But if we own the underlying title and they own an occupancy right, then doesnt that mean that were sort of like their landlord, right . Because thats the one that were familiar with. So, the landlord owns the building. You have an occupancy right to live there. And how do you get rid of tenants you dont like . Well, you change the lease terms. So, now it would be, you know, i love your dog. Hes a great dog, but you know, a 20,000 pet deposit, its not unreasonable. So, youre more than welcome to stay as long as you want to. As long as you want to, with the dog, but i need 20,000. Youre like, oh, this is terrible, im moving. You say, oh, ill miss you. Youve been great, right . And thats sort of what happens to the cherokees. What troup does is he marches into the legislature of georgia and says, look, were their landlords, and he uses that. And so, we can theyre our tenants. We can change the lease terms and you guys should do something to act on this. And thats pretty much troups contribution at this stage, because he leaves the governorship immediately afterwards and moves to washington to be georgias new senator, where hes going to play a major role in the adoption of the indian removal act presently. So, all right, what does georgia do . This is 1827. Georgia issues these resolutions. In december 1828, the next governor, john forsythe, persuades or pushes through the legislature a statute that acts on this idea from troup that says, okay, cherokees, you guys stay as long as you want, but from now on, were going to divide your lands up and youre going to be parts of four georgia counties, and you can keep your own laws until june of next year or june of 1830 at which point you will all be subject to the laws of georgia, and all of your laws will be null and void. So, but youre welcome to stay. And unsurprisingly, the Cherokee Nation says, no, thats not how this is going to work. Now, what made georgia confident that it could get away with this now after so many years was the election the previous month of this guy, Andrew Jackson, to the white house. And jackson was on record as being supportive of the idea of forcing indians out of the southeast and finding some other place for them. They thought jackson will get sworn in and hell actually take some federal action to support us in this effort, and of course, it turned out that they were exactly correct. March 1829, jackson is sworn in. By the way, before this happens, alabama steps up and says, look what georgias doing, and they pass a law imposing their laws over the creek nation. And as well see, within a year, mississippi is going to do the same thing, imposing its laws over the chickasaws and the choctaws. So, this is more than just georgia by the time all of this becomes the subject of litigation. December 1829, jackson delivers his first, what we would now call state of the union address, his first annual address as he called it, and a lot of it is about indian removal. He says, look, georgia, alabama had passed these laws imposing their laws over the indian nations. Theyre perfectly right in doing so, and the tribes are welcome to stay, but they will be subject to state law. What id like you, congress, to do, is to pass legislation offering, if they want to, to trade with these tribes in the southeast their current lands for lands out in what was essentially the Louisiana Purchase territory. And way out in the Louisiana Purchase territory, it was as far as you could go before you were in mexico. It was right at the, basically the mexico border in what would eventually be the texas border when texas is an independent state. And that Little Corner is where these tribes were going to be tucked, if jackson had his way. This message was delivered. In the audience, by the way, troup and former governor forsythe, whos holding the other Georgia Senate seat, and theyre going to become, as they were architects in georgia of the idea of ousting the cherokees, theyre going to become major backers of the indian removal act in congress when it comes up, and it comes up almost immediately. The removal act debate begins early in 1830. The debate lasts eventually about five months. There is support for the tribes position, mostly from new england representatives and midatlantic representatives. Among the most vocal was Theodore Frelinghuysen from new jersey, who takes the floor on multiple occasions to say, you know, what are you doing . How can you possibly assert your laws over these people . And the response that comes from troup and forsythe and other supporters of indian removal is, johnson versus mcintosh. We own the land. John marshall told us we own the land, and so, we can do this. We have the right to do this. Were the landlord. Eventually, that position will prevail. And in april, end of april, the Senate Approves the indian removal act. The house approves it a month later, may 26th, with slight modifications. The senate accepts those the following day, and on may 28th, Andrew Jackson signs it into law. Almost immediately, the Jackson Administration starts negotiating with southeastern tribes to get them to remove. Because look, weve got land for you now. The first tribe to say, okay, is the choctaw nation, which signs the treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in september 1830. And it includes two provisions that i want to spotlight for you because they sort of help explain exactly whats going on