E183 The Case of George Corn Tassel

Everyone, and welcome to. Then again, in today's episode, we delve into the story of George Corn Tassel, a Cherokee man who was charged with the murder of another Cherokee man in Cherokee Territory in the 1830s. And despite the incident happening in Cherokee territory involving only Cherokee people, he was convicted by the state of Georgia and hung in Gainesville, Georgia. Now, this led to a series of legal battles that reached the United States Supreme Court in Worcester versus Georgia. Hi, everyone. I'm Liba Beecham, director of operations at the Northeast Georgia History Center. Welcome to our podcast. Then again, my guest today is Dr. Michael Gagnon, historian, professor, and author, who has conducted extensive research on Cherokee removal, Cherokee court cases, and many, many other topics that we look forward to exploring in later episodes. Now, today we are going to dive into the details of the Corn Tassel story and what led the state of Georgia to intervene in Cherokee affairs. Dr. Gagnon, welcome to.

Then again, thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here.

So before we talk about Corn Tassel, can you sort of set the stage for us? What is the context that we should know about the relationship between Georgia and the Cherokee Nation at this time in the early 18 hundreds?

Well, the context starts with the compact that the state of Georgia made in 18 two with the federal government. The federal government took over Georgia's Western territories, what is today Alabama and Mississippi, in part because Georgia, the entire Georgia legislature, got caught taking a bribe in the Yazoo. Land fraud, which is an entirely different.

Story to talk about.

However, what comes out of this is Georgia agrees to give up the land in exchange for the federal government taking over any financial responsibility that comes out of the fraud. That's the main reason Georgia gave it up. But they also got the promise that the federal government would extinguish Native American claims to the land within the current boundaries of GeorgiA as quickly as possible. Now, they had a disagreement over how quickly as possible would be. The federal government meant that they would do it peaceably, and when the natives were ready to give it up, they would take it and they would encourage them along the way. But they weren't going to force the natives. That was not their plan. At least in 18 two. The official program of the federal government was to civilize the natives by teaching Christianity, sedentary agriculture, partable property, and in addition to that, patriarchy, because Native Americans didn't have that. Okay, so go forward a few years. Sequoia develops a written language for the Cherokee. Notice I did not say alphabet, right? Yeah, maybe syllabi.

Yeah.

So there are about 85 syllables. I don't know the exact number. I'm not an expert on that, but there are about 85 syllables in the Cherokee language that make up every word of the Cherokee. And Sequoia created a syllabary, symbols for each of those. And apparently it was a fairly easy system to learn. And within ten years, all the leadership of the Cherokee Nation could write in Cherokee, read and write in Cherokee. And by 1829, they have a Cherokee newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, that is a bilingual newspaper in both English and in Cherokee. Every story is in both languages. The first thing that they're going to print when they open is the new written constitution that the Cherokee write in the summer of 1828. And it not only lays out what the different parts of the Cherokee government were, the principal chief is the chief executive, the National Council is their legislative branch, and then the lawgivers are their judicial branch, and what all the duties are. It's very similar to the United States Constitution. The thing that really upset Georgia was that they also defined the actual boundaries of where the Cherokee Nation was. And so for your listeners in perhaps Hall county or Gwinnett county, they were on the frontier of the Cherokee Nation. The Chattahoochee river was the southeastern boundary of the Cherokee Nation. And as you go down into Gwinnett county, approximately the boundary between Forsyth county and Fulton county today was the boundary, more or less, of the Cherokee Nation and the Creek Nation up until 1826. In 1826, the Creek had been removed under an illegal treaty, the Treaty of Indian Springs of 1824, in which William Macintosh basically gave away all the Creek lands in Georgia because his first cousin was the governor of Georgia.

What was that process of removal like, if you could briefly share for the Creek?

Well, what happens with the Creek? First of all, McIntosh was told if he signed this treaty, he would be executed for treason. In fact, the lawgivers for the Creek Nation were standing outside the negotiating cabin. It didn't have any windows to speak of, know, no screens and no glass. It was just open windows. And they're yelling in at him, hey, Macintosh, if you sign that treaty, we're going to kill you. And he signs it anyway. And within a month, they carried out their sentence. They executed him, including everyone else who was on his plantation. His plantation was located in what is today Carroll county, and he had been promised that he would have a private reservation for he and his family in perpetuity, as well as being granted Georgia citizenship, so that he wouldn't have second class citizenship, as most Native Americans were offered by the state of Georgia. So what happened was the US Senate ratifies the treaty because they don't care that it's an illegal treaty, illegally gotten so long as the United States gets the land.

And when you say illegal, does that go against U. S. Law? When you say illegal? Or is this going against the Creek's policies and law?

