The Trail of Tears was the forced displacement of approximately 60,000 people of the "Five Civilized Tribes" between 1830 and 1850, and the additional thousands of Native Americans and their enslaved African Americans within that were ethnically cleansed by the United States government.
John Ross was the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1828 to 1866; he served longer in that position than any other person. Ross led the nation through such tumultuous events as forced removal to Indian Territory and the American Civil War.
Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. 1 (1831), was a United States Supreme Court case. The Cherokee Nation sought a federal injunction against laws passed by the U.S. state of Georgia depriving them of rights within its boundaries, but the Supreme Court did not hear the case on its merits. It ruled that it had no original jurisdiction in the matter, as the Cherokees were a dependent nation, with a relationship to the United States like that of a "ward to its guardian," as said by Chief Justice Marshall.
The Ridge, later known as Major Ridge was a Cherokee leader, a member of the tribal council, and a lawmaker. As a warrior, he fought in the Cherokee–American wars against American frontiersmen. Later, Major Ridge led the Cherokee in alliances with General Andrew Jackson and the United States in the Creek and Seminole wars of the early 19th century.
New Echota was the capital of the Cherokee Nation in the Southeastern United States from 1825 until their forced removal in the late 1830s. New Echota is located in present-day Gordon County, in northwest Georgia, north of Calhoun. It is south of Resaca, next to present day New Town, known to the Cherokee as Ꭴꮝꮤꮎꮅ, Ustanali. The site has been preserved as a state park and a historic site. It was designated in 1973 as a National Historic Landmark District.
John Ridge, born Skah-tle-loh-skee, was from a prominent family of the Cherokee Nation, then located in present-day Georgia. He went to Cornwall, Connecticut, to study at the Foreign Mission School. He met Sarah Bird Northup, of a New England Yankee family, and they married in 1824. Soon after their return to New Echota in 1825, Ridge was chosen for the Cherokee National Council and became a leader in the tribe.
Fort Smith National Historic Site is a National Historic Site located in Fort Smith, Arkansas, along the Arkansas River. The first fort at this site was established by the United States in 1817, before this area was established as part of Indian Territory. It was later replaced and the second fort was operated by the US until 1871. This site was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1961.
The Hunter's Home, formerly known as the George M. Murrell Home, is a historic house museum at 19479 E Murrel Rd in Park Hill, near Tahlequah, Oklahoma in the Cherokee Nation. Built in 1845, it is one of the few buildings to survive in Cherokee lands from the antebellum period between the Trail of Tears relocation of the Cherokee people and the American Civil War. It was a major social center of the elite among the Cherokee in the mid-nineteenth century. It has been owned by the state since 1948, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1974.
Fort Cass was a fort located on the Hiwassee River in present-day Charleston, Tennessee, that served as the military operational headquarters for the entire Cherokee removal, an forced migration of the Cherokee known as the Trail of Tears from their ancestral homelands in the Southeast to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. Fort Cass housed a garrison of United States troops who watched over the largest concentration of internment camps where Cherokee were kept during the summer of 1838 before starting the main trek west to Indian Territory, and served as one of three emigration deports where the Cherokee began their journey west, the others of which were located at Ross's Landing in Chattanooga and Gunter's Landing near Guntersville, Alabama.
The Battle of Taliwa was fought in Ball Ground, Georgia, in 1755. The battle was part of a larger campaign of the Cherokee against the Muscogee Creek people, where a contingent of 500 Cherokee warriors led by war chief Oconostota defeated the Muscogee Creek people and pushed them south from their northern Georgia homelands, allowing the Cherokee to begin settling in the region.
Long Island, also known as Long Island of the Holston, is an island in the Holston River at Kingsport in East Tennessee. Important in regional history since pre-colonial times, the island is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is designated as a U.S. National Historic Landmark District.
Red Clay State Historic Park is a state park located in southern Bradley County, Tennessee, United States. The park preserves the Red Clay Council Grounds, which were the site of the last capital of the Cherokee Nation in the eastern United States from 1832 to 1838 before the enforcement of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. This act resulted in a forced migration of most of the Cherokee people to present-day Oklahoma known as the Cherokee removal. At the council grounds, the Cherokee made multiple unsuccessful pleas to the U.S. government to be allowed to remain in their ancestral homeland. The site is considered sacred to the Cherokees, and includes the Blue Hole Spring, a large hydrological spring. It is also listed as an interpretive center along the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail.
The Cherokee National Capitol, now the Cherokee National History Museum, is a historic tribal government building in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Completed in 1869, it served as the capitol building of the Cherokee Nation from 1869 to 1907, when Oklahoma became a state. It now serves as the site of the tribal supreme court and judicial branch. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961 for its role in the Nation's history.
Creek National Capitol, also known as Creek Council House, is a building in downtown Okmulgee, Oklahoma, in the United States. It was capitol of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation from 1878 until 1907. They had established their capital at Okmulgee in 1867, after the American Civil War.
Chieftains Museum, also known as the Major Ridge Home, is a two-story white frame house built around a log house of 1819 in Cherokee country. It was the home of the Cherokee leader Major Ridge. He was notable for his role in negotiating and signing the Treaty of New Echota of 1835, which ceded the remainder of Cherokee lands in the Southeast to the United States. He was part of a minority group known as the Treaty Party, who believed that relocation was inevitable and wanted to negotiate the best deal with the United States for their people.
Ross's Landing in Chattanooga, Tennessee, is the last site of the Cherokee's 61-year occupation of Chattanooga and is considered to be the embarkation point of the Cherokee removal on the Trail of Tears. Ross's Landing Riverfront Park memorializes the location, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Cherokee Nation was a legal, autonomous, tribal government in North America recognized from 1794 to 1907. It was often referred to simply as "The Nation" by its inhabitants. The government was effectively disbanded in 1907, after its land rights had been extinguished, prior to the admission of Oklahoma as a state. During the late 20th century, the Cherokee people reorganized, instituting a government with sovereign jurisdiction known as the Cherokee Nation. On July 9, 2020, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Muscogee (Creek) Nation had never been disestablished in the years before allotment and Oklahoma Statehood.
The Cherokee removal, part of the Indian removal, refers to the forced displacement of an estimated 15,500 Cherokees and 1,500 African-American slaves from the U.S. states of Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama to the West according to the terms of the 1835 Treaty of New Echota. It is estimated that 3,500 Cherokees and African-American slaves died en route.
Cherokee Plantation is a historic house in Fort Payne, Alabama. The house was built in 1790 as a two-story log cabin by Andrew Ross, a judge on the Cherokee Supreme Court and brother of Principal Chief John Ross. In 1834 a second log cabin was built connected to the rear of the original cabin, and a third was built to the northeast, separated by a breezeway. Ross, being one-eighth Cherokee, was forced to leave his home in 1838 under the provisions of the Treaty of New Echota, of which Ross was a signatory; a portion of the Cherokee Trail of Tears passes in front of the house.
US Post Office-Rossville Main, also known as Rossville Post Office, is a post office built in 1931 in Rossville, Georgia. It is a brick, two-story building with Georgian Revival style, with a tetrastyle pedimented portico. An eagle emblem is inset to the transom over the double front doors within the portico. It has tall 12 over 12 windows and a tile, mansard roof interrupted by dormer windows.
