The Cherokee removal (May 25, 18381839), part of the Indian removal, refers to the forced displacement of an estimated 15,500 Cherokees and 1,500 African-American slaves from the U.S. states of Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama to the West according to the terms of the 1835 Treaty of New Echota. It is estimated that 3,500 Cherokees and African-American slaves died en route.
The Cherokee have come to call the event Nu na da ul tsun yi (the place where they cried); another term is Tlo va sa (our removal). Neither phrase was used at the time, and both seem to be of Choctaw origin. Other American Indian groups in the American South, North, Midwest, Southwest, and the Plains regions were removed, some voluntarily, some reluctantly, and some by force. The Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek), and Cherokee were removed reluctantly. The Seminole in Florida resisted removal by the United States Army for decades (1817–1850) with guerrilla warfare, part of the intermittent Native American Wars that lasted from 1540 to 1924. Some Seminole remained in their Florida home country, while others were transported to Indian Territory in shackles.
The phrase "Trail of Tears" is used to refer to similar events endured by other Indian groups, especially among the "Five Civilized Tribes". The phrase originated as a description of the involuntary removal of the Choctaw in 1831.
Origins In the fall of 1835, a census was taken by civilian officials of the War Department to enumerate Cherokee residing in Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Tennessee, with a count of 16,542 Cherokee, 201 inter-married whites, and 1592 slaves (total: 18,335 people). Tensions between the indigenous Cherokee and white settlers developed over ownership of the land rich in gold deposits and fertile soil that could be used for farming cotton. In October of that year, Principal Chief John Ross and an Eastern visitor, John Howard Payne, were kidnapped from Ross's Tennessee home by a renegade group of the Georgia militia. Released, Ross and a delegation of tribal leaders traveled to Washington, DC to protest against this high-handed action, and to lobby against the removal policy of President Andrew Jackson. In an effort to reach an agreeable compromise Principal Chief John Ross met with President Jackson to discuss the possibility that Cherokee might give up some of their land for money and land to the west of the Mississippi River. Jackson turned this deal down resulting in Ross suggesting $20 million as a base for negotiating the sale of the land and eventually agreeing to let the US Senate decide the sale price.
John Ross estimated the value of Cherokee Land at $7.23 million. A conservative estimate by Matthew T. Gregg in 2009 puts Cherokee's land value for the 1838 market at $7,055,469.70, more than $2 million over the $5 million the senate agreed to pay. In this power vacuum, U.S. Agent John F. Schermerhorn gathered a group of dissident Cherokee in the home of Elias Boudinot at the tribal capital, New Echota. There on December 29, 1835, this rump group signed the unauthorized Treaty of New Echota, which exchanged Cherokee land in the East for lands west of the Mississippi River in Indian Territory. This agreement was never accepted by the elected tribal leadership or a majority of the Cherokee people. In February 1836, two councils convened at Red Clay, Tennessee and at Valley Town, North Carolina (now Murphy, North Carolina) and produced two lists totaling some 13,000 names written in the Sequoyah writing script of Cherokee opposed to the Treaty. The lists were dispatched to Washington, DC and presented by Chief Ross to Congress. Nevertheless, a slightly modified version of the Treaty was ratified by the U.S. Senate by a single vote on May 23, 1836, and signed into law by President Jackson. The Treaty provided a grace period until May 1838 for the tribe to voluntarily remove themselves to Indian Territory.
Growth in cotton farming and agriculture
Until widespread use of the cotton gin, short-staple cotton had been such an arduous crop to grow and process because of the time-consuming process of removing the sticky seeds from each of the individual bolls of cotton. This process took so long that it was nearly unprofitable to grow cotton. The increased ease of cotton production due to access to the Cotton Gin, invented in 1793 by Eli Whitney, which used teeth to comb through the fluffy fibers and remove all of the seeds in a much more efficient manner, led to a major rise in the production of cotton in the south near North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia. Production increased from 750,000 bales in 1830 to 2.85 million bales in 1850, earning the south the nickname King Cotton for its success.Pierson, Parke. "Seeds of conflict: tiny cotton seeds had a lot to do with bringing on a big war." America's Civil War Sept. 2009: 25. Academic OneFile. Web. 12 Oct. 2014. Matthew T. Gregg writes that "According to the 1835 Cherokee census enumerators, 1,707,900 acres in the Cherokee Nation in Georgia were tillable." This land was valuable farming land, with the ideal climate and the necessary 200 frost-free days for growing cotton, and would have been crucial in supporting the cotton industry's monumental growth, as would have increased ease of transportation due to railroads. The Cherokee Indians typically grew small family farms and only planted what was needed to survive alongside hunting and gathering. Some, however, heeded Silas Dinsmoor's advice. They took advantage of the growing demand for cotton and began to farm it themselves, asking for cotton cards, cotton gins, and spinning wheels from the United States Government.Development of the Cotton Industry by the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory. Gilbert C. Fite, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Aug., 1949), pp. 342–353, Published by: Southern Historical Association. , As immigration increased rapidly throughout the 1820s and 1830s, and by 1850 approximately 2.6 million people immigrated to the United States, the government saw that the land could be used for more than just small family crops and could provide a source of income for the farmers immigrating to the south and needing farmable land. The Cherokees that did farm cotton in excess for selling became a threat to the settlers that were hoping to capitalize on the cotton industry by taking away not only valuable farm land but also adding more cotton to the market which could reduce the demand and the price, thus prompting the pursuit of a removal treaty.