Well, the Creek said you have to be authorized by the Creek National Council in order to give away land. Anyone who sells Creek land is guilty of treason. So they had their own laws, they had their own process. But traditionally, European powers didn't care about what the natives thought. For instance, if you'Ve ever heard that Manhattan was sold for $24 in beads, well, guess what? They didn't buy it from the people who actually owned it. It was a different group of Native Americans who scammed the Dutch in order to sell Manhattan to the Dutch. They were actually from Long Island.

I had no idea.

Yeah. So European powers frequently just, they would get a treaty with whoever would sign it and then enforce it on the natives saying, well, you signed it. And since most Native cultures didn't have a written language, they couldn't argue with it.

Yeah, that's really important.

And that is why Sequoia developed a written language and that is why the Cherokee developed a written constitution. And that is why Georgia freaked out. We were going to steal that land fair and know. And now that you've defined it in writing, well, that can't be. And that's when Georgia starts to assert their dominance over the Cherokee and assert by law. Georgia passes a law that says, from here on out, the Cherokee Nation is now under Georgia law. The Cherokee Nation is not a true government. They are not a sovereign nation. They are a mere community.

Now, were they deemed a sovereign nation before this? How were they regarded?

Well, there are a lot of treaties between the United States and various Native American groups. The most important one for the Cherokee was the Treaty of Hopewell. 1785. Georgia said, well, we weren't really a party to that. The reason they're able to say this, and this is something most you don't learn in, in height grade school, is that between 1783, at the end of the American Revolution and 1789, the adoption of the United States Constitution, the so called 13 original states were independent republics. Yeah, okay. And you don't really get that in grade school. 13 states. Yeah, well, state means independent republic. And they literally were. They had their own currency, they had their own government. And it's why states rights become so important is because they still think of themselves as sovereign, independent republics who have only granted the nation certain aspects of their sovereignty, and we're still fighting about that. What is the full extent of states rights and where is it defined?

Yeah, and so you mentioned earlier that there was this effort to, quote, unquote, civilize the Cherokee, and that was mostly through, I guess, Western culture and religion. But here they are creating a system of government that seems pretty similar to our own government. And to me, that seems like, oh, well, aren't they taking that path toward civilization?

They did. In fact, the Cherokee were one of the so called Five civilized tribes of the Southeast. The Cherokee, the Creek, the Chickasaw, the Choctaw, and the Seminole were collectively known as the Five Civilized Tribes. And that's because they had done everything that the white people had asked them to do. They had adopted Christianity and a written language and a formal constitution for their government, as well as African American slavery. All of these are things that were signs of civilization according to what the white people of the United States believe to be the mainstays of white culture.

And so from the United States perspective, if the Cherokee were going to stay on these lands, was there any path forward to peaceably live among them or have them become United States citizens? Or was it because they are becoming their own sovereign state that that is what makes them such a threat. All of a sudden, they're not United States citizens. They're now a more powerful Cherokee nation that has these written more. There's a lot more risk and things at stake. Was there ever a path for them to become citizens?

My personal opinion is that, no, there was not. As far back as Washington and Jefferson, they would send out various people to the various Native American tribes. And their official policy was, we will civilize these and make them into white people. Maybe in a hundred years they'll be the equal of white people. But when it came to the land, the land is what they wanted. Do whatever it takes to get the land by any means necessary. Lie, cheat, steal. They're not white, and honor only exists between equals. And if you do not believe that the people that you're dealing with as a group are your equal, then it's okay to lie, cheat, and steal because there's no honor lost.

Yeah, that's a good point. And so there's a lot at stake when it comes to land in particular. But today's episode is about a specific situation, circumstance between two Cherokee men. And so I want to maybe give a little higher level view of how does this tassel case relate to the context we just spoke about, essentially, Georgia's government having any kind of say, or dominion over the Cherokee Nation. And whatever way you feel is best to connect those dots before we go into the details, but just from a higher level, what does this one individual have to do with the Georgia government intervening in Cherokee affairs?

Well, there are four cases that are really important for understanding that Georgia pushes back and asserts themselves over the Cherokee pretty much immediately by July or September of 1829. And there are immediately cases that come before the superior court judge. The judge of the Western circuit was Judge Augustine Clayton of Athens, Georgia, who is kind of the center of the research that I am doing. I'm writing a biography of Judge Clayton of Georgia, and Clayton is going to be the main judge in all the cases. Well, three of the four cases, three of which wind up in front of the Supreme Court. Okay. The first case is the case. John Saunders. John Saunders. Well, back it up a little. Jesse Stansel of Habersham county, with others, invaded the Cherokee Nation. They raided a village near what is today Elejay, and they stole six or seven horses, potatoes, and pumpkins, and the Cherokee caught them. So this is in September of 1829. The Cherokee, under their laws, then gave him a trial, found him guilty, and detained him for several days while they were. While this was taking place, and then gave him 50 lashes with a hickory stick. Okay. And then set him loose because they had satisfied their law.

