The state of Georgia refused to abide by the Court decision, however, and President Jackson refused to enforce the law. It stated that the Cherokee had the right to self-government, and declared Georgia’s extension of state law over them to be unconstitutional. The court this time decided in favor of the Cherokee. The state legislature had written this law to justify removing white missionaries who were helping the Indians resist removal.
INDIAN REMOVAL ACT LICENSE
This time they based their appeal on an 1830 Georgia law which prohibited whites from living on Indian territory after March 31, 1831, without a license from the state. The Cherokee went to the Supreme Court again in 1831. The Cherokee took their case to the Supreme Court, which ruled against them. The state of Georgia, however, did not recognize their sovereign status, but saw them as tenants living on state land. Now the Cherokee hoped to use this status to their advantage. They based this on United States policy in former treaties, Indian nations had been declared sovereign so they would be legally capable of ceding their lands. In 1827 the Cherokee adopted a written constitution declaring themselves to be a sovereign nation. They sought protection from land-hungry white settlers, who continually harassed them by stealing their livestock, burning their towns, and sqatting on their land. The Cherokee used legal means in their attempt to safeguard their rights.
The presence of the fugitives enraged white planters and fueled their desire to defeat the Seminoles. The Seminoles were aided by fugitive slaves who had found protection among them and had been living with them for years. The First Seminole War lasted from 1817 to 1818. Some Indian nations simply refused to leave their land - the Creeks and the Seminoles even waged war to protect their territory. Other attempts involved ceding portions of their land to the United States with a view to retaining control over at least part of their territory, or of the new territory they received in exchange. But it only made whites jealous and resentful. This earned the nations the designation of the “Five Civilized Tribes.” They adopted this policy of assimilation in an attempt to coexist with settlers and ward off hostility. One method was to adopt Anglo-American practices such as large-scale farming, Western education, and slave-holding. They wanted to protect what remained of their land before it was too late.Īlthough the five Indian nations had made earlier attempts at resistance, many of their strategies were non-violent. This was because their “right of occupancy” was subordinate to the United States’ “right of discovery.” In response to the great threat this posed, the Creeks, Cherokee, and Chicasaw instituted policies of restricting land sales to the government.
In 1823 the Supreme Court handed down a decision which stated that Indians could occupy lands within the United States, but could not hold title to those lands. This was a period of voluntary Indian migration, however, and only a small number of Creeks, Cherokee and Choctaws actually moved to the new lands. As a result of the treaties, the United States gained control over three-quarters of Alabama and Florida, as well as parts of Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky and North Carolina. They wanted to appease the government in the hopes of retaining some of their land, and they wanted to protect themselves from white harassment.
The tribes agreed to the treaties for strategic reasons. acquired more land in 1818 when, spurred in part by the motivation to punish the Seminoles for their practice of harboring fugitive slaves, Jackson’s troops invaded Spanish Florida.įrom 1814 to 1824, Jackson was instrumental in negotiating nine out of eleven treaties which divested the southern tribes of their eastern lands in exchange for lands in the west. In their defeat, the Creeks lost 22 million acres of land in southern Georgia and central Alabama. military forces that defeated a faction of the Creek nation. Eager for land to raise cotton, the settlers pressured the federal government to acquire Indian territory.Andrew Jackson, from Tennessee, was a forceful proponent of Indian removal. These Indian nations, in the view of the settlers and many other white Americans, were standing in the way of progress. This area was home to the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chicasaw and Seminole nations. Early in the 19th century, while the rapidly-growing United States expanded into the lower South, white settlers faced what they considered an obstacle.
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