Cheorkee Indians :: essays research papers

MARSHALL, C. J. This bill sticker is brought by the Cherokee democracy, praying an injunction to restrain the conjure up of Georgia from the execution of original laws of that state, which, as is alleged, go directly to annihilate the Cherokee as a political society, and to seize for the use of Georgia, the lands of the nation which have been assured to them by the fall in States, in solemn treaties repeatedly made and still in force.If courts were permitted to baffle their sympathies, a case better calculated to excite them can only be imagined. A people, once numerous, powerful, and truly independent, found by our ancestors in the quiet and uncontrolled possession of an ample domain, gradually sinking on a lower floor our superior policy, our arts and our arms, have yielded their lands, by successive treaties, each of which contains a solemn guarantee of the residue, until they retain no more of their formerly all-encompassing territory than is deemed necessary to their co mfortable subsistence. To preserve this remnant, the present application is made. beforehand we can look into the merits of the case, a preliminary inquiry presents itself. Has this court jurisdiction of the cause? The third article of the constitution describes the extent of the judicial power. The siemens section closes an enumeration of the cases to which it is extended, with "controversies between a state or citizens thereof, and alien states, citizens or subjects." A subsequent clause of the same section gives the autocratic court original jurisdiction, in all cases in which a state shall be a party. The party defendant may then unimpeachably be sued in this court. May the plaintiff sue in it? Is the Cherokee nation a foreign state, in the sense in which that term is use in the constitution? The counsel for the plaintiffs have maintained the affirmative of this proffer with great earnestness and ability. So much of the argument as was intend to prove the character of the Cherokees as a state, as a different political society, separated from others, capable of managing its own affairs and governing itself, has in the opinion of a majority of the judges, been completely successful. They have been uniformly enured as a state, from the settlement of our country. The numerous treaties made with them by the coupled States, recognise them as a people capable of maintaining the relations of stillness and war, of being responsible in their political character for any ravishment of their engagements, or for any aggression committed on the citizens of the United States, by any individual of their community.