Yeah.

Stansel then comes to Gainesville and files a lawsuit for assault, files a warrant. The sheriff of Hall county that dispatches people up into the Cherokee Nation and arrests all the people involved with the trial and administration of justice, 13 Native Americans, including the foreman of the jury, one John Saunders. Saunders will give bond, and there will be a question as to whether or not Georgia has jurisdiction to intervene in the case. And in March of 1830, Judge Clayton will deliver his opinion and say, yes, we have the jurisdiction. And it's a very long legal description of why he thought they did, most of which is important only to diplomatic scholars and things like that. It's all about international law and why Georgia exists and the Cherokee Nation does not.

Is this in any way setting a precedent, or were there other.

Well, this is the start down the road.

Yeah.

Okay, so it's not exactly a precedent. And I learned recently by looking at some Cherokee documents that later on, nothing ever comes out of this trial. Right. It kind of fizzles out. There's no real prosecution. Yes. Georgia decides that it has the right to prosecute, but for some reason, it never does. Okay. So there's no resolution to this case.

Okay.

Now, in the meanwhile, what's going to happen is in July of 1830, somewhere in the Cherokee Nation. Some people suggest that it was a place called talking Rock. I don't know if that's true or not. I've never actually seen that in any of the documents that I've read, but it could be true. It's somewhere deep in the Cherokee Nation. That's the main thing to be aware of. There are two Native Americans. One is corn tassels, whose English name was George. So George Tassel or Tassels. And the other guy was Cornelius Dougherty. Okay? And they're hanging out when they have an argument, and they are dead drunk, just absolutely drunk out of their minds and are wildly drunk. And at some point in their conversatIons, Tassels tells Dougherty, hey, I'm going to shoot you. Okay? And Dougherty thought, well, he's joking. And, you know, just going along, yeah, okay, you're going to shoot me. And then Tassels gets up, picks up his musket and starts to load it. And this is no easy feat in 1830. He's got to get the ram rod out. He's got to put the load in, get it all ready, and by the time he gets it loaded, Doherty understands, hey, he's serious about this, and starts to head for the door, okay? He's like, hey, don't shoot me. Okay? One witness reports having heard, okay, and he's running toward the door and Tassel shoots him. Now, Tassels will testify. Well, he will tell people, hey, I wasn't intending to kill him. I was going to shoot him in the butt, okay? And because he was running and we were all dead drunk, he wasn't running very well, and I wasn't aiming very well. I shot him in the side instead. Well, it took Doherty two days to die.

Oh, wow.

Okay. He bled out, probably with modern medicine. He'd been air flighted someplace and someone would have saved his life. But they didn't have that in 1830. And so because Georgia has asserted their laws, they dispatch the officials from Hall County, a constable whose name was. Let's find it here. I have it in my notes. There are two of them. Elijah Roberts, who was a guard when Tassels was arrested, and Mark Castleberry, who was the constable who actually did the arresting. Okay, this is in the report that Judge Clayton will publish in the newspaper to show that corn Tassels got a fair trial. So this is written in December of 1830, I believe it is. Yes, 1830. And so there are four people who testify at the trial in Gainesville. One is a Native American woman named Letty Proctor. And she, you know, they were really drunk, and they were arguing, and I had to go to the bathroom. And so I headed to the outhouse, and I heard Cornelius yell, don't shoot. Then I heard the gunshot. And then me and everyone else in the area, we ran away because a drunk person with a gun, God knows who else he's going to shoot. The same sort of reaction most of us would have today. Okay. Then she comes back, and the constable is there, and one of the other witnesses is James Dougherty, who is likely to be a close relative of the deceased. Okay. I did a quick look on a genealogy site, trying to track these people down to see, I don't know how accurate it was, but they did list someone named Cornelius Dougherty, who was likely to be of a grandfather age to the Dougherty who was killed, and that he had a son, James Sr. Okay, so it is possible that this particular person is related very closely, either as a cousin or perhaps even the father of the deceased. And he's know this guy just shot. Just. Doherty lived for two days after he died, said he heard Tassels confess to the crime, and when asked why he did it, he replied that they were friends and he just wanted to be buried in the same grave.

What do you make of that explanation?

It makes no sense whatsoever.

Yeah. And what are the documents that you see? These. What are the primary sources that you're using?

The sources I'm using are newspaper articles.

Yeah.

Back in the age of Jackson, newspapers could be sent in the mails for free to other newspaper editors. And so even if the person who wrote the story, if there's no existing record of that newspaper, you can frequently find it in another newspaper. Okay, so most of these are out of an Athens, Georgia, newspaper called the Athenian. And you can find almost everything you want in Georgia newspapers by going to the Georgia Historical Records site of the Digital Library of Georgia.

