1. The official speaking on behalf of the Cherokee nation started his speech with “We are aware” (409). This is important because the Native American people once considered “noble savages” (152) were now, thanks to Thomas Jefferson and his followers, educated and well versed in “white culture” (153). The newly enlightened Indian population of the Cherokee nation now had the means to argue their case in the U.S. judicial system and not by traditional methods of warfare. In addition to the opposition of removal the speaker also brings up the right to remain on their land, “We have a perfect and original right to remain without interruption or molestation” (409). Essentially the speaker is referring to a Supreme Court ruling, Johnson v. M’Intosh. In which it was determined that “… tribes which occupied land were, at the time of discovery, no longer sovereign and had no property rights but rather merely held a right of occupancy” (18-20).
The language present in this speech is well planned and executed with the intention of creating awareness and understanding of the magnitude …show more content…
At the time of this speech and for nearly thirty years prior, the Cherokee people maintained a tribal nation within the State of Georgia as well as in other states within the newly formed United States. Georgia experiencing a land shortage at the height of a gold rush looked for legal opportunities to remove the Indian tribes from its borders. In 1823 that opportunity came in the form of the Supreme Court ruling, Johnson v. M’Intosh. This occupancy right could be sold or transferred to the same discovering sovereign and not foreign nations. Over twenty years prior to the Supreme Court ruling, Georgia had ceded its western land claims to the United States, land it had previously acquired through British Charters. Through these two opportunities the State of Georgia, back by the United States government helped catapult the process of removing the Native Americans from “…white settlement”