The Marshall Case

The law was passed that all Natives had to leave. Cherokees believed even if they stayed they would still have to deal with all the troublesome White neighbors, therefore their best option was to leave. There was nothing they could do because the whites were too powerful as said in doc 5. “It is argued that they can never remain quiet where they are;n that they will always be infested by troublesome whites; and that the states, which lay claim their territory, will always preserve in measures to vex and annoy them.” The Natives didn’t understand why the white people wanted them gone so bad, because the white people tried so hard to change the Natives culture to make them act like the white people. The Natives changed they way they acted, worked, and how they looked. In doc 7 it says “ The Cherokees have been reclaimed from their wild habits. Instead of hunters, they have become the cultivators of the soil instead of wild and ferocious savages, thirsting for blood, they become the mild “citizens.” The Cherokees were really upset, because not only were they leaving what had now become their norm they were also leaving their land which had been passed down through their family. The Cherokees started a petition to the United States asking for them to fulfill their treaty they had made. In doc 9. It says “ Cherokee people used no violence but humbly petitioned the Government of the United States for a fulfillment of treaty

The Treaty of Hopewell in 1785 established borders between the United States and the Cherokee Nation offered the Cherokees the right to send a “deputy” to Congress, and made American settlers in Cherokee territory subject to Cherokee law. With help from John Ross they helped protect the national territory. In 1825 the Cherokees capital was established, near present day Calhoun Georgia. The Cherokee National Council advised the United States that it would refuse future cession request and enacted a law prohibiting the sale of national land upon penalty of death. In 1827 the Cherokees adopted a written constitution, an act further removed by Georgia. But between the years of 1827 and 1831 the Georgia legislature extended the state’s jurisdiction over the Cherokee territory, passed laws purporting to abolish the Cherokees’ laws and government, and set in motion a process to seize the Cherokees’ lands, divide it into parcels, and other offer some to the lottery to the white Georgians.

In the year of 1828, the president Andrew Jackson was appointed to the office of the American government with this the fact of the remaining Indians tribes were important which were named “The Five Civilized Tribes” including the Cherokee and with the pass of the “Treaty of Etocha” forced the Cherokee out of the land of Georgia also known as the “Trail of Tears” where thousands upon thousands of Cherokee were killed during the extraction of the Cherokee’s land.

The government attempted to uphold relations with the Indians on the condition that they establish themselves in the beliefs and values of the United States people (Jackson, First Annual Message to Congress, 2). They wanted the Indians to be of the Christian faith and to learn their practices, such as their agricultural lifestyle and techniques, to help civilize and assimilate the Indian people. This really just rooted the settler’s supremacist temperament into place. The Supreme Court did back the Indians temporarily in the Worcester v. Georgia trial, in which the United States Supreme Court held that “the Cherokee Indians constituted a nation holding distinct sovereign powers” (Garrison, Worcester v. Georgia, 1). While it seemed a concerted effort, it eventually led to the forced signing of the Cherokee people at the “Cherokee capital of New Echota”, and furthermore, to the Trail of Tears and the downfall of the Indian nation (Garrison, Worcester v. Georgia, 1). The Americans ultimately made a frail attempt at civil dealings with the Indian people and their tribes, but when the Indians refused, the government used unnecessary force and aggression to get what they

Since international law said that England had discovered the American colonies, they therefore owned all of the land. That meant that the natives or "uncivilized" people no longer owned the land. This group of the "uncivilized" consisted of many Indian tribes which were forced out of their homeland, including the Cherokee.

Gold was discovered near Cherokee territory in Georgia. As result, Georgia desired to remove the Cherokees and relocate the Cherokees to lands west of the Mississippi river. This struck a major debate. Andrew Jackson was known to support the removal of Native Americans, so the state of Georgia took advantage of the scenario. With little difficulty, the Indian Removal Act was passed in 1830. The Cherokees did not relocate without a civilized fight. They sent several documents to Congress to argue their case. These documents included three arguments to support the sovereignty of the Cherokee nation. These three arguments were Great Britain saw the Cherokees as separated nation from the Colonists, George Washington saw them as an independent nation, and the Cherokees had the same natural rights as the United States.

Few individuals have left as prominent a mark on the United States as Chief Justice John Marshall. An ardent Federalist, he worked throughout most of his life to separate the powers of national and state government, furthering the agenda of his party long after they dissolved.

