The Treaty of New Echota was a treaty signed on December 29, 1835 in New Echota, Georgia by officials of the United States government and representatives of a minority Cherokee political faction. The treaty was amended and ratified in March 1836. The treaty established terms under which the entire Cherokee Nation was expected to move west to the Indian Territory. Although it was not approved by the Cherokee National Council, it was ratified by the U.S. Senate and became the legal basis for the forcible removal known as the Trail of Tears.
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Background
Early discussions
By the late 1820s, the territory of the Cherokee nation lay almost entirely in northwestern Georgia, with small parts in Tennessee, Alabama and North Carolina. It extended across most of the northern border and all of the border with Tennessee. Around 16,000 Cherokee people lived in this territory, and others had emigrated west to present-day Texas and Arkansas. In 1826, the Georgia legislature asked the John Quincy Adams administration to negotiate a removal treaty. Adams, a supporter of Indian sovereignty, initially refused, but when Georgia threatened to nullify the current treaty, he approached the Cherokee to negotiate. A year passed without any progress toward removal, and the 1828 presidential election brought Andrew Jackson, a staunch removalist, into the office.[1]
Georgia Cherokee laws
Shortly after the election, Georgia acted on its nullification threat. The legislature passed a series of laws abolishing the authority of the Cherokee and extending state law over their territory. Cherokee officials were forbidden to meet for legislative purposes. White people (including missionaries and those married to Cherokees) were forbidden to live in Cherokee country without a permit, and Cherokee were forbidden to testify in court cases involving white people.[2] Soon after his inauguration, Jackson signalled his intent to support the Georgia government with an open letter to the southern Indian nations urging them to move west.
Gold was discovered in Georgia in late 1829, and the ensuing gold rush only increased Georgians' determination to see the Cherokee removed.[1] Cherokee were forbidden to dig for gold, and the state began surveying the Cherokee country in anticipation of a lottery to distribute the land to white Georgians. This lottery was held in 1832, and in the following session the legislature stripped the Cherokees of all land other than their residence and adjoining improvements. By 1834 this exception was also removed. When state judges intervened on behalf of Cherokee residents, they were harassed and denied jurisdiction over such cases.[2]
Cherokee reaction
The new laws targeted the Cherokee leadership in particular; many of them, including Principal Chief John Ross, were mixed-blood landowners who had married into or otherwise assimilated into white culture. Since the laws made it illegal for them to conduct national business, the National Council (the legislative body of the Cherokee Nation) cancelled the 1832 elections. It declared that current officials would retain their offices until elections could be held, and established an emergency government based in Tennessee. The Council tried to force Jackson's hand against Georgia by suing the state in the federal courts and lobbying members of Congress to support the Cherokee.[2] Although the United States Supreme Court struck down Georgia's laws with its 1832 ruling in Worcester v. Georgia, the state ignored the ruling and continued to enforce the laws.[3]
Negotiations
Jackson's initial proposal
Shortly after the Supreme Court's ruling, Jackson met with John Ridge, clerk of the Cherokee National Council and head of the Cherokee delegation in Washington City. When asked whether he would use federal force against Georgia, Jackson bluntly said he would not, and urged Ridge to persuade the Cherokee to accept removal. Ridge, until then a supporter of the National Council, left the White House in despair. Anti-Jacksonian congressmen and Supreme Court Justice John McLean likewise urged the Cherokee representatives in Washington to negotiate. Jackson quickly dispatched Secretary of War Lewis Cass to present his terms, which included western land titles, self-government, reconstruction assistance, and several other long-term benefits—all conditioned on a total removal, except for a small number of Cherokee who would have to accept state authority.[3]
In the following months Ridge found supporters for the removal option, including his father Major Ridge and the major's nephews Elias Boudinot and Stand Watie. In October 1832, he urged the National Council to consider Cass's proposal, but the Council was unmoved.[3]
Divisions among the Cherokee
While Ross's delegation continued to lobby Congress for relief, the worsening situation in Georgia drove emigrationists to Washington to press for a removal treaty. In December 1833, several emigrationists formed a band with former Nation principal chief William Hicks as their principal chief and John McIntosh as his assistant, and sent a delegation to Washington led by Ross's brother Andrew Ross. The administration refused to deal with them, but invited them to return with leaders more involved in the nation's affairs. They returned with Boudinot and Major Ridge, and entered negotiations with Cass.[3] When Cass urged John Ross to join the negotiations in progress, he angrily denounced his brother's delegation.[4] Andrew Ross nonetheless signed a harsh treaty in June 1834 without the Ridge family's support,[5]
The progress of separate negotiations finally moved John Ross to discuss terms. He made offers to cede all land except the borders of Georgia, and then to cede all land, on the condition that the Cherokee could remain in the east subject to state laws. Cass refused, saying that he would discuss only removal. Andrew Ross's treaty was submitted to the Senate, where it was rejected as not having the support of the Nation.[2] In the October General Council (comprising all citizens of the Nation able to attend) meeting, a federal representative presented this treaty for consideration. John Ross condemned the treaty. The Ridges and the Waties left the Council, and they and other treaty advocates began holding their own council meetings.
