While the negotiations leading up to the conclusion of this treaty
were in progress John Ross and his delegation, finding no disposition
on the part of the executive authority to enter into a discussion of
Cherokee affairs predicated upon any other basis than an abandonment by
them of their homes and country east of the Mississippi, presented[403]
a memorial to Congress complaining of the injuries done them and
praying for redress. Without affecting to pass judgment on the merits
of the controversy, the writer thinks this memorial well deserving of
reproduction here as evidencing the devoted and pathetic attachment
with which the Cherokees clung to the land of their fathers, and,
remembering the wrongs and humiliations of the past, refused to be
convinced that justice, prosperity, and happiness awaited them beyond
the Mississippi.
The memorial of the Cherokee Nation respectfully showeth,
that they approach your honorable bodies as the representatives
of the people of the United States, intrusted by them under the
Constitution with the exercise of their sovereign power, to ask for
protection of the rights of your memorialists and redress of their
grievances.
They respectfully represent that their rights, being stipulated
by numerous solemn treaties, which guaranteed to them protection,
and guarded as they supposed by laws enacted by Congress, they
had hoped that the approach of danger would be prevented by the
interposition of the power of the Executive charged with the
execution of treaties and laws; and that when their rights should
come in question they would be finally and authoritatively decided
by the judiciary, whose decrees it would be the duty of the
Executive to see carried into effect. For many years these their
just hopes were not disappointed.
The public faith of the United States, solemnly pledged
to them, was duly kept in form and substance. Happy under the
parental guardianship of the United States, they applied themselves
assiduously and successfully to learn the lessons of civilization
and peace, which, in the prosecution of a humane and Christian
policy, the United States caused to be taught them. Of the advances
they have made under the influence of this benevolent system,
they might a few years ago have been tempted to speak with pride
and satisfaction and with grateful hearts to those who have been
their instructors. They could have pointed with pleasure to the
houses they had built, the improvements they had made, the fields
they were cultivating; they could have exhibited their domestic
establishments, and shown how from wandering in the forests many of
them had become the heads of families, with fixed habitations, each
the center of a domestic circle like that which forms the happiness
of civilized man. They could have shown, too, how the arts of
industry, human knowledge, and letters had been introduced amongst
them, and how the highest of all the knowledge had come to bless
them, teaching them to know and to worship the Christian's God,
bowing down to Him at the same seasons and in the same spirit with
millions of His creatures who inhabit Christendom, and with them
embracing the hopes and promises of the Gospel.
But now each of these blessings has been made to them an
instrument of the keenest torture. Cupidity has fastened its
eye upon their lands and their homes, and is seeking by force
and by every variety of oppression and wrong to expel them from
their lands and their homes and to tear them from all that has
become endeared to them. Of what they have already suffered it
is impossible for them to give the details, as they would make a
history. Of what they are menaced with by unlawful power, every
citizen of the United States who reads the public journals is
aware. In this their distress they have appealed to the judiciary
of the United States, where their rights have been solemnly
established. They have appealed to the Executive of the United
States to protect these rights according to the obligations
of treaties and the injunctions of the laws. But this appeal
to the Executive has been made in vain. In the hope that by
yielding something of their clear rights they might succeed in
obtaining security for the remainder, they have lately opened a
correspondence with the Executive, offering to make a considerable
cession from what had been reserved to them by solemn treaties,
only upon condition that they might be protected in the part not
ceded. But their earnest supplication has been unheeded, and the
only answer they can get, informs them, in substance, that they
must be left to their fate, or renounce the whole. What that fate
is to be unhappily is too plain.
The State of Georgia has assumed jurisdiction over them, has
invaded their territory, has claimed the right to dispose of their
lands, and has actually proceeded to dispose of them, reserving
only a small portion to individuals, and even these portions are
threatened and will no doubt, soon be taken from them. Thus the
nation is stripped of its territory and individuals of their
property without the least color of right, and in open violation
of the guarantee of treaties. At the same time the Cherokees,
deprived of the protection of their own government and laws, are
left without the protection of any other laws, outlawed as it were
and exposed to indignities, imprisonment, persecution, and even to
death, though they have committed no offense whatever, save and
except that of seeking to enjoy what belongs to them, and refusing
to yield it up to those who have no pretense of title to it. Of the
acts of the legislature of Georgia your memorialists will endeavor
to furnish copies to your honorable bodies, and of the doings
of individuals they will furnish evidence if required. And your
memorialists further respectfully represent that the Executive of
the United States has not only refused to protect your memorialists
against the wrongs they have suffered and are still suffering at
the hands of unjust cupidity, but has done much more. It is but too
plain that, for several years past, the power of the Executive has
been exerted on the side of their oppressors and is co-operating
with them in the work of destruction. Of two particulars in the
conduct of the Executive your memorialists would make mention, not
merely as matters of evidence but as specific subjects of complaint
in addition to the more general ones already stated.
The first of these is the mode adopted to oppress and injure
your memorialists under color of enrollments for emigration. Unfit
persons are introduced as agents, acts are practiced by them that
are unjust, unworthy, and demoralizing, and have no object but
to force your memorialists to yield and abandon their rights by
making their lives intolerably wretched. They forbear to go into
particulars, which nevertheless they are prepared, at a proper
time, to exhibit.
The other is calculated also to weaken and distress your
memorialists, and is essentially unjust. Heretofore, until within
the last four years, the money appropriated by Congress for
annuities has been paid to the nation, by whom it was distributed
and used for the benefit of the nation. And this method of payment
was not only sanctioned by the usage of the Government of the
United States, but was acceptable to the Cherokees. Yet, without
any cause known to your memorialists, and contrary to their just
expectations, the payment has been withheld for the period just
mentioned, on the ground, then for the first time assumed, that the
annuities were to be paid, not as hitherto, to the nation, but to
the individual Cherokees, each his own small fraction, dividing the
whole according to the numbers of the nation. The fact is, that for
the last four years the annuities have not been paid at all.
The distribution in this new way was impracticable, if the
Cherokees had been willing thus to receive it, but they were not
willing; they have refused and the annuities have remained unpaid.
Your memorialists forbear to advert to the motives of such conduct,
leaving them to be considered and appreciated by Congress. All they
will say is, that it has coincided with other measures adopted
to reduce them to poverty and despair and to extort from their
wretchedness a concession of their guaranteed rights. Having failed
in their efforts to obtain relief elsewhere, your memorialists
now appeal to Congress, and respectfully pray that your honorable
bodies will look into their whole case, and that such measures may
be adopted as will give them redress and security.