Yes.

It is a fabulous website.

It is. Yeah, it's great.

And if you play with it long enough and learn to do the searches, you can do a lot with that. I have extracted all of the sorts of documents that I thought I needed to write my biography of Judge Clayton, and so I have an entire page on my website that is dedicated to Indian removal, at least the parts of Indian removal that are at least tangentially connected to Judge Clayton. SO it's quite extensive, dating from the 1820s into the late 1830s. It's pretty good. I'm in the process of turning that website over to my school we'll see if they actually complete it. If not, I'll then offer it to the Digital library of Georgia, since most, but not all of the newspapers came from them.

Excellent. And we'll dive into some great resources near the end of the episode. But I was really curious to know. I mean, it's just fascinating to have those primary sources and have actual direct quotes from the witnesses, from the people involved. We have this strange situation where two friends, apparently, things get out of hand, and that's to say the least, as this tumbles into this court case in Georgia and then later to the Supreme Court. But get us there. How did the trial actually unfold in Gainesville? Can you tell us anything that was notable about the jury or you mentioned the judge and some. You have a great deal.

I can tell you about the judge. I can't tell you anything about the jury. I haven't found any records of that. It would have been in the November term of Hall County Superior Court, and perhaps Hall county has records of that. Okay. It is a judicial proceeding, and they would be able to tell you who were the jurors, who were the grand jurors, who was the inferior court members who would have been available at the time. The way that superior courts happened is that twice a year, the judge of the Superior Court of that circuit would come to town. This was part of the Western District. And so Judge Clayton covered everything from Athens to Gainesville to Lawrenceville to know. So he would spend about two weeks in each place and twice a year for two weeks, that town would come to life because everybody would come to hear and see everything it's doing. And all the lawyers follow the circuit, too. They don't live in a town. They travel with the judge from place to place. So they're kind of a fraternity of men who follow the judge from place to place. Typically, the first week is civil cases, and then the second week is criminal cases. This was what was called an adjourned term, meaning that it was supposed to have happened in September, and they had to adjourn and come back in November. And that's why I don't know the exact date, because it's not listed in the newspapers.

Yeah, I'm curious to know. I would imagine that this would be of interest to the general population to know what's going on with these cases. The more interesting ones, at least. Was this particular case with corn tassels? Was there any frenzy over this case? Was there any interest? And talk to me about that and.

What you gleaned from so let's get this case to the Supreme Court. Yeah. Judge Clayton will. The reason that they adjourned is that the defense attorneys argued that, George, this was an unconstitutional trial, that Georgia had no right to be trying a native for killing a native in native territory. Only the federal government could do that, or the Cherokee. And so Judge Clayton adjourned the case and applied to a convention of judges that was to meet in November in the state capital of Millageville. Okay. Now, this, in and of itself is kind of an interesting aside. Note of Benny, as we say in academia, is that there's no constitutional clause that says there should ever be this convention of judges. But apparently, every year, the judges would work out kinks in the system, and they would come up with rules that they would then publish as Rule 38, rule five, things like that, and they'd wind up in the newspapers. These are some of the rules about how the court should operate that the Convention of judges have come up with. And we're not going to have an appeals court or a Supreme Court for about another 1520 years. Okay. And so this was their way of working their way through the details of different cases, was to refer questions to this convention of judges, which typically met whenever the state legislature was meeting. Because judges are elected by the legislature. They probably show up when that's happening to make sure they get reelected. Okay. So the case is presented to the Convention of judges, probably by Judge Clayton, but Judge Clayton does not. He sets himself aside so that he's not in deciding what the rule should be. And William Crawford, former presidential candidate in 1824 from the state of Georgia, writes the decision because he's a judge of one of the circuits and says, no, Georgia's in perfect harmony. This is up to us. And he basically mimics what Judge Clayton had already had written before in the Saunders case.

Yeah.

Okay. So they're all on the same page. Georgia is well within their right. We are a sovereign state. The Cherokee are a mere community.

I want to pause for a second, because you had mentioned that there was an argument on the defense, and I was kind of wondering if there was any information that you came across about who was.

I do know them. I don't have it in my notes.

That's okay.

But there are three defense attorneys, and they're going to show up in all the cases. Yeah, they're the same three.

Okay.

One is former judge Underwood.

Okay.

So in 1828, Judge Underwood's party loses control of the legislature. They'd only held it for a few years, and Judge Clayton's party takes control of it again. Clayton had been judge of the Western circuit from 1818 until about 1825, and he loses out, winds up in the state legislature instead, and his party takes control again in 1828. So Underwood is now out. Clayton is back in. Underwood then becomes the lead counsel for all the local cases involving the Cherokee.

Okay.

And indeed, the Cherokee have papers for him in their archives in Oklahoma.

