The Cherokee Native American tribe, living within the State of Georgia, were suffering under recently passed laws in the year of 1828 that stripped Cherokee Native Americans of their rights, as well as authorized their removal from their land within Georgia. To counteract this, the tribe, attempted to utilize prior signed treaties between their tribe, referred to as a nation, and the United States. However their efforts had no impact when speaking with the President, Andrew Jackson, or Congress. Thus, in 1830, in order to defend their land and people, they sought an injunction from the Supreme Court to stop Georgia's law from being carried out. However, due to the nature of the Cherokee's independent status as a nation conflicting with their existence within the borders of the United States, the Supreme Court of the time ruled that they did not have the authority to decide the case, as the Cherokee nation was not a completely foreign nation according to the Constitution, treating them as a domestic dependent nation. However, two years later, in 1832, Samuel Worcester, a missonary to the Cherokee who supported maintaing Cherokee Independence, along with eleven other missionaries would attempt to resist a Georgia law from 1830 that forbid white men from living within Cherokee territory without a license. While this law was meant as a way to keep people from unlawfully entering Cherokee land, their reasoning was that, if this law was obeyed, it would effectively deny the Cherokee any right to control their own land. As such, the twelve men were arrested following their refusal to obey the law, and all twelve men were convicted after two trials. Of the twelve imprisoned, two, Worcester and a man named Elizur Butler, did not take pardons, and the case was brought before the US Supreme Court under the basis that the law passed by Georgia held no authority over Native American lands. This time, the Justices of the Supreme Court would agree with the missionaries, stating that the Cherokee nation was only capable of being negotiated with the federal government of the United States, rather than the states, and thus that the law against the missionaries imprisonment, and subsequently the prior Georgia law concerning the removal of the Cherokee from their lands was invalid. Unfortunately the aftermath of this decision amounted to no victory for the Cherokee nation. Instead the federal government began to attempts to secure a treaty to remove the Cherokee from their lands, and the state of Georgia refused to release the imprisoned men, due to a belief that the Supreme court was violating State's rights. Eventually, due to a uprising of nullification law within South Carolina, Georgia's governor and the missionaries eventually reached a compromise that saw the men go free, however the Supreme Court's decision, while giving the Indian nations dominion over their own land and laws, and in 1835, following the treaty of New Echota, the Cherokee would be removed from their lands and forced upon the journey now known as the Trail of Tears. This would continue into 1838, until the Cherokee were within the allotted territory of Indian Reservation, within Oklahoma. This of course affects race, as Cherokee were not held in high regard by Americans.
Works Cited:
McBride, Alex. The Supreme Court . The First Hundred Years . Landmark Cases . Cherokee Indian Cases (1830s): PBS. Dec. 2006, www.thirteen.org/wnet/supremecourt/antebellum/landmark_cherokee.html.
“Cherokee Nation v. Georgia.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 22 Sept. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_Nation_v._Georgia.