Here’s a first hand account you will appreciate. Many of the Cherokee in No. Georgia (not so of others) lived as aristocrats, many educated in the North East. Some had homes designed by European architects.
The circumstances and fate of the Cherokee in their homelands of Georgia is best described by Too-qua-stee, who was known as DeWitt Clinton Duncan, native to the area and the brother of Rev. Walter Duncan. He was New England educated as were many of his Cherokee contemporaries and later became a lawyer and a teacher of English, Latin and Greek at the Cherokee Male Seminary. In the “Story of the Cherokees’ he wrote:
” The Cherokees, from time to time, sold portions of their territory to the whites in the hope of saving by that expedient small part, at least, of their ancient heritage as a permanent home for themselves and their children.
....The Cherokees made the question of civilization a subject of deliberation in the council of the nation. ‘Shall the Cherokee adopt the habits, customs, and institutions of the white race, or shall they continue in the way of their forefathers?’ That was the question. They determined in favor of civilization.
Accordingly, they organized a civil government founded on the three fundamental ideas: Law, Law understood, and Law executed. The rights and liberties of the citizens were suitably guaranteed; religion was made free; morality encouraged and education provided for. With the greatest unanimity and most commendable zeal, they addressed themselves to the employments of civilized life, and pleasant homes, mingled with churches and schoolhouses, sprang up and adorned the land.
They had begun to appreciate and enjoy the blessings of home, and to love wife and children with a more refined devotion. The land, which they inhabited, was no more their cherished ‘hunting ground’, but their country, which they had learned to love with all the fervor of an enlightened patriotism. Their increased intelligence enabled them to discern more accurately the distinctions between justice and injustice, while their moral sensibilities, vitalized by the influence of civilization, experienced a new delight in the triumphs of the former, and flamed with an unwonted indignation at the invasions of the latter. In their estimation, the white men were no more, as in ancient times they had been supposed to be, ‘children of the sun’, but were only men, like themselves, capable of evil as well as good. To be, at this period, driven from their country, endeared by so many improved causes of attachment, and sent to new and untried abodes in the western wilderness far beyond the Mississippi, was a prospect, which filled the heart of the nation with sensations of chilly horror.
..... They cried to their ‘Great Father at Washington’, but his answers never rose to anything higher than hypocritical expressions of parental regard for his ‘Red children’. Georgia well understood this bias of the Administration.......’The Cherokees must go,’ was her motto; it had been whispered in her ear at the White House. ‘The Cherokees must go’ was caught up and echoed by the intruders. ‘The Cherokees must go,’ was the war cry throughout the state.
An act was hurried through the forms of legislation having in view the two-fold purpose of driving the Cherokees out of their country and putting Georgia in possession of their lands. The statute abolished the Cherokee body politic, annulled all Cherokee laws, and made it a penal offense for any person to enforce, or attempt to enforce, a judgment or process of any Cherokee court. It extended the laws of Georgia over the Cherokee country, and punished all white men with imprisonment who should be found remaining therein without first taking the oath of allegiance to the state government and to support her in her measures against the Cherokees.
It also provided for a survey of the Cherokee lands and for dividing them up ‘by lot’ in homesteads to such loyal citizens as might see fit to venture out and make improvements in the wilds of the newly acquired territory.....By its terms, no Indian was allowed to bear witness against a white man in any of the courts of the state; and if any Indian should be detected in digging gold, except in the employ of a loyal citizen of the state, he was liable to be arrested and punished with imprisonment.
To put this oppressive law into execution, the militia of the state were called out, armed and mounted. Dr. Elizar Butler and Rev. S. A. Worcester, who were in the service of the American Board among the Cherokees, were the most distinguished of these recusant missionaries. They were arrested by militia on charge of being found in the Cherokee country contrary to the terms of the statute.... The prisoners were pinioned. For each, they prepared a rope. One end they tied around the prisoner’s neck, the other to the pummel of a saddle. The ruffians then rode away, while these good men trotted along behind them on the way to jail. They were tried, found guilty of violating the statute and sentenced to the penitentiary. They served out their time and were discharged, and returning to the Cherokees in their new home west of the Mississippi, resumed their labors. They gave their lives to the Cherokees, and their works live after them and bless their memory.