here, and it reinforces what weve just said. The first is a provision that says that when you move out to these lands were going to swap you for in what would become known informally as the indian territory, now oklahoma, no state shall ever be allowed to pass laws to govern the choctaw nation. And this line becomes a standard feature of these, what we call removal treaties no state shall ever be allowed to pass laws to govern your nation. The other provision thats in there is a provision saying, and you will own the title to those lands. And thats important because that had been the means by which georgia had claimed the power to impose its laws. That cant happen because you guys will own the title to your lands. And ill mention that today thats still the rule. The five tribes from the southeast almost uniquely not entirely but almost uniquely own as a matter of u. S. Law the title to their land. We call it restricted fee lands, and thats as a consequence of these removal treaty negotiations, to avoid having again to deal with the problem that they had to face in the 1830s. Now, John Marshall and this is an early 1830s portrait of John Marshall, so hes older than you may be used to seeing him was appalled by all of this. Marshall wrote to dabney carr, humanity must bewail the course which is pursued. Elsewhere in a letter, if memory serves to frelinghuysen, with whom he was in contact with during the removal debates, he described the effort of the Southern States as Something Like the unholy combination of unrighteous power. And i have to say, i think that part of the reason he was so upset must have been that he felt partly to blame for it, because hes the one who had handed georgia the tool to independently start initiating the ouster of the Cherokee Nation by claiming rights as a landlord to impose its laws, and that provided incentive for the tribes to leave, et cetera. I think that got thrown in his face very soon after all of this started. In fact, the same month that the treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was signed with the chickasaws, the richmond inquirer published the full text of a georgia judicial opinion, the Organization Called the georgia judicial convention, which was the equivalent acted as the Georgia Supreme Court in those days. In the case of a man named george tassels his english name this with a cherokee who was accused of killing another cherokee in Cherokee Nation, in northwest georgia. And because georgia had imposed its criminal law, the georgians went in and grabbed this guy, prosecuted him in state court and sentenced him to death. And tassels tried to appeal through the Georgia Court system unsuccessfully and then pleaded with the Supreme Court of the United States to help him. Marshall, within three days after the richmond inquirer ran the georgia opinion, ordered the governor of georgia to halt proceedings and send legal representatives to washington to talk about whether georgia had the authority to do any of this. The georgia governors response ill read to you, and im paraphrasing sightly. When George Gilmer, who was then the governor, received marshalls citation ordering them to appear, et cetera, called the legislature together and informed them that as far as he was concerned, orders received from the Supreme Court for the purpose of staying or interfering with the decisions of the courts of the state in the exercise of their constitutional jurisdiction would be disregarded, and any attempt to enforce such orders would be resistant with whatever force the laws had placed at his command. Thats 1830. Now, marshall might have turned tassels into what would become the cherokee cases but was denied the opportunity to because the legislature on hearing this, by after denouncing marshalls order as im quoting again a flagrant violation of georgias rights, told the governor, basically, kill him now. And the governor agreed, dispatched a rider at midnight on december 23rd, and georgia hanged george tassels, as scheduled, on christmas eve. Now, this is chilling, and i think this must have been upsetting to the chief justice, and it may well have been at that point that he resolved he had to do something to fix this problem that he had in large part created. Helpfully, there was a case in the pipeline that might allow him to do so. Four days before tassels, george tassels was hanged, john ross had informed governor George Gilmer that the cherokee were going to file suit to stop georgias imposition of its laws, and this would be the case of Cherokee Nation versus georgia. The lawyer that they had retained and this is the first of the great cherokee cases was william wirt. Some of you may know him. He spent most of his adult professional life in richmond. He served as attorney general of the United States for more years than anyone. He was two terms for james monroe and one term for john quincy adams, and then he ran for president in 1832 as the candidate of the shortlived Antimasonic Party. I dont know if there are any Antimasonic Party members here. Maybe its still around. We havent heard from them lately, i guess. But in any event, he failed in his we dont have a president wirt and died almost immediately after, so there you go. Wirt also, by the way, is famous for having written two mediocre works, according to critics. I have read both of them and i thought they were okay. One was a book called the letters of the british