Oh, wow.

Which I would like to see more of. I know that they're there, that there are some papers there, and he is in touch with both the Cherokee and with the Missionary board in Boston, because the missionary board are the people who are financing Christian missions to the Cherokee Nation and other places as part of their missions approach and with the defense.

Is there any written documentation of the argument that they presented that scholars today can point to as.

I have not yet come across that, but that does not mean other scholars haven't.

So I was just wondering how strong their argument was from someone who actually has knowledge of.

Well, in the end, their argument wins out.

Yeah. Okay. Right.

So fast forward, corn tassels is convicted. The jury is out for 35 minutes.

Oh, wow.

They convict him of murder because that was never in question.

Right.

The question was whether or not Georgia had the right to try him for it, because corn Tassels had confessed and he was sorry. He never intended to kill the man. Today, we probably would not have executed him because of special circumstances. He was indeed sorry for killing his friend. He never intended to shoot him in the side. He intended merely to wound him, and so there was no intent to kill. And by modern law, we would never have convicted him of that kind of murder. However, he was sentenced to be hung on Christmas Eve in Gainesville. I do not have any records of what that entailed. However, Underwood and the defense lawyers immediately send a message, this is in November, to the United States Supreme Court to appeal. Chief Justice John Marshall will then write the Governor of Georgia and instruct Georgia that there is a writ of error, meaning that we believe that this trial has a significant error in it, and subpoenas the state of Georgia to appear before the United States Supreme Court in January 1831. Well, the governor blows his stack. This is George Gilmer, for whom Gilmer county is. All of the counties that were divvied up out of the Cherokee Nation frequently have names for people who made certain that the Cherokee lost, particularly Gilmer and Lumpkin counties.

Interesting. Yeah.

Okay. So Gilmer receives the letter on December the 22nd from Chief Justice John Marshall, and he immediately goes to the state legislature, which is in session. It's nearing the end of its session. Georgia legislature, typically in the early 19th century, met in starting the end of oCtober, where the outgoing governor would give kind of a swan song speech, and then the incoming governor, who had just been elected because the elections were in October, would give his kind of a state of the. This is what I plan to do. And then the legislature would meet for two months, usually November and December, and by the end of December, they were done. And then in January, they would publish all the new laws that they had passed. So it's December 22. The governor goes to the legislature, gives them a letter, basically, that says, this is what the Supreme Court is advising us we must do, and this is an infringement on our state's rights. And essentially what the governor argues and the legislature agrees to is that the legislature and the governor have no right to interfere with the judiciary system of Georgia. That's the legal reason they don't do anything. The rest of it is all rehashing how the federal government's just imposing on states'rights. And this is a terrible thing. Okay. So they refuse to do send. There's no stay of execution. Georgia never sends anything to the Supreme Court. And Northern newspapers react tremendously to all of this, that when news comes that George Tassels is executed despite the intervention of the United States Supreme Court, people are arguing, well, we need to go arrest the sheriff of Hall county and maybe the governor and declare martial law and send the army in.

Was this a sentiment that was because, did the sentiment come from any kind of sympathy for the Cherokee, or was this more because of the understanding of where the federal government's power interacts with the state power? I mean, where did that sentiment, what was it rooted in?

Yes, to both of those.

Yeah. Okay.

But there's more to it than that. It also is politics.

Okay. Right.

Washington politics.

Yeah.

It's always a tempest in a teapot. People are always getting angry as can be, and the rest of us are left scratching our heads. So on the one hand, there are major supporters of the Cherokee Nation in the north. Jeremiah Everts is one of these people who has written a series of essays known as the William Penn Essays that are published in the late 1820s, about 1828 or so, 1820, 718 28, explaining that the Cherokee, they're civilized and that they deserve to have their own land and to be left alone and to be basically a sovereign place. And that is not well received in Georgia. Okay. And it is not well received in most places that have a recent interaction with Native Americans. All these places that we can call Western that Hall County, Gwinnett county, and indeed, Georgia was as much a Western place as it was a southern place because of this regular interaction with Native Americans and the desires of Georgia to settle the land with white people and their enslaved African Americans, that that was their idea of how they would colonize and control all of the western lands of Georgia was to remove the natives by any means necessary. Now, one of the things I didn't mention is John Saunders, in the first case, is going to report in the newspaper, in the Cherokee newspaper, that Stansel comes back with groups and raid the Cherokee regularly once it's clear that George is going to back his raids and prevent the Cherokee from administering punishments. So this is the sort of thing that has been going on ever since Native Americans have been dealing with white settlers, is that, yes, there's a treaty, here's the boundary. But you know what? No one's going to enforce it, so go ahead and cross it. Steal the land, destroy the hunting grounds, make them unusable by the natives. And when the natives then attack you for having destroyed their livelihoods, attack them back, declare war, and then create another treaty where the natives have to give up land. So that has happened repeatedly in Georgia history with the Natives, starting with the Akoni War of the 1780s.

