Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) and Worcester v. Georgia (1832) arrived at the Supreme Court in a political setting of uncertainty and potential crisis. Andrew Jackson was reelected president in 1832, southern states were uneasy with the union, and Georgia, in particular, was unhappy with the Supreme Court. Within the Court, divisiveness marked relations among the justices. John Marshall, the aging chief justice, suffered the strains of his wife's death, his own illness, and tests of his leadership. At the same time, Americans craved the lands of resistant Native Americans, and armed conflict was always possible.
Cherokee Nation v. Georgia was the first controversy Native Americans brought to the Supreme Court. Until the late 1820s, the Cherokees were at peace with the United States. They had no desire and no apparent need for war. They were remaking their nation on the New comers' model. They had a sound, agricultural economy. They adopted a constitution and writing as well as Western dress and religion. Treaties with the United States guaranteed protection of their territory. The Cherokees in north Georgia planned to remain in place and prosper, but the state and the United States had other plans. When Georgia ceded its claims to western territory in 1802, the federal government agreed to persuade southeastern tribes to move west of the Mississippi. Peaceful campaigns convinced most Cherokees in Tennessee to leave but had no effect on the majority in Georgia.
Cherokee territory proved vulnerable to illegal entry by Georgians. Violations escalated with the discovery of gold there in 1829. Federal defense of the borders was unavailing. The state grew aggressive and enacted legislation for Cherokee country as though it were Georgia. The president removed the troops. Congress voted to remove the tribes. The Cherokees hired a famous lawyer, William Wirt, to represent them. Wirt filed suit in the Supreme Court. Cherokee Nation v. Georgia asked the Court to forbid enforcement of state law in the nation's territory. Law and morality favored the Cherokees; Congress and the president sided with Georgia. A Court order against the state could produce a major constitutional crisis if the president refused to enforce it. The court avoided the political risk without abandoning the law. Although the Cherokees had a right to their land, the chief justice said, the court had no authority to act because the Constitution allowed the Cherokee nation to sue Georgia only if it were a "foreign nation." Because it was instead what he termed a "domestic, dependent nation," the court lacked jurisdiction.
The crisis passed, but not for long. Wirt returned to the Court the following year, representing Samuel A. Worcester, a missionary to the Cherokees. Georgia had convicted Worcester and sentenced him to hard labor for his conscientious refusal to obey Georgia law within the Cherokee nation. Because Worcester was a U.S. citizen, the Court had jurisdiction over his appeal and could not escape a difficult judgment. The Cherokees had another chance.
Writing resolutely for a unanimous court, Marshall found that Georgia had acted unlawfully. The Cherokees, he said, were an independent people and a treaty-making nation. The decision was a triumph for the Cherokees and the chief justice. It would amount to little, however, without the president's support. According to popular story, Jackson responded: "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it."
A showdown never took place. Procedural delays intervened. In the interim, southern secessionists pressed toward a different crisis. Supporters of Worcester's mission feared for the union. They urged him to relieve pressure on Georgia by halting the legal proceedings. He did so and was released. The tribe's white allies also advised the Cherokees to strike a bargain. A minority of the tribe's leadership agreed to a sale, and the tribe was brutally herded west along the Trail of Tears. Georgia was ethnically cleansed of Native Americans.
Worcester v. Georgia continues to be important in American law and in Native American self-understanding because of its robust affirmation of tribal sovereignty, a familiar concern of modern Court cases. Cherokee Nation v. Georgia has currency because of Marshall's passing comment that tribes' relation to the United States resembles that of a ward to a guardian. Some judges and scholars find in this analogy a source for the modern legal doctrine that the United States has a trust obligation to tribes. Worcester himself reentered the News in 1992 when Georgia posthumously pardoned him.
Bibliography
Ball, Milner S. "Constitution, Court, Indian Tribes." American Bar Foundation Research Journal 1 (1987): 23–46.
Breyer, Stephen. "'For Their Own Good.'" The New Republic, 7 August 2000: 32–39.
McLoughlin, William. Cherokee Renascence in the New Republic. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986.
—Milner S. Ball
