MooNKv] ARREST Ob' MISSIONARIES 1831 1 U> 



liuiiicdiatcly on tlio jiassajiP of tlir first act the Cherokoo apjx'alccl to 

 Prt'sick'iit Jaoksoii, but were told that no protection would be allorded 

 tlieni. Other efforts were then made — in 1829 — to persuade them to 

 nnnox'al. or to ])i'()i'ure i'nothei" cession — this time of all their lands in 

 North Carolina — but the Cherokee remained firm. The Georgia law 

 was declared in force on June 3, 1830, whereupon the President 

 directed that the aniuiity payment due the Cherokee Nation under pre- 

 vious treaties should no longer be paid to their national treasurer, as 

 hitherto, but distributed per capita by the agent. As a national fund 

 it had been ust>d for the maintenance of their schools and national 

 press. As a per capita payment it amounted to forty-two cents to each 

 individual. Several 3'ears afterward it still remained unpaid. Fed- 

 eral troops were also sent into the Cherokee country with orders to 

 prevent all mining b\" either whites or Indians unless authorized by the 

 state of Georgia. All these measures served only to render the Chero- 

 kee more bitter in their determination. In September, 1830. another 

 proposition was made for the removal of the tribe, but th(^ national 

 council emphatically refused to consider the subject.^ 



In January. 1831, the Cherokee Nation, by John Ross as principal 

 chief, l)rought a test suit of injunction against Georgia, in the United 

 States Supreme Court. The majority of the court dismissed the suit 

 on the sTound that the Cherokee were not a foreign nation within the 

 meaning of the Constitution, two justices dissenting from this opinion." 



Shortly afterward, under the law which forbade any white man to 

 reside in the Cherokee Nation without taking an oath of allegiance to 

 (leorgia, a number of arrests were made, including Wheeler, the 

 printer of the Chi-roh'!', I'Jimnii'. and the missionaries, Worcester, But- 

 ler. Thompson, and Proc-tor, who, being there In^ permission of the 

 agent and feeling that plain American citizenship should hold good in 

 any part of the United States, refused to take the oath. Some of 

 those arrested took the oath and were released, but Worcester and 

 Putler, still refusing, wei'e dressed in prison garb and put at hard 

 labor among felons. Worcester had plead in his defense that he was a 

 citizen of Vermont, and had entered the Cherokee country by permis- 

 sion of the President of the United States and approval of the ("herokee 

 Nation; and that as the United States l)y several treaties had acknowl- 

 edged the Ch(>rokee to be a nation with a guai'anteed and definite ter- 

 I'itory, the state had no right to iiiterfei-e with him. He was sentenced 

 to four years in the penitentiary. On March 3, 1832, the matter was 

 appealed as a test case to the Supreme Court of the United States, 

 which rendered a decision in favor of Worcester and the Cherokee 

 Nation and ordered ids release, (ieorgia, however, througli her gov- 

 ernor, had defied the sununons with a threat of opposition, even tothe 



' Royeu. Cherokw Nnti.in, Kiflti Ann. Ri-p. BurL-ail <if Kthnology, pp. 2in,2ia, 1S88. 

 = Ibid.,p.2r)2. 



