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Letter from Chief John Ross, "To the Senate
and House of Representatives"
[Red Clay Council Ground, Cherokee Nation, September 28,
1836]
It is well known that for a number of years past we have
been harassed by a series of vexations, which it is deemed
unnecessary to recite in detail, but the evidence of which
our delegation will be prepared to furnish. With a view to
bringing our troubles to a close, a delegation was appointed
on the 23rd of October, 1835, by the General Council of the
nation, clothed with full powers to enter into arrangements
with the Government of the United States, for the final adjustment
of all our existing difficulties. The delegation failing to
effect an arrangement with the United States commissioner,
then in the nation, proceeded, agreeably to their instructions
in that case, to Washington City, for the purpose of negotiating
a treaty with the authorities of the United States.
After the departure of the Delegation, a contract was made
by the Rev. John F. Schermerhorn, and certain individual Cherokees,
purporting to be a "treaty, concluded at New Echota,
in the State of Georgia, on the 29th day of December, 1835,
by General William Carroll and John F. Schermerhorn, commissioners
on the part of the United States, and the chiefs, headmen,
and people of the Cherokee tribes of Indians." A spurious
Delegation, in violation of a special injunction of the general
council of the nation, proceeded to Washington City with this
pretended treaty, and by false and fraudulent representations
supplanted in the favor of the Government the legal and accredited
Delegation of the Cherokee people, and obtained for this instrument,
after making important alterations in its provisions, the
recognition of the United States Government. And now it is
presented to us as a treaty, ratified by the Senate, and approved
by the President [Andrew Jackson], and our acquiescence in
its requirements demanded, under the sanction of the displeasure
of the United States, and the threat of summary compulsion,
in case of refusal. It comes to us, not through our legitimate
authorities, the known and usual medium of communication between
the Government of the United States and our nation, but through
the agency of a complication of powers, civil and military.
By the stipulations of this instrument, we are despoiled
of our private possessions, the indefeasible property of individuals.
We are stripped of every attribute of freedom and eligibility
for legal self-defence. Our property may be plundered before
our eyes; violence may be committed on our persons; even our
lives may be taken away, and there is none to regard our complaints.
We are denationalized; we are disfranchised. We are deprived
of membership in the human family! We have neither land nor
home, nor resting place that can be called our own. And this
is effected by the provisions of a compact which assumes the
venerated, the sacred appellation of treaty.
We are overwhelmed! Our hearts are sickened, our utterance
is paralized, when we reflect on the condition in which we
are placed, by the audacious practices of unprincipled men,
who have managed their stratagems with so much dexterity as
to impose on the Government of the United States, in the face
of our earnest, solemn, and reiterated protestations.
The instrument in question is not the act of our Nation;
we are not parties to its covenants; it has not received the
sanction of our people. The makers of it sustain no office
nor appointment in our Nation, under the designation of Chiefs,
Head men, or any other title, by which they hold, or could
acquire, authority to assume the reins of Government, and
to make bargain and sale of our rights, our possessions, and
our common country. And we are constrained solemnly to declare,
that we cannot but contemplate the enforcement of the stipulations
of this instrument on us, against our consent, as an act of
injustice and oppression, which, we are well persuaded, can
never knowingly be countenanced by the Government and people
of the United States; nor can we believe it to be the design
of these honorable and highminded individuals, who stand at
the head of the Govt., to bind a whole Nation, by the acts
of a few unauthorized individuals. And, therefore, we, the
parties to be affected by the result, appeal with confidence
to the justice, the magnanimity, the compassion, of your honorable
bodies, against the enforcement, on us, of the provisions
of a compact, in the formation of which we have had no agency.
SOURCE: The Papers of Chief John Ross, vol 1, 1807-1839,
Norman OK, Gary E. Moulton, ed., University of Oklahoma Press,
1985
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