Worcester v. Georgia: The Cherokee Win Jackson Ignored and Berry's Ferry

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The cotton gin and the 1828 Georgia gold rush made roughly 25 million acres held by the Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw and Choctaw nations a prize for white settlers, and writers like James Fenimore Cooper spread the myth of the vanishing Indian. Andrew Jackson made the Indian Removal Act of 1830 his top priority, and historians still debate whether he acted from expansionism or a belief that removal would save the tribes. In 1832 missionary Samuel Worcester, jailed for living on Cherokee land without a Georgia license, won at the Supreme Court when Chief Justice John Marshall ruled Georgia's laws void there. Jackson refused to enforce the ruling, needing Georgia's support during the Nullification Crisis with South Carolina.

The nations answered in different ways. The Muscogee proved a removal treaty fraudulent, only to be driven out by Georgia militia; the Chickasaw bought land from the Choctaw; the Choctaw signed the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek and endured an icy winter journey that killed an estimated 2,500 to 6,000. The Seminoles fought a decade long war in the Everglades. A Cherokee minority led by Elias Boudinot and Major Ridge signed the Treaty of New Echota, and despite John Ross's petition with 16,000 signatures the Senate ratified it by one vote. In 1838 General Winfield Scott's 7,000 troops rounded up the Cherokee, and about 4,000 died in camps and on the march.

• Choctaw rations on the steamboats fell to a handful of boiled corn, one turnip and two cups of heated water a day.
• Alexis de Tocqueville witnessed the Choctaw removal in Memphis, and a chief in Little Rock first used the phrase trail of tears and death.
• The Second Seminole War cost the U.S. roughly $20 million, and the Seminoles never signed a peace treaty.
• Ferry operators on the Ohio River charged the Cherokee a dollar a head, against 12 cents for white settlers, while families sheltered at Mantle Rock.
• Elite members of the nations held enslaved Black people, who were forced west on the same trails.