Treaty of New Echota
The New Echota Treaty was a treaty that regulated the resettlement of the resident Indian tribes east of the Mississippi River . The treaty was negotiated in New Echota , Georgia by representatives of the United States and some unofficial members of the Cherokee (so-called Ridge Faction ), signed on December 29, 1835, and ratified on May 23, 1836 .
background
The "Ridge Faction" foresaw with the increasing settlement of white settlers on the outskirts of their territory that the Cherokee would sooner or later lose their eastern territories and that resettlement to the west was the only way to preserve their nation .
contract
In the contract , the United States agreed to pay the Cherokee $ 5 million in severance pay to cover the cost of their relocation. They were also promised equivalent land in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma ) in exchange for the entire Cherokee country east of the Mississippi River.
Objections from John Ross
When the news of the contract became public, the contract was challenged by the leadership of the Cherokee, especially by Chief John Ross , because they had not approved it. The US Senate has been asked not to ratify this treaty. Nevertheless, the treaty was passed in May 1836 by a single majority. Thereupon Ross wrote a petition calling on the US Congress to invalidate this contract. He personally delivered this petition to Congress in the spring of 1838, with more than 15,000 signatures attached. That was more people than the Cherokee Nation, which at the time had a few hundred in its territory.
The resettlement of the Cherokee
The petition was ignored by President Martin Van Buren , who soon after appointed General Winfield Scott to enforce the treaty. He was supposed to force all those Cherokee who had not yet complied with the treaty to move west, even though the treaty said those who wished could stay in the east. Scott's act is commonly referred to as the path of tears .
After the New Echota Treaty was enforced, the Cherokee were almost completely relocated to the west of the Mississippi (a few bought farmland in the area to stay at least as close to their ancestral lands).
Upon arriving in Indian Territory, a group of Ross' supporters raided the Ridge Faction, allegedly because Cherokee law prohibited the sale of Cherokee land to foreign powers. Several signatories to the treaty had been murdered, including Major Ridge , his son John Ridge, and Elias Boudinot . The real reason was probably that the "Ridge Faction" had already integrated too much into the political fabric of the settlers, which led Ross to make his authority clear on his arrival.
Bibliography
- John Haywood, AS Colyar : The Civil and Political History of the State of Tennessee from its Earliest Settlement up to the Year 1796. Including the boundaries of the state . Printed for WH Haywood, Nashville TN 1891 (Also: Overmountain Press, Johnson City TN 1999, ISBN 1-57072-105-X ).
- Karl Klinck, James J. Talman (Eds.): The Journal of Major John Norton . Toronto: Champlain Society, 1970 ( Publications of the Champlain Society 46, ISSN 0384-6202 ).
- William G. McLoughlin: Cherokee Renascence in the New Republic . Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1992, ISBN 0-691-04741-3 .
- James Mooney : Myths of the Cherokee and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokee . Charles and Randy Elder-Booksellers, Nashville TN 1982, ISBN 0-918450-22-5 .
- John Trotwood Moore, Austin P. Foster: Tennessee, The Volunteer State. 1769-1923 . Volume 1. SJ Clarke Publishing Co., Chicago IL et al. 1923.
- James Getty's McGregor Ramsey: The Annals of Tennessee to the End of the Eighteenth Century . 3rd edition. Judge David Campbell, Chattanooga TN 1926.
- Thurman Wilkins: Cherokee Tragedy. The Story of the Ridge Family and the Decimation of a People . Macmillan Company, New York NY 1970.