Georgia). The state of Georgia never released them from imprisonment and Jackson never intervened. The government also turned a blind eye when dealing with treaties that were previously agreed to with the Indians. In 1791 the Cherokee nation acknowledged themselves to be under the protection of the United States and no other sovereign, also an agreement was made that white men could not be on their lands without passports. Jackson himself offered false promises to the Indians that they would have the lands west of the Mississippi "as long as Grass grows or water runs.

filed with the U.S. Supreme Court an action challenging the authority of Georgia's laws. The Cherokees disputed that the laws desecrated their chief rights as a nation and criminally interfered into their treaty relationship with the United States. In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), the court held that it did not have the authority to strike down Georgia's laws. In dicta that became particularly important in American Indian law, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote that the Cherokees constituted a "private, dependent nation" that existed under the custody of the United States.

     In Georgia, the Cherokee Indians had developed a lifestyle that included schools, mills, and turnpikes. In the 1820's, under pressure from the state to give up their lands, they wrote a constitution, hired lawyers, and sued in the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Marshall upheld the rights of the Cherokee against Georgia. However, Jackson refused to carry out the decision that ordered Georgia to return Cherokee lands. He is quoted as to have said, "Marshall has made his opinion, now let him enforce it."

In 1831, the Cherokee nation went to court against the state of Georgia. They were disputing the state’s attempt to hold jurisdiction over their territory. Unfortunately, because they are not under the laws of the constitution, the Indian’s right to court was denied. It was not until 1835 that the Cherokee finally agreed to sign the treaty, giving up their Georgia land for that of Oklahoma.

Many laws were modified to meet the peoples needs, as well as when Marshall was appointed he created an uproar when he was brought in by John Adams. “Few things were better known, than the immediate causes which led to the adoption of the present constitution… ”(Doc. G). Marshall believed that a change in the constitution would result in a change in the people's view on the government by protecting everyone under a uniform law. Even though many people are firm believers that the Indian Removal Act was a great event in the South, many people in the North disagree. So, “In 1832 U.S. Supreme Court decision which ruled that Georgia could not impose its laws upon Cherokee tribal lands.”(Doc. I). The Marshall Court said that Georgia was no longer permitted to push the Cherokees out of their land without permission. Speaking about permission, during the Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, “Marshall handed down the decision that Dartmouth was a private rather than a public entity, therefore, the state of New Hampshire did not have regulatory power over it.”(Doc. F). Marshall supported Webster when he came to the Supreme Court in search of justice fromm the newly elected governor of New Hampshire, William

Both thought of Natives as wards of the state that could be controlled by the government, but had very different ideas on what to do with them. For Jackson, this culminated in the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Though Jackson saw Natives as people, he did not see them as equal to whites, once again showing his conservative Southern ways. To expand the territory of the US, Jackson ordered the four remaining southern tribes to assimilate or move farther westward. His conviction that the Native Americans must be moved drove him to negotiate the terms of the Indian Removal Act himself, the only act Jackson himself pushed for in his eight year presidency. The Cherokees were the only tribe to refuse to go, and gained judiciary backing from the Supreme Court after presenting the cases Cherokee Nation v. Georgia in 1831 and Worcester v. Georgia in 1832. Jackson’s immense support for the Native migration, despite the established unconstitutionality of it, manifested as advising Georgia to slowly move onto Cherokee territory, all the while secretly negotiating a treaty with rebels in the tribe. Jackson’s intense desire to preserve his own ideals of white supremacy and Manifest Destiny, even if it meant ignoring the rights of an entire race, exemplified his conservative nature, can be seen most clearly in his intentional

By the early 1800s, the Cherokees were flourishing— they had written their own alphabet, published a newspaper, formed a government, and written a constitution. However, with the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828, Georgia passed legislation that nullified the Cherokee government and revoked their rights as people. Soon thereafter, gold was discovered on Cherokee land and people flooded the land to pan for gold. In 1829, the Indian Removal Act proposed to force all five southern tribes to move west of the Mississippi River. After Jackson signed it into law, the Cherokee challenged the case in the Supreme Court.

Also Known as Marshall Trilogy, Marshall Laws are decisions by the Supreme Court of United States between 1823 and 1832 named after Chief Justice John Marshall. Marshall Trilogy laid the legal framework governing the relationship between federal government and Native Indians (Canby Jr, 2014). Further, the Laws established Indian tribe’s sovereignty while balancing the place of federal government and congress in regulating commerce in the United States (Ouden & Brien,2013). In fact, the cases are commonly cited as the precedents that affirmed among other things sovereignty of Indian nations. In Johnson v M’Intosh (1823), the court observed that the federal government could only exercise preemptive rights to Native American lands (Kiel, 2017).