264 CHEROKEE NATION OF INDIANS. 
17. A few individual reservations to be permitted east of the Missis- 
sippi, but only on condition that the reservees Shall become citizens of 
the State in which they reside, and that all reservations between them 
and the United States, founded upon their previous circumstances as 
Indians, must cease. 
Cherokees contemplate removal to Columbia River.—In the discussion 
of these propositions the fact was developed that a project had been 
canvassed, and had received much favorable consideration among the 
Cherokees themselves (in view of the difficulties and harrassing cir- 
cumstances surrounding their situation), to abandon their eastern home 
and to remove to the country adjacent to the mouth of the Columbia 
River, on the Pacific coast. This proposition haying reached the ears 
of the Secretary of War, he made haste, in a letter to Mr. Chester,' 
to discourage all idea of such a removal, predicated upon the theory 
that they would be surrounded by tribes of hostile savages, and would 
be too remote from the frontier and military posts of the United States 
to enable the latter to extend to them the arm of protection and sup- 
port. 
Nothing was accomplished by the negotiations of Mr. Chester, and 
in the autumn? of the same year Governor Lumpkin, of Georgia, was 
requested to attend the Cherokee council in October and renew the 
proposition upon the same basis. <A similar fate attended this attempt. 
DECISION OF SUPREME COURT IN WORCESTER VS. GEORGIA. 
Among other laws passed by the State of Georgia was one that 
went into effect on the Ist of February, 1831, which prohibited the 
Cherokees from holding councils, or assembling for any purpose ; pro- 
vided for a distribution of their lands among her citizens; required all 
whites residing in the Cherokee Nation within her chartered limits to 
take an oath of allegiance to the State, and made it an offense punish- 
able by four years’ imprisonment in the penitentiary to refuse to do so. 
Under this law two missionaries, Messrs. Worcester and Butler, were 
indicted in the superior court of Gwinnett County for residing without 
license in that part of the Cherokee country attached to Georgia by her 
laws and in violation of the act of her legislature approved December 
22,1830. In the trial of Mr. Worcester’s case, which was subsequently 
made the test case in the Supreme Court of the United States, he 
pleaded that he was a citizen of Vermont and entered the Cherokee 
country as a missionary with the permission of the President of the 
United States and the approval of the Cherokee Nation; that Georgia 
ought not to maintain the prosecution inasmuch as several treaties had 
been entered into by the United States with the Cherokee Nation, by 
which the latter were acknowledged as a sovereign nation, and by which 
the territory occupied by them had been guaranteed to them by the 


1 July 18, 1832. 
2 September 4, 1832. 