Okay. Yeah. And so this becomes a national news item. Does this have any significant negative effects on the local community in Gainesville having a bit of a spotlight on at least the North Georgia area?

None whatsoever. None whatsoever. The Cherokee are simply trying to hang on to their land. Hall county is looking across the river where gold is discovered. In 1829. Gold is originally discovered in Habersham County. Okay. That's the first place in Georgia where gold is discovered. Habersham at that time also included White County. So it's probably more in the white county part of it than anywhere. So the major portions of gold were across the river in what is today Lumpkin county, but gold was everywhere from Habersham county down to Carroll county, and the gold is still there. It's just not in significant enough quantity to make it worthwhile to mine it. Though if you stumble across it, you could discover a big chunk or nugget. Those nuggets are definitely still out there, but it's kind of like. So anyway, so the land's even more valuable because of the land is more valuable. And as a resort, Georgia really wants the land. And they're going to send surveyors out in 1828 to survey the boundary between the Creek Nation and the Cherokee. Now, one of the things I recently learned from one of my colleagues was that Native Americans didn't really have hard and fast boundaries. They were fairly porous. But that there are several anecdotes of the Cherokee marching past what they believed to be their boundaries and saying, oh, this is not our land. We got to stop. And so even though there's no exact line, there is kind of a ten mile stretch between boundaries, between places. So typically, we think of the boundary between the creek and the Cherokee west of the Chattahoochee as being where McGinnis Ferry Road is.

Okay. Yeah.

Okay. That's where it starts. Now, it travels outward from there, but it would be five or 10 miles on either side of that road, roughly.

And so with the Georgia government now intervening in this particular case, this is essentially establishing that they disagree with the Supreme Court that they're going to do.

Oh, they don't just disagree with the SupremE court. They tell the Supreme Court, stay out of our business. Okay. And this sets up the next case.

Yeah.

Okay. So the Cherokee are going to sue. In the case Cherokee Nation versus Georgia, it's going to be argued in front of the Supreme Court by former Attorney General of the United States, William Wirt. Okay. And Wirt is going to make all the same arguments that the defense in Georgia had made. And the Supreme Court under John Marshall is going to decide that the Cherokee have no standing to come directly to the Supreme Court to make this lawsuit. They are indeed not an independent nation. They are a dependent nation. The only people that the Cherokee can make treaties with is the United States, and therefore they are not independent. They are a nation, but they are a dependent nation. And the US Constitution lays out which cases can come directly to the Supreme Court, and this is not one of them because they are a dependent nation, not an independent nation. However, John Marshall invites the Cherokee to find a case in which someone has standing and that they will rule favorably for the Cherokee. So they're told at the end, we'll work with you if you find a case. Well, the next case is going to be involving the missionaries who are in the Cherokee Nation. One of the laws that Georgia passes in 1830 says that all white people living in the Cherokee Nation must obtain a passport from the governor in order to be there. And in order to get a passport, they have to swear allegiance to Georgia laws. And those laws say that Georgia law is supreme. Overall, there is no such thing as the Cherokee Nation. They are a mere community of people, not a governmental entity. Well, the missionaries who have been living among the Cherokee for ten or 20 years, refuse to get passports. Their leader is a man named Samuel Worcester. Okay. He is the postmaster at Nuita, the capital of the Cherokee Nation. And, oh, by the way, if you've never been to Nuita, you should go.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. It's a fabulous place, and it's owned by the state of Georgia. And frequently you can get a free pass by going to your local library.

Oh, nice.

And checking it out. They frequently have purchased a couple dozen of these passes, season passes to visit. And all you can do, you can check it out from a week or so. I've checked it out when I lived in Gwinnett county, and I know that Hall county also has at least a limited number of these.

Excellent. Excellent.

So anyway, he's at Nuita. There are other missionaries in different places, and they are all arrested by a police force that Georgia created in order to stop people from coming into the Cherokee Nation and mining the gold. Georgia said the gold belongs to Georgia. Now, there is a gold rush in North Georgia, and what you have to understand about gold rushes is the understanding that nobody owns the gold. Nobody legally owns the land. The natives have the right of occupation because they've been there forever. But in European census, they have no government that gives out legal documents that says, this is your land, and this is how you pass it on or sell it to the next person or the next generation or anything like that. And therefore, well, they don't own it, okay? They only possess it. And there's a legal difference between the two. And so if nobody owns the land, then let's go take the gold. The same thing's going to happen in California in 1840, 918, 50. Because it is non white people involved again, even though they have Spanish land grants that may date back 100 or 200 years. It doesn't matter. It's not laws that we need to worry about, because they're not white people, and therefore they don't matter. And so you can rush the land and claim it.

