Qualla: Cherokee Removal

Cherokee Removal: Introduction

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Charles Bird King, Public domain. On December 30, 1835, twenty-one Cherokee men stepped forward inside a council house at New Echota, Georgia, and signed away a nation. They represented a fraction of the Cherokee people -- perhaps five hundred out of thousands had even answered the summons. Principal Chief John Ross, the elected leader of the Cherokee Nation, refused to sign. But the Treaty of New Echota was ratified by the U.S. Senate by a single vote, and it set in motion one of the most devastating chapters in American history: the forced removal of an estimated 15,500 Cherokee and 1,500 enslaved African Americans from their homeland to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi. The Cherokee called what followed Nu na da ul tsun yi -- the place where they cried.

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Image: Charles Bird King | Public domain

Cherokee Removal: A Nation That Refused to Vanish

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian Stansberry (photographer), CC BY 3.0. The Cherokee had done everything European-American society asked of them. They adopted a written constitution on July 26, 1827, declaring themselves a sovereign nation. They established a capital at New Echota near present-day Calhoun, Georgia. They had their own written language...

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Image: Brian Stansberry (photographer) | CC BY 3.0

Cherokee Removal: A Treaty Signed in Shadows

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian Stansberry (photographer), CC BY 3.0. Andrew Jackson's landslide reelection in 1832 convinced some Cherokee that resistance was futile. Major Ridge, his son John Ridge, and nephew Elias Boudinot formed the Treaty Party, believing negotiation was better than waiting for white squatters and state violence to make thing...

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Image: Brian Stansberry (photographer) | CC BY 3.0

Cherokee Removal: Rounding Up a People

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian Stansberry (photographer), CC BY 3.0. On April 23, 1838, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote to President Martin Van Buren, urging him not to inflict 'so vast an outrage upon the Cherokee Nation.' The letter changed nothing. General Winfield Scott established headquarters at Fort Cass in Charleston, Tennessee, and on May 26, s...

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Image: Brian Stansberry (photographer) | CC BY 3.0

Cherokee Removal: The Road West

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian Stansberry (photographer), CC BY 3.0. The journey unfolded in waves of suffering. The Army's initial boat detachments down the Tennessee River proved disastrous -- Captain Gustavus Drane's group of 1,072 people arrived with only 635, having lost 146 souls along the way. Drought lowered the rivers, stranding flatboats...

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Image: Brian Stansberry (photographer) | CC BY 3.0

Cherokee Removal: What Endures

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Charles Bird King, Public domain. The political fallout was swift and bloody. Major Ridge, John Ridge, and Elias Boudinot -- the men who had signed the treaty -- were assassinated shortly after arrival in Indian Territory. Only Stand Watie escaped his killers. But the Cherokee Nation endured. In North Carolina, a...

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Image: Charles Bird King | Public domain