Division of the Cherokee Nation East
A division developed between Ross supporters (the "National Party") advocating refusal and resistance and Ridge supporters (the "Treaty Party") advocating the negotiation of a treaty securing the best terms possible for the removal which they saw as inevitable, willing or otherwise. The Treaty Party included John Ridge, Major Ridge, Elias Boudinot, David Watie, Stand Watie, Willam Coody (Ross' nephew), William Hicks (Ross' cousin), Andrew Ross (John's younger brother), John Walker Jr., John Fields, John Gunter, David Vann, Charles Vann, Alexander McCoy, W.A. Davis, James A. Bell, Samuel Bell, John West, Ezekial West, Archilla Smith, and James Starr.[3]
Eventually tensions grew to the point that several Treaty advocates, most notably John Walker Jr., were assassinated. In July 1835, hundreds of Cherokee, not from just the Treaty Party but also from the National Party (including John Ross), converged on John Ridge’s plantation named Running Waters (near Calhoun, Georgia) to meet with John F. Schermerhorn (President Jackson's envoy on the matter of a removal treaty with the Cherokee Nation East), Return J. Meigs, Jr. (Commissioner for Indian Affairs), and other officials representing the United States government. [3]
The General Council in October 1835 rejected the proposed treaty that came out of these negotiations, but appointed a committee to go to Washington City to negotiated a removal treaty, a committee including not only John Ross but treaty advocates John Ridge, Charles Vann, and Elias Boudinot (who was later replaced by Stand Watie), to represent the Cherokee Nation East for a removal treaty with the stipulation that it has to be for more than five million dollars. Meanwhile, Schermerhorn, who was present at the meeting, pushed a meeting he wanted held at New Echota, and the council likewise approved a delegation to meet there.[3] It is important to reiterate that both delegations were specifically charged with negotiating a treaty for removal.
New Echota meeting and final treaty
Over four hundred men converged on the Cherokee capital in December 1835, almost exclusively from the Upper and Lower Towns (heavy snow in the western North Carolina mountains made it nearly impossible for those from the Hill and Valley Towns to travel). After a week of negotiations, Schermerhorn agreed for the United States to pay the Cherokee people $5 million dollars to be disbursed on a per capita basis, an additional $500,000 dollars is given for educational funds, title in perpetuity to an equal amount of land in Indian Territory to that given up, and full compensation for all property left in exchange for all Cherokee land east of the Mississippi River. [3](By contrast, the entire Louisiana Territory was purchased from Napoleon I of France for just over $23,000,000.) There was also a clause in the treaty allowing all Cherokee who so desired to remain and become citizens of the states in which they resided on 160 acres of land, but that was later stricken out by President Jackson.[6]
The committee reported the results to the full council gathered at New Echota, which approved the treaty unanimously. In a lengthy preamble, the Ridge party laid out its claims to legitimacy, based primarily on its willingness to negotiate in good faith the sort of removal terms for which Ross had expressed support. The treaty was signed by Major Ridge, Elias Boudinot, James Foster, Testaesky, Charles Moore, George Chambers, Tahyeske, Archilla Smith, Andrew Ross, William Lassley, Caetehee, Tegaheske, Robert Rogers, John Gunter, John A. Bell, Charles Foreman, William Rogers, George W. Adair, James Starr, and Jesse Halfbreed. After Shermerhorn returned to Washington City with the signed treaty, John Ridge and Stand Watie added their names.[3]
Ratification
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After news of the treaty became public, the officials of the Cherokee Nation from the National Party instantly objected that they had not approved it and that the document was invalid. John Ross and the Cherokee National Council begged the Senate not to ratify the treaty (failure to ratify would thereby invalidate it). However, the measure passed in May 1836 by a single vote. Ross later drew up a petition asking Congress to void the treaty--a petition he personally delivered to Congress in the spring of 1838 with almost 16,000 signatures attached, nearly as many persons as the Cherokee Nation East had within its territory according to the 1835 Henderson Roll, including women and children, who had no vote.
