A fraudulent minority treaty was used to justify Cherokee removal

Evidence

With Andrew Jackson in the presidency, federal and state proponents of Native expulsion worked in tandem to pressure the Cherokees into leaving the South for Indian Territory, western lands acquired through the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Convinced that exile was inevitable, a small cohort of elite Cherokee men (mostly enslavers) signed the Treaty of New Echota in 1835, relinquishing the people’s claim to their remaining land in the Southeast. The treaty was deemed fraudulent by the Cherokees’ elected principal chief, John Ross (also an enslaver), who had not authorized these men to represent the nation. Cherokees organized a campaign of legal and political resistance as hundreds of white Northerners flooded Congress with petitions rejecting the idea of removing Native people from their lands. Nevertheless, the Senate ratified the treaty. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 497

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in origin stories as infrastructure — here the broader scaffolding of white land acquisition that American slavery-based development rested within.