MooNKvl EXTENSION OF GEORGIA LAWS IS.'iO 117 



III Novcnihor. 1828, Andrew Jackson was elected to succeed John 

 Quiiiev Adams as President. lie was a frontiersman and Indian hater, 

 and the, ehani^'c Ixjded no good to the (."herok(>e. His position was well 

 understood, and there is good ground for believing that the action at 

 once taken In* Georgia was ;it his own suggestion.' On Decemlier 20, 

 1828, a month after his election, Georgia passed an act annexing that 

 part of the Cherokee country within her chartered limits and extending 

 over it her jurisdiction; all laws and customs esta))lished among the 

 Cherokee were declared null and void, and no person of Indian hlood 

 or descent residing within the Indian country was henceforth to be 

 allowed as a witness or party in any suit where a white man should Ik? 

 defendant. The act was to take etlect June 1, 1830 (42). The whole 

 territory was soon after mapped out into counties and surveyed by 

 state surveyors into "land lots" of KIO acres each, and "gold lots" of 

 40 acres, which were put up and distributed among the white citizens 

 of Georgia by public lottery, each white citizen receiving a ticket. 

 Every Cherokee head of a family was. indeed, allowed a reservation 

 of 160 acres, but no deed was given, and his contiiuiance depended 

 solely on the pleasure of the legislature. Provision was made for the 

 settlement of contested lottery claims among the white citizens. ))ut 

 by the most stringent enactments, in addition to the sweeping law 

 which forbade anyone of Indian blood to bring suit or to testify 

 against a white man, it was made impossible for the Indian owner to 

 defend his right in any court or to resist the seizure of his homestead, 

 or even his own dwelling house, and anyone so resisting was made sub- 

 ject to imprisomuent at the discretion of a Georgia coui't. Other laws 

 directed to the same end (juickly followed, one of which made invalid 

 any contract between a white man and an Indian unless established by 

 the testimony of two white witnesses — thus practically canceling all 

 debts due from white men to Indians — while another obliged all white 

 men residing in the Cherokee country to take a special oath of allegi- 

 ance to the state of Georgia, on penalty of four years' imprisonment 

 in the peuitentiarj', this act being intended to drive out all the mis- 

 sionaries, teachers, and other educators who refused to countenance 

 the spoliation. About the same time the Cherokee were forl)idden to 

 hold councils, or to assemble for any public purpose," or to dig for 

 gold upon their own lands. 



' See Butler letter, quoted in Royce, Cherokee Nation, Fifth Ann. Rep. Bureau of Ethnology, P- 297, 

 1888; see also Everett, speech in the House of Representatives on May 31. 1838, pp. 16-17, Xi-SS, 1839. 



-For extracts and synopse.sof tltese acts sec Koycc, op. cit., pp. 2.'J9-2r»4; Drake, Indian.^, pp. 438-150, 

 1880; (ircdey, American Confiict, i. pp. 105, 10<">, 18C1; Edward Everett, speccli in the House of Rep- 

 resentatives, February 14, 1831 (lottery law). Tlie gold lottery is also noted incidentally by Ijannian, 

 Charles, Letters from the Alleghany Mountains, p. 10; New York, 1849, and by Nitze, in his report on 

 the Georgia gold fields, in the Twentietli Annual Report of the United States Guological Survey, 

 parte ( Mineral Resources), j). 112, 1899. Theautlior has himself seen in a mounUiin village in Georgia 

 an old book titled "The Clierokee Land and tJold Lottery," containing maps and plats covering tlie 

 whole Cherokee country of Georgia, with eadi lot immbered, and descriptions of the water courses, 

 soil, and supposed mineral veins. 



