Treaty of New Echota
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The Treaty of New Echota was a removal treaty signed in New Echota, Georgia by officials of the United States government and several members of the so-called Ridge faction within the Cherokee Nation on December 29, 1835 (proclaimed on May 23, 1836). The Ridge faction held that the Cherokee would lose their eastern lands sooner or later and that removal to the west was the only way to preserve the Nation. In the treaty, the United States agreed to pay the Cherokee people $4.5 million in compensation, cover the costs of relocation, and give them equivalent land in the Indian Territory (modern Oklahoma) in exchange for all Cherokee land east of the Mississippi River. While the treaty was ratified by the United States Senate and enforced upon the Cherokee people, it was never signed by any official representative of the Cherokee Nation, and the Cherokee nation refused to recognize the validity of the treaty.
[edit] Objections from the Cherokee
After news of the treaty became public, the officials of the Cherokee Nation instantly objected that they had not approved it and that the document was invalid. John Ross and the Cherokee tribal council begged the Senate not to ratify the treaty (failure to ratify would thereby invalidate it). However, the measure passed in May of 1836 by a single vote, thanks in part to President Andrew Jackson's support. Ross later drew up a petition asking Congress to void the treaty--a petition he personally delivered to Congress in the spring of 1838 with more than 15,000 signatures attached.
[edit] Cherokee removal
The petition was ignored by President Martin Van Buren, who soon thereafter directed General Winfield Scott to forcibly move all those Cherokee who had not yet complied with the treaty and moved west, even though the treaty allowed those who wished to remain in the east to do so. Scott's action is now commonly referred to as the Trail of Tears. After the Treaty of New Echota was enforced, the Cherokee people were almost entirely removed west of the Mississippi (a few purchased farmland in the area in order to remain near their ancestral lands). After their arrival in the Indian Territory, a radical group of those who had been forcibly removed enforced the Cherokee law outlawing sale of Cherokee land to foreign powers by attacking the Ridge faction. Several signers of the treaty were assassinated, including Major Ridge, his son John Ridge, and Elias Boudinot (Cherokee). As a result, the Cherokee nation subsequently endured 15 years of civil war.