spy, which were serialized in one of the richmond papers, and include sort of portraits, sketches of famous richmonders and other political figures, including John Marshall. And a lot of the anecdotal information we have about marshalls character and stuff comes from wirt. The other book that he wrote that enjoyed some celebrity was a biography of Patrick Henry. And it appears that it was wirt who had henry say this is the first time this appears anywhere give me liberty or give me death at st. Johns church. And a lot of people think that was a quote wirt made up because it sounded like something henry might have said, if he had thought to. But thats the first appearance of that quote for Patrick Henry. In any event and heres another this is another sort of trivial piece on wirt, but may be sort of interesting. The story that i had always heard as an indian lawyer and law prop was that wirt represented the Cherokee Nation for free, right . This was a principle thing. I mentioned that to one of chief hoskins predecessors, smith one time, and he said, actually, weve got his bill. So, that story may anyway, well see. But, so, that may not be true, either. History. Okay. So, wirt teamed up with a guy named john sergeant, who was a frequent appearer before the Supreme Court, and filed this case in the Supreme Court, and his theory was and this is where the case will be argued georgia doesnt show. His theory was that the federal courts had jurisdiction and had original jurisdiction, which meant he didnt need to go up through the lower federal courts before he went to the Supreme Court. He could go straight there because the constitution gives the court, the Supreme Court, original jurisdiction in cases where a state is a party and georgia was a party and it also, the federal judicial power extends to suits between a state and foreign states or foreign nations. And georgias a state and the Cherokee Nation is a foreign state. Its a foreign state because state just means a political entity, and its clearly a political entity. Its got a constitution and stuff. And its foreign because none of its citizens are u. S. Citizens. So, it has to be foreign. It cant be anything else. And this is the argument that he made. And this is so, this is the argument on which jurisdiction rested. So, if the court doesnt find that to be true, then they cant consider the case on the merits, and that ended up being the big stumbling block. Heres the court at the time. One justice, justice duvall, was absent and didnt participate, but these six guys did, and they split three ways in Cherokee Nation versus georgia, over this jurisdictional question. The two guys on the right let me back up. The two guys on the left, smith thomas, and in the upper lefthand corner, joseph story, said wirts right, theyre a state, theyre foreign, theyre a foreign state, and so, we can go ahead and hear this case. The two guys on the right, Henry Baldwin and william johnson, said, no, its neither foreign nor a state. And johnson in particular said, if we, you know, if we admit these guys to be a foreign state, then every tribe is a foreign state and were just going to become an indian law court because every tribe everywhere is going to sue for something or other and were going to have to act as a tribal court and it may have been the concern of caseload that involved him. Baldwin was a jackson appointee, and were going to learn more about baldwin momentarily, but he just didnt believe in any of this. He didnt think much of tribes. Marshall and john mclean came up with a third path here. And marshall ends up writing an opinion which he calls the opinion of the court, although its really only joined by himself and one other guy, john mclean, whos another jackson appointee. And what marshall says is the Cherokee Nation are a state, but theyre not a foreign state. Theyre something different. They are and this is his phrase a domesticdependent state, or he used the phrase domesticdependent nation. What does that mean . He says, well, its like this theyre not entirely freestanding. Their relationship and im quoting now to the United States resembles that of a ward to his guardian. And this will be the source of what will later come to call the guardianward relationship doctrine between the federal government and the tribes. So, okay, well, what does that mean . Well, we dont really know, says marshall, but we know what it doesnt mean. It doesnt mean that we have jurisdiction. It means we dont have jurisdiction. And so, were going to have to kick this case back. Now, georgia celebrates, great victory, but marshall at the end of the opinion writes that in a proper case with proper parties, wed be happy to entertain the merits of the claim that the Cherokee Nation is making, and thats an invitation to Cherokee Nation to try again. And they will. The very next term, theyll try again, after the arrest of this guy, samuel worcester, who is a young new england missionary. Hes also the postmaster, federal postmaster in Cherokee Nation, which might have bought him exemption from georgia law, but he didnt make that argument. Samuel worcester and eelijah butler, who is another new england missionary, are arrested for failing to have a Georgia State license as nonnatives to be in Cherokee Nation territory. Theyre sentenced to a period of years in jail. They request relief from the Supreme Court of the United States, and John Marshall says this is