Creating the United States

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Supreme Court Upholds Cherokee Dispossession

Supreme Court Upholds Cherokee Dispossession (118.01.00)

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In a landmark case on the rights of Native Americans, Cherokee Nation vs. The State of Georgia, the Supreme Court refused to order an injunction against Georgia’s extensions of state laws over the Cherokee Indian Nation. The effect was to force the Cherokee to abandon their lands and move to the Federal Indian Reservation west of the Mississippi. Justice Smith Thompson (1768–1843), wrote a dissenting opinion, which was vindicated two years later by the Supreme Court ruling that states could not arbitrarily extend their laws over Indian Nations, but this was too late to save the Georgia Cherokee from “The Trail of Tears” to their western reservation.

(Transcription)

Entertaining different views of the question before us, and having arrived at a different conclusion from that of a majority of the Court...


In a landmark case on the rights of Native Americans, <em>Cherokee Nation vs. The State of Georgia</em>, the Supreme Court refused to order an injunction against Georgia’s extensions of state laws over the Cherokee Indian Nation. The effect was to force the Cherokee to abandon their lands and move to the Federal Indian Reservation west of the Mississippi. Justice Smith Thompson (1768&ndash;1843), wrote a dissenting opinion, which was vindicated two years later by the Supreme Court ruling that states could not arbitrarily extend their laws over Indian Nations, but this was too late to save the Georgia Cherokee from “The Trail of Tears” to their western reservation.