Again, I got this information from the Chieftains Trai brochure from Calhoun, Georgia.
"I witnessed the execution of the most brutal order in history of American warfare. I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven at the bayonet point into the stockades. And in the chill of a drizzling rain on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle or sheep into six hundred and forty-five wagons and heade for the west." U.S. Pvt. John G. Burnett, 1838.
Sparked by the discovery of gold near Dahlonega in 1828, Georgia passed a law proclaiming the laws of the Cherokee Nation null and void after June 1, 1830. The law reserved a tradition dating from 1791 of recognizing the legal sovereignty of the Cherokee Nation.
The Cherokees filed numerous lawsuits protesting encroaching settlers and the denial of their sovereignty. Finally, in 1832 the U.S. Sumpreme Court ruled in favor of the Cherokees in the landmark case of Worcester v. Georgia. However, President Andrew Jackson's refusal to enforce the ruling left the "Principal People" at the mercy of the greedy settlers and prospectors armed with the new Georgia law.
Seeing the situation as hopeless, a small band of Cherokees led by Major Ridge signed the Treaty of New Echota in 1835, dooming the "Principal People" to removal. According to this treaty, the Cherokees would forstake their land east of the Mississippi and move to the Indian Territory for the sum of $5 million.
In 1838 the brutal execution of the Treaty of Echota was begun. More than 4,000 U.S. Army troops under the direction of General Winfield scott rounded up 15,000 Cherokees into concentration camps then herded them along the 2,000 mile march. The 116 day "Trail of tears" began in October 1838. More than 8,000 Cherokees died as a result of the march.
Small bands of Cherokees escaped to the mountains of North Caroline to join the Oconaluftee Cherokees, a group who successfuly claimed immunity to the Treary of Echota because they lived outside the state of Georgia. North Carolina eventually recognized them. Today they are known as the Eastern Band of Cherokees, resident of teh Quala Boundary Reservation.
Approximately 47,000 Cherokees live in Oklahoma today. The capitol of the Western band of Cherokees is in Tahlequah, OK.