I see. Yeah. And so with the Worcester case, tell us how that. What's the ultimate decision? Did we discuss that?

They are arrested by the Georgia Guard. They're taken to Lawrenceville, where ultimately they are tried August 1831 by Judge Clayton. Judge Clayton, it's the same defense team that had defended tassels. They argue that this is an unconstitutional and that Georgia has no jurisdiction. The case is clear that they have indeed violated Georgia law. Judge Clayton instructs the jury that the constitutionality of this case has already been decided. And therefore, the only thing you need to consider is whether or not they violated Georgia law. The jury was out for four minutes.

Wow.

And under the sentencing guidelines in the law, they are sentenced to four years at hard labor in the state penitentiary.

Wow.

Okay. Now, Governor Gilmer offers a pardon for anyone who will apologize to the state, admit that they were wrong, and leave the state forever. And all but two of the missionaries take the pardon. The two leaders of the missionaries, Samuel Worcester and Elizar Butler, will say, no, we're not going to take the pardon. And they appeal to the US Supreme Court, and they have standing to make the case that Georgia does not have the authority to do what they've done. It is heard in the US Supreme Court in January 1832. Now, here's another note of Benny, another sidebar. Judge Clayton, in another case called the Canatu case, is going to rule in favor of the natives. The case was Cannatu was mining gold on Native American land in the Cherokee Nation. And the state of Georgia had ruled that that was illegal, that was Georgia's gold. Nobody was supposed to. Okay. And so he was arrested by the Georgia Guard, brought and probably brought to either Gainesville or to Lawrenceville. I'm not quite sure which, probably Lawrenceville. And Judge Clayton in this case said, legally, if the Native Americans have the right of occupation, then they also have the right of use of the land, and mining the gold is part of their rightful use, and therefore, he is not guilty of anything. The law of Georgia is unconstitutional. Oh, man. The state Capitol went berserk. Governor Gilmer denounced Clayton and told the Georgia Guard to arrest any native anyway, who might be mining the gold, to ignore the judge in this case. So apparently what he said about the Tassels case, that he didn't have the right to interfere with the judiciary, did not apply to the cannitude case when it was in fact his benefit in order to interfere. And so, Judge Clayton, remember, judges are elected by the legislature. He gets voted out of office by his own party.

Oh, wow.

He turns around and runs for Congress. Wilson Lumpkin has just been, who was a congressman at the time, has just been elected the new governor to secede. Gilmer as governor of the state. And as a result, there is a vacant seat, and Clayton runs for it and wins. So when the Supreme Court is hearing the Worcester case, which originated in his court in Lawrenceville as state versus missionaries, he's in Washington, DC.

Wow.

And then when the Supreme Court issues their decision in March 1831, he delivers a fiery speech on the floor of the United States Congress House of Representatives in opposition to former President John Quincy Adams, who gives a speech denouncing Georgia for ignoring the plight of these missionaries. So these are a series of cases that culminate in a Supreme Court case that rules that Georgia is in the wrong, that only the federal government can extend its authority over Native American nations. However, Andrew Jackson is reputed to have said, but never proven to have said, that John Marshall has made his decision. Let him enforce it now. We have no proof he actually said that, but actions speak louder than words. Jackson refused to enforce the Supreme Court's decision, and for the next hundred years, all the states violated native sovereignty until during the New Deal, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, no, we're going to follow the Supreme Court. Now, in the short run, John Ross, Principal chief of the Cherokee, will try to convince Congress to follow its own laws to no avail. And as a result, members of his tribes, several members who had gone with him to try to convince Congress, realized that they're just going to kill us and steal our land. Let's cut the best deal that we can. These are what are known as the Treaty Party, and they're composed of Major Ridge, his son John Ridge, and his nephew Elias Boudino, the editor of the Cherokee Phoenix. And they negotiate an illegal treaty with the state of Georgia and the United States at the same time, the Treaty of New Eachota of December, 1835, that says, okay, we'll leave the state in exchange for you pay for the transportation and give us an equal amount of land in this land that is today known as Oklahoma, which for most part people thought of as pretty worthless land, okay. And enough money to get set up and start our civilization all over again. John Ross kept telling the people, look, if we leave our land, we will be alive, but we will cease to be Cherokee. It is our land that makes us Cherokee. And then in 1838, the United States army under General Winfield Scott, there's a lake name for him in North Georgia, starts to round up the Cherokee along with the Georgia Guard, and they will take anyone where they find them in the fields or whatever and take them to a concentration camp. And families are broken up because the wife may be in the house and the man is out in the field, and they leave everything they have behind, their house, their livestock, their harvest, anything.

So this was not like a, hey, in X amount of time you have.

They were given two years.

