Native American Women Urge Resistance to Removal Policy

CHEROKEE WOMEN, Petition (1821 [1831?])

Andrew Jackson saw himself as the protector of the people, but his treatment of Native Americans reveals the limits of his vision. Jackson justified his policy of Indian removal, which resulted in the infamous Trail of Tears, as necessary to “protect” Indians from white encroachment by removing them from eastern lands and resettling them in the interior. Native Americans saw the move differently. In this petition, published in 1831 in The Cherokee Phoenix, a tribal newspaper, Cherokee women denounced the Indian removal policy.

October 17, 1821 [1831?]

To the Committee and Council,

We the females, residing in Salequoree and Pine Log, believing that the present difficulties and embarrassments under which this nation is placed demands a full expression of the mind of every individual, on the subject of emigrating to Arkansas, would take upon ourselves to address you. Although it is not common for our sex to take part in public measures, we nevertheless feel justified in expressing our sentiment on any subject where our interest is as much at stake as any other part of the community.

We believe the present plan of the General Government to effect our removal West of the Mississippi, and thus obtain our lands for the use of the State of Georgia, to be highly oppressive, cruel and unjust. And we sincerely hope there is no consideration which can induce our citizens to forsake the land of our fathers of which they have been in possession from time immemorial, and thus compel us, against our will, to undergo the toils and difficulties of removing with our helpless families hundreds of miles to unhealthy and unproductive country. We hope therefore the Committee and Council will take into deep consideration our deplorable situation, and do everything in their power to avert such a state of things. And we trust by a prudent course their transactions with the General Government will enlist in our behalf the sympathies of the good people of the United States.

The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History with Documents, ed. Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005), 134.

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