Enforcement
Ross's petition was ignored by President Martin Van Buren, who soon thereafter directed General Winfield Scott to forcibly move all those Cherokee who had not yet complied with the treaty and moved west. The Cherokee people were almost entirely removed west of the Mississippi (except for the Oconaluftee Cherokee in North Carolina, the Nantahala Cherokee who joined them, and two or three hundred married to whites).
That summer (1839) a council to effect a union between the Old Settlers and the Late Immigrants convened at Double Springs, which broke up sixteen days later without having reached an agreement when John Brown, Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation West, became frustrated with Ross’ intrangience, the latter's insistence that the Old Settlers accept him as Principal Chief over the united Nation without an election and recognize his absolute authority.
Ross’ partisans blamed Brown’s actions on the members of the Treaty Party, particularly those, such as the Ridge and Watie families, who had emigrated prior to the forced removal and integrated into the political structure of the Old Settlers. A group of these men targeted members of the Ridge faction for assassination, allegedly to enforce the Cherokee law (written by Major Ridge himself) that made it a capital crime for any Cherokee to cede national land for private profit.[3] There is no evidence that John Ross himself either supported or knew of their plans.
The list of targets included Major Ridge, John Ridge, Elias Boudinot, Stand Watie, John A. Bell, James Starr, George Adair, and others (notably absent from the list were Treaty Party leaders David Vann, Charles Vann, John Gunter, Charles Foreman, William Hicks, and Andrew Ross). On 22 June 1839, teams ranging up to twenty-five in number converged on the houses of John Ridge, Major Ridge, and Elias Boudinot, and murdered them; their attempt on Stand Watie was unsuccessful.[3] Although no subsequent attempts were made on other targets, the assassinations nonetheless marked the beginning of the Cherokee Civil War, which continued until after the American Civil War. James Starr was also killed during this period. They also cowed the unwilling Old Settlers into giving up their established political system and accepting John Ross' authority structure.
Notes
- ^ a b Williams, David (1995). The Georgia Gold Rush.
- ^ a b c d Perdue, Theda; Michael D. Green (2004). The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History with Documents.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wilkins, Thurman (1986). The Cherokee Tragedy: The Ridge Family and the Decimation of a People.
- ^ Royce, Charles (1884). "The Cherokee Nation of Indians". Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology.
- ^ Logan, Charles Russell (1997). "The Promised Land: The Cherokees, Arkansas, and Removal, 1794-1839". Arkansas Historic Preservation Program. http://www.arkansaspreservation.com/pdf/publications/Cherokee_Removal.pdf.
- ^ Brown, p. 498-499
See also
References
- Blankenship, Bob. Cherokee Roots, Volume 1: Eastern Cherokee Rolls. (Cherokee: Bob Blankenship, 1992). Contains the 1835 Henderson Roll of the Cherokee Nation East.
- Brown, John P. Old Frontiers: The Story of the Cherokee Indians from Earliest Times to the Date of Their Removal to the West, 1838. (Kingsport: Southern Publishers, 1938).
- Haywood, W.H. The Civil and Political History of the State of Tennessee from its Earliest Settlement up to the Year 1796. (Nashville: Methodist Episcopal Publishing House, 1891).
- Klink, Karl, and James Talman, ed. The Journal of Major John Norton. (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1970).
- McLoughlin, William G. Cherokee Renascence in the New Republic. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).
- Mooney, James. Myths of the Cherokee and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokee. (Nashville: Charles and Randy Elder-Booksellers, 1982).
- Moore, John Trotwood and Austin P. Foster. Tennessee, The Volunteer State, 1769-1923, Vol. 1. (Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1923).
- Starr, Emmet. History of the Cherokee Indians. (Fayetteville: Indian Heritage Assn., 1967).
- Wardell, Morris L., "A Political History of the Cherokee Nation, 1838–1907", Reprint, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977.
- Wilkins, Thurman. Cherokee Tragedy: The Ridge Family and the Decimation of a People. (New York: Macmillan Company, 1970).
External links
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