Essay on Cherokee Removal

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The Cherokee people were forced out of their land because of the settler’s greed for everything and anything the land had to offer. Many Cherokee even embraced the “civilization program,” abandoning their own beliefs so that they may be accepted by white settlers. Unfortunately for the Cherokee though, the settlers would never accept them as an equal citizen. A quote from historian Richard White says it very well, “The Cherokee are probably the most tragic instance of what could have succeeded in American Indian policy and didn’t. All these things that Americans would proudly see as the hallmarks of civilization are going to the West by Indian people. They do everything they were asked except one thing. What the Cherokees ultimately …show more content…
Due to the “civilization program” many Cherokees became extremely wealthy and even ended up purchasing slaves to do field work. These Cherokee men became key political leaders for the Cherokee nation. They would end up writing and applying their very own “Constitution of the Cherokee Nation” which was made very similar to out very own constitution. The main concern for most of the Cherokee was land and due to that it was the first thing to be outlined in the Cherokee Constitution. In Article 1-Section 1 it states the boundaries they now posses because of the treaties made with the U.S. and also states that those boundaries shall forever be their land. Cherokees made another important law about the selling of land as well in order to keep their borders, “The Cherokee Nation Council advised the United States that it would refuse future cession requests and enacted a law prohibiting the sale of national land upon penalty of death.” Even with these laws in place a small group of Cherokee set out against the rest of the Nation. Major Ridge, John Ridge, and Elias Boudinot, signed a removal treat at the Cherokee capital of New Echota without the authority of Principal Chief John Ross or the Cherokee government. The Treaty of New Echota required the Cherokee Nation to exchange its national lands for a parcel in the "Indian Territory" set aside by Congress, in what is now Oklahoma, in 1834 and to relocate
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