the proper case with proper parties. So, worcester versus georgia decided in the 1832 term, becomes the case where we finally get a resolution of georgias claim to extraterritorial legislative jurisdiction. How does it work out . Well, this is a fascinating opinion. Part of it, the part thats probably best remembered, is the part in which marshall says, the u. S. Has a treaty with the Cherokee Nation in which its contemplated that they are a separate state, capable of entering into treaty relations with the u. S. Given that, georgia cant assert it has legislative authority over them. We have a conflict between what the federal government thinks in a treaty and what a State Government wants to do, and under the supremacy clause of the u. S. Constitution, if theres a conflict between the federal government and the state, the federal government wins. So, that might have decided it, but marshall had one more thing to do, and that was to fix the problem he had created in johnson versus mcintosh. So, the bulk of the worcester decision is devoted to essentially a rewrite, without ever mentioning it by name, of the Johnson Mcintosh discovery rule. In Johnson Mcintosh, as i mentioned earlier, the court said on discovery, what the sovereign required was ownership of the underlying title and an exclusive right to purchase, basically. What the court says in worcester is, upon discovery by european sovereigns, what the europeans acquired was an exclusive right to purchase. Period. There is no vesting of fee title in the discovering sovereign in the worcester version of the discovery doctrine rule. And he really goes out of his way to say it. Its a real its a fascinating sort of you get a fascinating insight into the way that marshall drafted, because he doesnt want to say were overruling a case we just decided. He never overruled a case that he had decided, because that would have undermined the authority of the court, the confession of error. So, instead, he says heres what the europeans got. Thats all they got. They didnt get anything else. Theres nothing more here, folks. Nothing but preemption. Thats all there is. And nobody has ever understood otherwise. And then he moves on. And it is that long, the section is three or four sentences of his, making sure we get the point that there is nothing more, without ever mentioning what the something more might be. But of course, the purpose for this is to avoid this situation recurring so that we wont have other states attempting to claim the authority to legislate over Indian Country based on their ownership of the soil because they dont after worcester versus georgia. How does this play with the other justices . Everybody joins him with two exceptions. John mclean writers a concurring opinion that i find reprehensible. Mclean basically says, yeah, yeah, all thats right, but if a tribe were so degraded that, you know, it couldnt really function, then it would be okay for a state to exercise legislative authority. And the question of whether that was proper probably wouldnt be a justiciable question, ae for the court to consider, which essentially as i read to georgia is go around and start killing people. Eventually, they will be degraded and they can be taken over and we wont stop you. Hes an opinion of one. Mclean was a perennial president ial candidate, and i suspect that he was campaigning for southern votes in this opinion. And thinking he wouldnt risk losing new england because he had agreed with the majority. Last opinion is by Henry Baldwin, and ill Say Something briefly about baldwin. Baldwin was a nut, apparently. He was a jackson appointee from pennsylvania. He wanted to be secretary of the treasury. Jacksons Vice President , john c. Calhoun, had already given that job to a South Carolina friend of his, so they put baldwin on the court to give him something to do, and it cracked, somehow. There were stories he had a running fight with the court reporter, henry wheaton. Wheaton would write letters of complaint to John Marshall and joseph story saying, you know, i was at the Court Last Night and baldwin is sitting in his room in the dark wearing nothing but his socks, and weird stuff like that. Baldwin repeatedly the reporter decisions as to who handled publication of opinions, and baldwin refused to give stuff to wheaton because he couldnt stand him for some reason. So if you read through the court reports, they conclude with mr. Justice baldwin declined to give his opinion to the reporter but he dissented, and he almost always dissented for some reason or another. What happened in worcester versus georgia, he dissented, he declined to give his opinion to the reporter, but that doesnt mean it never showed up. And i discovered this by accident when i was researching this book on these cases. And i can tell you, this basically had to do with my being really tired and pushing a button on a microphone, holding it for too long and it was one of the pages shot forward and i was looking, and i think it was the washington globe from the week or so after the worcester versus georgia opinion came out, and i shot ahead, i dont even remember how long. And the screen froze. I jumped back sort of in shock at the noise. And there it said, the opinion of mr. Justice baldwin in the case of worcester versus georgia. And i started reading it, and it was nuts and it was long. It was Something Like 50 or 60 pages long. And so, i ran home because i