Andrew Jackson

The Supreme Court never ruled on the subject of the Cherokee's removal because the Court held it lacked original (trial) jurisdiction over the case. John Ross would have had to refile his case in a District Court, then petition the Supreme Court to hear it on appeal. This never happened. Everything Chief Justice John Marshall wrote about the federal government's obligation to the Cherokee was personal opinion, not part of a legally binding decision.

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What I'm about to say might help. In the court case, Worcester v. Georgia, the court said that the Cherokee's couldn't be affected by Georgia's state laws that would try to break the terms on which they self govern themselves. The court might have said this but both Georgia and President Andrew Jackson ignored the court's ruling.

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According to popular myth, Jackson was supposed to have said, "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!" In Paul Boller's book, They Never Said It: A Book of False Quotes, Misquotes, & False Attributions, historian Robert V. Remini claims Jackson never made such a statement. The tale is based on something Jackson wrote in a letter to John Coffee, "...the decision of the Supreme Court has fell still born, and they find that they cannot coerce Georgia to yield to its mandate,"meaning the Court's opinion was moot because it had no power to enforce its edict (not being a legislative body).

The State of Georgia wanted to evict the Cherokee tribes from treaty land because gold had been discovered on it. The Cherokee tribe took the matter to the Supreme Court, where then Chief Justice John Marshall presided.

The case, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 US 1 (1831), was dismissed for lack of original jurisdiction because the Supreme Court determined the Cherokee Nation and United States were like two separate nations, with the Cherokee's status that of a "denominated domestic dependent nation," which the federal government was obligated to protect.

In Worcester v. Georgia, (1832), Chief Justice John Marshall stated that Georgia had no legal right to interfere with the Cherokee and held that the Native Americans were not bound by Georgia law while on their own land. In the Court's opinion the territory under Cherokee occupation would have passed to the United States government following the British defeat in the Revolutionary War, and that the Cherokee Nation was not a state but a "denominated domestic dependent nation." This created an implied obligation for the federal government to defend the Native Americans against Georgia, but Jackson ignored Marshall's suggestion because Marshall's comments about the United States' obligations were personal opinion, not part of the legal decision.

While this may appear to grant the Cherokee a right to remain on tribal land, the ruling only applied to the state of Georgia. The Court lacked jurisdiction over the United States government because the United States was not party to the case, and the question before the Court related to the fate of imprisoned missionaries (Worcester, et al.), and whether the State of Georgia had a right to make laws regulating the use of Cherokee land, not removal.

Unfortunately, the decision couldn't reach the broader issue regarding Georgia's and Congress' determination to evict the Cherokee, so any allegations that the Supreme Court determined the Cherokee could remain on their land is a misinterpretation of the case.

Jackson was a staunch proponent of Indian removal because, in his view, the Indian land was a valuable commodity, and their occupation stood in the way of progress. The United States had already appropriated more than 22 million acres of land from the Creek (1814) and Seminole (1818) nations by use of military force. An earlier Supreme Court ruling, Johnson v. M'Intosh (1823), validated this practice, while the Worcester ruling seemed to condemn it, supporting, instead, Native American rights.

Both Jackson and the state of Georgia ignored the Court's ruling about Georgia law being inapplicable in Native American territory.

The US government was ultimately responsible for the Cherokee being removed from Georgia as a result of the Treaty of New Echota, ratified in 1836. Congress offered the Native Americans $5 million and land 1,000 miles away in Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma) in exchange for their Southern land. An unauthorized faction within the Cherokee Nation agreed to the Treaty, but the elected Cherokee officials protested to Congress. Congress ignored them.

President Van Buren, Jackson's cohort and successor, ordered federal troops to force some 15,000 Cherokees to leave Georgia in winter, leading to what became known as the Trail of Tears for the many who died en route.