If a ‘lot,’ happened to cover an occupied improvement, the owner was thrown out of possession on private responsibility. Such personal property as was found upon the premises, especially the implements of husbandry and the mechanical arts were appropriated by the newcomer. The poultry was dressed and enjoyed by him, his wife and little ones. The hogs were remarked and the cattle re-branded in the name of the white man, and went to augment his patrimony.
Two horsemen now came into view far down the highway in the direction of the white settlement. They were armed with rifles certainly and doubtless with other weapons that are visible only in cases of emergency. They were white men. It was a good hit for them, for their ‘lot’ covered the man’s premises completely. They were coming to see their newly acquired property. The first part of the improvement that came under their notice was the pasture in which the man’s horses were grazing. Here they loitered and looked for a time with evident satisfaction. At length, they moved on. The orchard next attracted their attention. Here they estimated the number of fruit trees and tried to take in their quality and variety. -
By and by, they came to the great gate that stood near the barn. One of them here dismounted, flung the gate open, remounted and they both rode in. On they went, inspecting, prospecting-slowly onward till at last they were lost from sight in the expanse of the farm. They arrived at the same great gate and passed out still wearing an impenetrable air of inquiry and investigation.
Here one of the white men drew from his pocket and read a certificate showing that he had won the man’s premises at Georgia’s infamous lottery box. They then rode away in the direction they had come.
The man’s dark eye followed them as they went. His deep sense of wrong had hung itself in shadows upon his swarthy brow, and in the tones of one whose spirit, oppressed by a power which it cannot repel, finds its last support in hopeless feelings of contempt, he said:
‘The impudence of a white man! Specimens of a glorious civilization! Those obdurate villains have the hardihood to say that God has a peculiar liking for them and their race on account of what they know and what they are; that He gives them the whole world for a possession, and commissions them on errands of rapine and murder against us as He did Joshua against the poor Canaanites. If that be so, it is wonderful how such great meanness can be so popular in heaven, and be entrusted with such fearful prerogatives over the rest of mankind! Away with such civilization! -Nations are rarely human when they are not afraid to play the beast.’
A fortnight passed and two emigrant wagons rolled into view. They were attended by the same two white men that had a few days before explored the man’s premises. Their wives and their children were with them, also their hired hands. They came trudging, dusty, dirty, evidently weary. A long way they had doubtless traveled. Step by step their teams tugged on, freighted to the bows of their wagons’ white arching roofs with all the precious prospects of a new and happy home in the beautiful land of the Cherokees. On they came, soberly and directly, tending toward the big gate just back of the barn. They arrived and halted before its majesty. There was no god in all the Cherokee nation that commanded the reverence of those impious white men like that gigantic gate. They swung it wide open upon its ponderous hinges, though, and in they drove.
In the meantime, the man himself had received a threatening notification that his own well-being was conditioned upon his own gentle behavior, and that in case he should attempt any interference, his right to life and liberty would be deemed forfeited.
He brought an action… in the superior courts of the state of Georgia.....In the meantime, a system of persecution was inaugurated by the intruders, and daily the man and his family felt their sensibilities galled by insulting epithets and brutal maledictions. Their national pride was outraged by heaping contemptuous ridicule upon their name and race.
At length, the case came on for trial. ‘Bring on your witnesses, Mr. Plaintiff,’ came the injunction from the bench.
“Hold!” cried a voice from the defense; “we object to the competency of those witnesses. Those witnesses, your honor, are all Cherokee Indians; this defendant is a white man, and the statute of our state provides that no Indian shall be allowed to testify against a white man in any of the courts of the state of Georgia.’
‘The objection is well taken,’ responded the court, ‘and must be sustained.’ ‘Have you no white persons to testify for you, Mr. Plaintiff?’
‘None, your honor.’
‘Your case, then, must be dismissed at your own cost, and it is so ordered.’
Years have since rolled away. He and his heroic wife have long since found rest in death. The children still live, and that malignant power, falsely called civilization, is to this day still at their heels demanding their room or their ruin.”
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Preserved from history is one actual formal notice delivered to a Cherokee citizen to vacate his home as per a lot drawing. It states:
“It becomes my duty to give you notice to evacuate the lot of land No. 125, in the 14th District, of the third section, and to give the house now occupied by you to Col. William Handen, or whoever he may put forward to take possession of the same and that you may have ample time to prepare for the same, I will allow you until the 28th day of this month to do the same. “
****from the soon to be released book, “Jesus Wept”.
Appreciated.