thought, this isnt i never i didnt know this thing existed. And i did a lot of investigating and i called the Supreme Court and stuff, and it turns out, im probably the first human maybe ever to have read the entirety of mr. Justice baldwins dissenting opinion in worcester versus georgia, and if youre interested in it and i do not recommend this but if youre interested in it, the Supreme Court Historical Society published it. And they were excited. It was an unpublished and unknown Supreme Court opinion from a landmark case. Its basically, what baldwins position was, if memory serves, was that the writ of error process, which we inherited from england, which is the process by which you take appeals from lower court, required that files be sent by the clerk of court of the lower court, and this file had been sent by the chief judge of the lower court. And so, what should happen is it should be sent back, and the clerk of court should get it and send it up again, and then we could decide it. And he took 55 or so pages to say that. Its this long history of the writ of error process, if anybodys interested. There are occasional humorous this is one line and this is what you get for reading every word where he says Something Like, though some may think me mad with the flights of fancy of spring, and its like, ha, ha, ha. And youre thinking, yeah, ha, ha, ha, yeah, kind of. Anyway. So he goes on. But what makes baldwin a hero, in my judgment, after all this, is when i discovered the newspaper was publishing it and they told us why it was so late. They said, mr. Justice baldwin declined to give his opinion to the newspaper for publication until some period had passed because he didnt want the georgians to have any grounds for refusing to obey the expected Supreme Court mandate to let those two guys out of jail. And thats heroic, i think. Even though he disagreed, he didnt want to give them anything to hang on. He was a team player for the court, despite his eccentricities and the fact that he was a jackson appointee which made him more heroic in my opinion. I mention that because i think hes a bit of a hero of mine. I dont think people know enough about him. Now, what did jackson say . Well, famously, this is the point at which history records that jackson says, John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it. In truth, he almost certainly didnt say that. Thats a quote from horace greely, a bit like the Patrick Henry quote later, but he may have thought it. And it certainly proved that he did nothing to help out in the early days with the anticipated mandate. A mandate would have been an order from the Supreme Court to the Georgia Courts to order the jailer to let these guys out of jail, but before that was issued, the Supreme Court broke up. So, it was going to be the end of the summer before a mandate would issue, which gave georgia time to decide what it wanted to do. And initially, it will not surprise you in the least to learn that georgia said, hell no, right . Were not going to let these guys out of jail. Were going to keep them there. And theres some indication that the Jackson Administration wouldnt have done anything to force them to do otherwise, at least initially. The problem is that South Carolina was watching this whole thing develop, and South Carolina decided its time to act against the federal tariff. So, that summer, they cooked up the nullification ordinance, which some of you may remember. South carolina believed that the federal government did not have the power to pass a protective tariff, which was hurting imports coming into South Carolina, which produce nothing but indigo and rice, and you can only get so far in life with indigo and rice. They needed stuff like clothing and, you know. So, they were opposed to a high protective tariff. Nullification ordinance said, since we cant push our new tariff or repeal this tariff in congress, we dont have the votes, lets adopt this view the constitution is a compact among the states. Were a state. Were a party. We get to interpret it, as anybody else does. And so, we dont want to impose our interpretation on anybody else. Were kindly folk. But if we believe that your federal interpretation is wrong, then we have the right as a party to the deal to nullify the impact of a federal statute passed pursuant to your understanding, which means you can collect the tariff anywhere you want, except South Carolina. And they go even farther. And if you try to, well send you to jail. They made it a state crime for federal tax collectors to try and collect tariffs. They made it a crime for judges to try and enforce tariff collection. They put you in jail, et cetera. And they thought they could do this that summer because Andrew Jackson was letting georgia stand up to the Supreme Court. South carolinas action, i think, pushed this into a whole new playing field. Andrew jackson, who i think probably wouldnt have cared if the missionaries had died in prison, was not about to preside over the dissolution of the union, which is what the nullification doctrine portended, push through the force act, which basically empowered him to send the army down to hang everybody. And it being jackson, that was a threat that was taken seriously. And South Carolina repealed the nullification ordinance, at which point jackson got on the 1832 equivalent of the phone, called the governor of georgia, said you let those missionaries out of