Cherokee Cases

Cherokee Cases (1831 and 1832).The U.S. Supreme Court's decisions in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) and Worcester v. Georgia (1832), often referred to as the Cherokee Cases, considered the status of Indian tribes within the American constitutional framework. In an attempt to drive the Cherokee Indians from Georgia, the state legislature in 1828 extended the state's jurisdiction over the Cherokee Nation, annexed its land, and abolished its laws, government, and judiciary. In 1830, with Congress and President Andrew Jackson also intent on removal, Cherokee officials asked the Supreme Court to strike down the Georgia law and recognize the Cherokee Nation as an independent state. In Cherokee Nation, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote that the Cherokee Nation was not a foreign nation under article 3 of the Constitution but a “domestic, dependent nation” with a relationship to the federal government that resembled that “of a ward to his guardian.” A year later, Georgia convicted a Congregational missionary named Samuel Worcester of violating a law that prohibited “white persons” from entering Cherokee territory without a license from the state. Removal proponents had enacted the law to muzzle missionaries suspected of encouraging Cherokees to resist expulsion. Before the Supreme Court in Worcester v. Georgia, Worcester's attorneys contended that Georgia's actions interfered with Congress's constitutional authority to regulate Indian affairs, illegally obstructed federal treaties with the Cherokees, and trespassed upon the rights of a sovereign nation. This time Marshall and the Court struck down the Georgia laws and declared the Cherokees a sovereign nation with legitimate title to their lands. Georgia repudiated the decision, and President Jackson refused to enforce it against the state. Consequently, in 1838, the United States forcibly removed most of the Cherokee population to the Indian territory in Oklahoma. Worcester, however, would be recognized in the twentieth century as a foundation of tribal powers.
See also Antebellum Era; Expansionism; Indian History and Culture: From 1800 to 1900; Indian Removal Act.

Bibliography

Jill Norgren , The Cherokee Cases: The Confrontation of Law and Politics, 1991.
Stephen Breyer , For Their Own Good, The New Republic, Aug. 7, 2000, pp. 32–8.

Tim Alan Garrison