Cherokee Indian Cases Cherokee Nation v. Georgia 5 Peters 1 (1831) Worcester v. Georgia 6 Peters 515 (1832)

• Author: Leonard W. Levy
• Pages: 343-345

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The Cherokee Indian Cases prompted a constitutional crisis marked by successful state defiance of the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and federal treaties. The United

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States had made treaties with the Georgia Cherokee, as if they were a sovereign power, and pledged to secure their lands. Later, in 1802, the United States pledged to Georgia that in return for its relinquishment of the Yazoo lands (see FLETCHER V. PECK) the United States would extinguish the Cherokee land claims in Georgia. The Cherokee, however, refused to leave Georgia voluntarily in return for wild lands west of the Mississippi. In 1824 Georgia claimed LEGISLATIVE JURISDICTION over all the Indian lands within its boundaries. The Cherokee, who had a written language and a plantation economy, then adopted a CONSTITUTION and declared their sovereign independence. Georgia, which denied that the United States had authority to bind the state by an Indian treaty, retaliated against the Cherokee by a series of statutes that nullified all Indian laws and land claims and divided Cherokee lands into counties subject to state governance. President ANDREW JACKSON supported the state against the Indians, and Congress, too, recognizing that the Indians could not maintain a separate sovereignty within the state, urged them to settle on federally granted land in the west or, if remaining in Georgia, to submit to state laws.

The Cherokee turned next to the Supreme Court. Claiming to be a foreign state within the meaning of Article III, section 2, of the Constitution, the Indians invoked the Court's ORIGINAL JURISDICTION in a case to which a state was a party and sought an INJUNCTION that would restrain Georgia from enforcing any of its laws within Cherokee territory recognized by federal treaties. By scheduling a hearing the Court exposed itself to Georgia's wrath. Without the support of the political branches of the national government, the Court faced the prospect of being unable to enforce its own decree or defend the supremacy of federal treaties against state violation.

The case of Corn Tassel, which suddenly intervened, exposed the Court's vulnerability. He was a Cherokee whom Georgia tried and convicted for the murder of a fellow tribesman, though he objected that a federal treaty recognized the exclusive right of his own nation to try him. On Tassel's application Chief Justice JOHN MARSHALL issued a WRIT OF ERROR to the state trial court and...