jail. And they hemmed and hawed. And at the last possible moment, the day that the Supreme Court reconvened, the day that a mandate would have had to issue and we would have had a constitutional crisis, the governor of georgia let the two missionaries out of jail. And so that sort of ended at least the story of worcester versus georgia with a victory for the tribe, it appears. Yay. But unfortunately, history had sort of one more wrinkle in store, and thats that jackson decided theres no way im going to let the cherokees stay now. And so, he started a campaign, political and press campaign, to get rid of them. Lewis cass was his secretary of war. Cass had already been tasked with negotiating removal treaties. He had persuaded or the government had persuaded the choctaws to remove, as i mentioned, in september 1830. Now he went to work on the chickasaws and the creeks, convinced them that this worcester decision was not going to stand, theres no way this could be the law. Johnsonmcintosh was the law, the state acted properly, and you guys better get out and take the same deal that the choctaws did, and the creeks agreed, a majority did. And all of these tribes, by the way, left remnants behind, groups that refused to move, including the creek band who are represented here today, but also the florida seminoles who were subject to this, the mississippi, the eastern cherokee and the mississippi choctaws were groups of the tribe that didnt leave. But, so, cass engineered those. Cass wrote a piece for publication called examination of the cherokee question, which got published in newspapers all over the country, which was the Jackson Administrations argument that worcester had been wrongly decided. And so, things started to appear to be turning, at least with tribes that werent the cherokee. The cherokees refused to go anywhere still. They had a court victory. They didnt have to go anywhere. This map shows you can see chickasaw. Those are the dates of the removal treaties. Choctaws 2830, chickasaws 1832. But the cherokees, no, theyre still there. Thats a later date up there. So, why did the cherokees go . And ill tell you what i think finally drove the cherokees to depart. Georgia is or rather, the Supreme Court justices are getting old by this time. Marshalls last term is the 1835 term. The cherokees will hold out that long. But it isnt marshalls death i think that triggers this, its william johnsons. William johnson dies in 1834. And that leaves a seat. Jackson fills it with this guy, james wayne, who had been a georgia jurist and a vigorous proponent of indian removal. Then the same day that wayne is sworn in, Justice Gabriel duvall resigns, which opens up another seat for a jackson appointment. So hes already got one, two, this is three, this will be four justices on a court of seven. Duvalls resignation makes clear that theres no turning back. The majority of the Supreme Court are going to be jackson appointees pro removal. And we all know about the politics of Supreme Court appointments. The cherokees send two delegations to washington in 1835, after wayne is sworn in and after duvall is resigned and the open seat is in process of being filled with yet another jackson appointee. One group is john ross and his national party, who are the elected government, and they show up to say, were staying, right . But theres a second group headed by subchief named john ridge, who i think, reading the writing on the wall, makes the call, lets get the best deal we can. And so, the ridge faction, which is known in cherokee history as the treaty party or the treaty faction, though unelected and operating illegally under cherokee law agree in the spring to a removal treaty that will have signed in final form by that faction in the capital in december 1835, and its that treaty in which the Cherokee Nation, again, illegally executed under cherokee law will leave its lands and move west. And this is the beginning then of this complicated story of the trail of tears migration for the cherokees and of the trails of tears migrations for the other tribes. Thank you. [ applause ] now, i think do we want to do a minute of q a . Okay. Kevin and i are going to tag team q a for just a few minutes, since i went a little longer than expected. Theres so much to cover. Thats right. All right. So, there are microphones in the aisle, if anyone has any questions. Questions are not required, by the way, but if you have any questions. In the early 1800s, land anywhere, presumably, was fairly cheap. Was there any possibility that money could be gotten together and buy land for cherokees and other Indian Tribes and give them title to the land they bought and avoid the problem . Well, thats kind of what happened with removal, right, that land was purchased from tribes indigenous to what would be the indian territory by the United States and then given to the cherokees and they would own the title. So thats a bit of i think what happened is what youre saying, yeah. I just wanted to say, my second great grandfather and his brother were also jailed with worcester. Oh, good. I want to talk with you later and get i wondered if you knew anything about that. I dont. And actually, these are stories that arent widely known, and one of my missions in life is to get more publicity for the other folks, like butler. When they filed the claim in 1842, worcester wrote letters and ill be happy to give you a copy id love them. Describing