Indian Territory

Cherokee Legal Precedents

Many scholars assert that President Thomas Jefferson was one of the earliest advocates of relocating Native Americans to western lands as a result of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Legal scholar Stephen Bragaw describes Jefferson's ideas about federal Indian law as being shaped by 18th-century legal philosophies and Enlightenment-era ideas of the “noble savage.” These ideas shaped the political discourse on beliefs about the “Indian question” and justified the belief in the different uses of land by Native Americans, in comparison to the use of the land to expand the institution of slavery.

Georgia's conflict with the Cherokees festered with escalating intensity early in the 19th century. The remaining Cherokee territory was located primarily on lands claimed by Georgia. Contravening earlier treaties, Jefferson signed the Georgia Compact in 1802 in which Congress promised to purchase the remaining Creek and Cherokee lands in the southeast. Conflict ensued, as prior indigenous treaties had encouraged assimilation, whereas the Georgia Compact promoted removal. In 1802, the federal governmental leaders did not expect resistance as a result of the compact. However, because of rapidly increasing white population in Georgia, pressure increased to remove all local Native Americans in the 1820s.

During Andrew Jackson's presidency, the federal Indian Removal Act of 1830 was the pinnacle of treaties that affected various Native American tribes of the 19th century to try to codify the [Page 1183]development of the Indian Territory. Upon Jackson's election, and spurred by the discovery of gold in Georgia, laws were passed to appropriate Cherokee lands and provide a lottery to distribute this land to state citizens. Cherokees combated these policies, and in Cherokee v. Georgia and Worcester v. Georgia, the Cherokee Nation was the first to gain sovereignty rights in the U.S. Supreme Court—and then have these rights violated. In addition to the Cherokees, the other members of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes were the Seminoles, Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Creeks, who all faced federal removal. A series of state and federal battles occurred during the 1830s pertaining to Indian removal, as federal agents tried to influence tribes to move after gold was discovered in the state and white settlers moved in, despite the Worcester v. Georgia decision of the Supreme Court.

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