Oh, I see. I see.

They were given two years. But the Cherokee believed that the United States would come to its senses and follow the direction of the United States Supreme Court.

So when it finally came to the actual removal that was forcible removal without the time, like you said, to actually.

Prepare for because they just didn't believe it would happen. And John Ross was in Washington, DC when he heard that people were being rounded up. He came back to Georgia so that he would be with his family. And those who left beforehand were treated well. They rode on stagecoaches and steamboats and were transported the 900 miles or so to Oklahoma. But the Cherokee who remained, they were rounded up in concentration camps and dispatched from the Chattanooga area and sent on foot in the dead of winter to Oklahoma. And it's not the United States army that is escorting it. It is defense contractors, the same sorts of people who had been in the Georgia Guard, which were the same sorts of people who were in charge of the slave patrols locally.

I see.

They were known to be pretty vicious. And as a result, if you know anything about defense contractors, they cut every corner twice. They did not provide the food, clothing and shelter and transportation that they were being paid to provide because if they don't provide it, they pocket the money.

I see.

And one quarter of the Cherokee Nation will die.

Wow.

4000 out of 16,000 people will die. That is why it's called the Trail of Tears.

And so this all, in a sense, it's not that the corn tassels case, I guess my question is, if it wasn't corn tassels, it would have likely been some other case that would have. Ultimately, these decisions were going to have to be made at some point. But with this particular case, what are your reflections on something that is ultimately the kind of situation that we might have never, ever known about had it been dealt with by the Cherokee Nation? It's something that's sort of, I mean, it's a strange incident, but it's not all that interesting, though, until the state of Georgia gets involved. And it seems to be this catalyst for this bigger topic of sovereignty and Georgia's power versus the federal government? When you look back on this, I'm curious to know, is it true from your perspective that this would have happened regardless of whether corn Tassel and his friend had that incident or, and had.

The law not been, you know, it would have been a manslaughter case that would have been adjudicated by the Cherokee Nation, and the Cherokee Nation's rules would not have included execution. Their rules, had they, they had established a pretty fair system of legal adjudication because they were trying to avoid blood feuds. So in the late 17 hundreds, they came up with a set of Rules with having Lawgivers a lot of this is covered in the first chapter of my book on the history of Gwinnett. I edited a collection of essays, and in the first and second chapters it deals with Native Americans in Gwinnett County. And the second chapter specifically is by Lisa Crutchfield. Deals with the sets of rules that Cherokee imposed on themselves as a nation so that they wouldn't have blood feuds arising from someone killing someone else, and there would have been restitution. They were more interested in restitution for those who survived than they would have been punishment for those who committed the crime if they were sorry for it. And corn Tassels was certainly sorry. He never intended to kill his friend. He was just drunk as a skunk, and so was his friend. And it's just a sorry, sad episode. But yes, absolutely, there would have been another case without a question. Had there not been the corn Tassels case, it would have been something else. And Georgia was intent on asserting its sovereignty over the natives because they wanted the land. Even before the gold was discovered, they wanted the land, and by hook or crook, they were going to get it.

I think we can conclude the story of Corn Tassel with that today, but I'd love to know where our listeners can learn even more because there's so much that was mentioned that could go into a much deeper dive. And of course we'd love to have you back on the podcast to explore more of this topic and more. But you mentioned your website that has a lot of great resources for listeners.

Let me give you two resources.

One is a book, Cherokees and Missionaries, 1789 to 1839, by William G. McLaughlin.

That is the book to read to get started. Everyone since refers to that book as their starting point for going forward. So that's the starting point. McLaughlin died ten or 15 years ago, but his work is seminal when talking about the Cherokee. There are other books when talking about the creek, but for talking about particularly the origins of Indian removal of the CHerokee, that's the one to start with. Then for primary sources, I recommend my own website, and that is earlyushistory. Net. If you go to that website, click on the Jacksonian documents and it will pull up a whole series of things dealing with Judge Clayton of Georgia. Judge Clayton is going to be involved in every important political movement of the early 1830s, which is why I'm working on a biography of him.

I very much look forward to that as well.

I look forward to rewriting it.

Yeah, right. And folks, those links will be in the podcast description to those resources. And I just want to thank you so much for sharing this. I know that this story is almost somewhat urban legend in a way, here in Gainesville, because we hear of corn Tassel, but to really do a deep dive into the history and how significant of a case this was and its repercussions, I know is really valuable to our listeners and community, and I would love to have you back on to share even more of your research. So thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr. Gagan, thank you for having me, and I'll be glad to come back.

Senegan is a production of the Northeast Georgia History center in Gainesville, Georgia. Our podcast is edited by Andrews Gilles. Our digital and on site programs are made possible by the ADA May Ioster Education Center. Please join us next week for another episode episode of. Then again.