exactly what happened to them in their imprisonment, how they were treated. I would love that. Its very interesting. Thank you. Thank you. I understand that the cherokees had acclimated to their particular settlements and where they were in the country. A lot of them were trading in commerce and were part of society, so to speak. The question is, were the indians so hated and despised that we as a nation couldnt consider offering them citizenship and given them an option of being a citizen of georgia or north carolina, instead of moving away to another property that the country owned . So, the question is, how did they how did they communicate . Or were the indians actually taken advantage of . Yes. Im sure that was the earlier part of your question, yeah. So, citizenship actually will become a deal in some of the removal treaties. You know, you give us your land and it wasnt state citizenship, it was United States citizenship. Theres actually a group who lived whose lands are just east of where i am in central oklahoma, the citizen pottawatomie nation. And the citizen part is, that is a part of their removal deal, they were granted u. S. Citizenship. But i dont think it was so much so, there are two parties were talking about here. So, i cant really speak to any sort of collective congressional animus towards native peoples, but i can tell you there are a lot of native peoples who werent particularly interested in United States citizenship. Its an unmixed blessing, right . They were citizens of their own nations and happy to sort of live life as citizens of Cherokee Nation or chickasaw nation or whatever. There are individual cases of sort of tribal citizens exactly as you say, sort of becoming acculturated through commercial relations and maybe through intermarriage who did individually come and become citizens of states and sort of leave their tribal communities. But i think, especially in those early days, there wasnt any real appetite for that from the tribes themselves, and there was probably a fair amount of you know, hatred, maybe, probably in a lot of instances is dead on, but also jealousy, you know, desire for property and a real desire to just move people out. So, its a very complicated story, but you raise a really interesting question. Some of you may not know, when tribal citizens got United States citizenship universally by act of congress, and it may surprise you, 1924. 1924. And there were some states that didnt grant state citizenship to tribal citizens until the 1960s. I would just add on the nonlegal side of citizenship that the earlier period that i was describing, the 1780s, 1790s, the image you saw in the washington piece medal, essentially native americans adopting all of the practices, everything but the legal conception of citizenship, and sort of adopting agriculture, western agriculture and practicing those, but that was all over the place. People had that sort of sense that that would happen and that they would essentially acclimate and become transformed in that way. But also, as henry knox said, within 50 years there wont be all that many left anyway. So, theres a weird sort of sense of will native peoples acclimate . And again, they used the term civilization all the time. Or will they disappear or will they move west . All of those things are sort of overlapping and people have a sense that all of those things are simultaneously possible, and obviously, none of them could have happened simultaneously. Its an interesting world there in that earlier period of what will happen. One more question down here. This will be the last one. Two things, really. One, the titles that were supposedly given to the american indians, did they include mineral rights at that time . And also, would you say that georgias position against the federal government, was that sort of the beginning of the states rights kind of idea, do you think, or yes. Do you want to talk about that . Go ahead. Question for a law professor. So, yeah. So, the second one, yeah. So, this is georgia was one of the earliest loud blasts of states rights it wasnt the first. You have going back to the 1820s, virginia made noises after a case called cohens versus virginia about states you go back to jefferson, the protests. But the georgia position did provoke or came close to provoking a major constitutional crisis. Mineral rights is a great question. I think there was no legal resolution of that question. We feature programs exploring our nations past. Youre watching American History tv. 48 hours of programming on American History every weekend on cspan3. Follow us on twitter cspanhistory for information on our schedule and keep up with the latest history news. Up next on American History tv, trail of Tears Association president jack baker talks about the forced relocation of native americans in the early 19th century. Mr. Baker, a member of the Cherokee Nation, discusses his familys involuntary move to oklahoma. And it now gives me great pleasure to introduce jack baker. A former member of the triable council of the Cherokee Nation where he served for 11 years representing the cherokee citizens living outside of the Cherokee Nation. The National President of the trail of Tears Association. He is also the current president of the oklahoma Historical Society and serves on a number of other boards. He has done Extensive Research c
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