Georgia and the Cherokee Nation
The rapidly expanding population of the United States early in the 19th century created tensions with Native American tribes located within the borders of the various states. While state governments did not want independent Indian enclaves within state boundaries, Indian tribes did not want to relocate or to give up their distinct identities.
With the Compact of 1802, the state of Georgia relinquished to the national government its western land claims (which became the states of Alabama and Mississippi). In exchange, the national government promised to eventually conduct treaties to relocate those Indian tribes living within Georgia, thus giving Georgia control of all land within its borders.
However, the Cherokee, whose ancestral tribal lands overlapped the boundaries of Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Alabama, declined to move. They established a capital in 1825 at New Echota near present-day Calhoun, Georgia. Furthermore, led by principal Chief John Ross and Major Ridge, the speaker of the Cherokee National Council, the Cherokee adopted a written constitution on July 26, 1827, declaring the Cherokee Nation to be a sovereign and independent nation.
With this constitution, an election was held for Principal Chief. John Ross won the first election and became the leader and representative of the tribe. In 1828, the Cherokee government established a law that addressed the issue of removal. The law stated that the signing of an agreement with the United States that addressed Cherokee land without consent of the Cherokee government would be considered treasonous and could be punishable by death.
The Cherokee land that was lost proved to be extremely valuable. Upon these lands were the alignments for the future rights-of-way for rail and road communications between the eastern Piedmont slopes of the Appalachian Mountains, the Ohio River in Kentucky and the Tennessee River Valley at Chattanooga. This location is still a strategic economic asset and is the basis for the tremendous success of Atlanta, Georgia, as a regional transportation and logistics center. Georgia's appropriation of these lands from the Cherokee kept the wealth out of the hands of the Cherokee Nation.
The Cherokee lands in Georgia were settled upon by the Cherokee for the simple reason that they were and still are the shortest and most easily traversed route between the only fresh water sourced settlement location at the southeastern tip of the Appalachian range (the Chattahoochee River), and the natural passes, ridges, and valleys which lead to the Tennessee River at what is today, Chattanooga. From Chattanooga there was and is the potential for a year-round water transport to St. Louis and the west (via the Ohio and Mississippi rivers), or to as far east as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
These tensions between Georgia and the Cherokee Nation were brought to a crisis by the discovery of gold near Dahlonega, Georgia, in 1828, resulting in the Georgia Gold Rush, the second gold rush in U.S. history. Hopeful gold speculators began trespassing on Cherokee lands, and pressure began to mount on the Georgia government to fulfill the promises of the Compact of 1802.
In the early 1830s the state of Georgia aggressively moved to eliminate Cherokee political authority declaring its sovereignty over the Nation's territory as a deliberate legal strategy to seize valuable gold rich land. This political move was immediately followed by a statute that declared it unlawful for anyone acting “under pretext of authority from the Cherokee tribe” to call “for the purpose of making laws, orders, or regulations” which intern criminalized Cherokee governance. By declaring Cherokee political authority illegitimate, the state began to clear legal obstacles for white settlers and people who could profit from mineral exploitation. Lastly, the same legislation empowered Georgia to control residency in the gold region by ejecting whites unless they swore an oath to uphold the state constitution.
This campaign of removal was proposed by Governor George Gilmer, a fervent and powerful advocate for Georgia's sovereignty over the Cherokee territory. His strong opinion on state sovereignty, led him to view Cherokee resistance as an obstacle to Georgia’s expansion during the gold rush. As Governor Gilmer acknowledged the situation, he made it impossible to rely on civil functions alone, since “the sheer scope of the intrusion made that desire unrealistic.” With legislative support, his administration turned toward coercive enforcement embracing laws that “relied upon force first and civil authority second.” These developments provided both the justification and the legal foundation for the creation of a state controlled paramilitary force.