Untitled - the Digital Library of Georgia

558 GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS
the writ in question.' The governor was authorized to send an express
to Hall County to have the sheriff execute the laws without fail in the
case of Tassel." *
"On the day appointed for the hearing, counsel for the complainant
filed a supplementary bill, citing as further grievance of the Cherokees
that, in accordance with a resolution of the Georgia Legislature and in
defiance of a writ of error allowed by the Chief Justice of the United
States, the man called Corn Tassel, or George Tassel, had actually
been hanged by the Georgia sheriff; that the Georgia Legislature had
passed additional laws of an obnoxious character, providing for a sur
vey preparatory to the disposition of the Cherokee lands, forbidding
the exercise of powers under the authority of the Cherokee Indians and
their laws, and authorizing the Governor to take possession of all gold
mines in the territory; and that the Governor of Georgia had stationed
an armed force of Georgians at the mines to enforce Georgia laws.
No counsel appeared for the State of Georgia.' The opinion of the
court, as rendered by Chief Justice Marshall, granted that the counsel
for the plaintiffs had established that the Cherokee Nation was a State
and had been treated as a State since the settlement of the colonies;
but a majority of the court decided that an Indian tribe or nation in
the United States was not a foreign State in the sense of the Constitu
tion and could not maintain an action in the courts of the United States.
The motion for injunction was therefore denied."
But this decision did not make an end to trouble in the Cherokee
Nation. There were a number of missionaries laboring among the In
dians at this time who boldly defied the sovereignty of the state, not
only by remaining in the Cherokee Nation without a license, but by
making themselves perniciously active in political affairs. These mis
sionaries fomented discontent and dissension among the Indians, and
were largely instrumental. in creating a sentiment hostile to removal.
We will let Mr. Phillips, who has specialized in this particular field of
research, give us the particulars. Says Mr. Phillips: t
"There were at this time resident among the Cherokees twelve or
more Christian missionaries and assistants, some of them maintained by
the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. These
men were already suspected of interfering in political matters and
would probably have been made to feel the weight of the law without
inviting attention to themselves, but they did not passively await its
action. .They held a meeting at New Echota, December 29, 1830, in
which they passed resolutions protesting against the extension of the
laws of Georgia over the Indians and asserting that they considered the
removal of the Cherokees an event most earnestly to be deprecated. J
After sufficient time had elapsed for the intruders to have taken their
departure, if so disposed, the Georgia guard for the Cherokee territory
arrested such white men as were found unlawfully residing therein.
Among the number arrested were two missionaries, Messrs. Worcester
and Thompson. On writ of habeas corpus, ,they were taken before the
* "Nile's Register," Vol. 39, pp. 333-339.
t " Georgia and State Rights," U. B. Phillips, 79-81.
t "Georgians," Gilmer, p. 381; "White's Historical Collections," p. 139; the
Athenian, January 25, 1831.