to retrieve the riches no matter the cost. When word arrived in England that there was gold in the Americas, colonists were sent over to stake a claim. This continued throughout the centuries where men have coveted and lusted over another’s property, and have done terrible things to acquire that property for themselves. A perfect example of this would be the Cherokee Indian Removal, more commonly known as the Trail of Tears. After the Revolutionary…show more content…
The discovery of gold within Cherokee territory left the Indians with almost no choice but to endure the white settlers continued hatred and encroachment on their lands. The state of Georgia pushed harder than ever to get the federal government to remove the Cherokee from their lands (www.cherokee.org). Georgia “denounced them as ‘savage’, condemned them to second-class citizenship if they entered its society, and demanded with unbridled passion that they surrender their landed wealth” (Perdue and Green 66). The Cherokee’s considered themselves a sovereign nation with leaders and representatives. John Ross, a man of mixed heritage (only one-eighth Cherokee) was viewed as the principal chief of the Cherokee nation. With no solution in sight, John Ross and the Cherokee leaders did the only thing that they could do. Instead of fighting with weapons of war, they began to fight with weapons made of words. The two most famous Supreme Court cases involving the Cherokee Indian removal are the Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) and Worchester v. Georgia (1832). In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, the Cherokee people hired William Wirt to represent them in front of the Supreme Court. Wirt argued that the Cherokee nation had been seen since the time of the founding fathers as an independent sovereign nation existing within the United…show more content…
The people had divided into two groups; those who wanted to accept a treaty and move west, and those who wished to fight for their lands to the bitter end. The U.S. government was eager to speak with those of the “Treaty Party” who wanted to work on the passing of a treaty, and not so very eager to speak with those involved with what we now call the “National Party”, which was led by John Ross. Matters became increasingly more difficult as each of these “parties” worked against each other. Finally, there was a breaking point. President Andrew Jackson decided to directly refuse to acknowledge the laws stating that any state movements against the Cherokee nation were unconstitutional. He instead continued to pressure the Indians to leave their ancestral homes, and ordered a plan of removal to be begun. The Treaty Party began working in earnest. They saw that it was only a matter of time before the might of the U.S. army came full against them, and they wanted to protect the people in the only way they knew how to (www.cherokee.org). On December 30, 1835, a group of around 100 Cherokee men signed the Treaty of New Echota which gave away the Cherokee lands to the U.S. government and also guaranteed their eminent removal within the next two years (Ehle, 295). The National Party was furious. Not only did those 100 men sign away their lands, but they also did not

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