June 22, 1839: Cherokee “traitors” executed
The discovery of gold in Georgia in 1829 increased whites’ insistence that natives be pushed out. The government responded accordingly: the Indian Removal Act of 1830 gave President Andrew Jackson the authority to grant territory west of the Mississippi to Native Americans who gave up land in the east.
Of particular concern to Jackson were the “Five Civilized Tribes” in the southeast: the Nations of Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Seminole. Some abandoned their land voluntarily, while others put up a fight.
On this day in 1839, three members of the Cherokee Nation – the leaders of a breakaway faction that sold their people’s land, without permission, for personal gain in 1835 – were assassinated by those they had betrayed.
Georgia passed legislation to make life intolerable for the Cherokee, and even sold off their land to whites. Although the Supreme Court ruled in Worcester v. Georgia (1832) that state laws did not apply to Indian nations, Jackson and the Georgia government ignored the ruling, noting that the court had no means to enforce its decision.
The Eastern Cherokee Nation split into two factions. The smaller one, known as the “Treaty Party”, negotiated terms for western land in late 1835. The Treaty of New Echota, named for the Nation’s capital, was approved neither by Chief John Ross nor by the governing council.
In 1838, President Martin van Buren sent General Winfield Scott to forcibly evict the Cherokee. Nearly 4,000 died along the 2,200-mile route to Oklahoma that came to be known as the Trail of Tears in a forced march through a cruel winter.
The leaders of the Treaty Party – Major Ridge, his son John, and his nephews Elias Boudinot and Stand Watie – were marked for assassination in Arkansas on June 22, 1839. Only Stand Watie survived; a civil war broke out within the Cherokee Nation that would last nearly three decades.
For more on the Trail of Tears, visit PBS.
Image: Charles Bird King, Major Ridge, a Cherokee chief (c. 1838). Library of Congress