Talk:Treaty of New Echota

Mis-information
Much of the information on this page is incorrect. I will consider editing myself or speaking with the person who wrote this in the very near future. Please contact me for further information, anytime.

Annie Connors-Maloney Cherokee Historian

"Elected officials of the Cherokee Nation rejected the treaty" Did they also reject the $4.5 million?

Who signed the treaty on behalf of the Cherokees?

Even more treaty misinformation
"Ross drew up a petition asking Congress to void the treaty—a petition which he personally delivered to Congress in the spring of 1838 with almost 16,000 signatures attached. This was nearly as many persons as the Cherokee Nation East had within its territory, according to the 1835 Henderson Roll, including women and children, who had no vote."

Not only is this far-fetched ridiculous, it's just plain wrong! The national archives has this document, here are 3,352 signatures, not 16,000. The entire Ratification section has no sources cited, more care should be taken to documenting the events leading up to the Trail of Tears.

Excuse me if this isn't how this thing is typically done, I'm fairly new to the curation on this site, but the amount of existing talk on misinformation and just pure fiction in this article is astounding. Some of this has been here for almost 14 years.

More information needed
I'd like to see more info in this article.

How many Indians were there in the territory involved (before the treaty)? What is the territory involved (before the treaty - maps would be nice)?

"the Cherokee nation refused to recognize the validity of the treaty."

I'd like to see this expanded upon. What was the population of the Cherokee nation? What were the borders? How many refused?

"The petition was ignored by President Martin Van Burden, who soon thereafter directed General Winfield Scott to forcibly move those Cherokee who had not yet complied with the treaty and moved west."

How many Cherokee "had not yet complied with the treaty"? How many had?

The question of acceptance aside, were the terms of the treaty honored by all sides?

This seems like a pretty scant article for such an important part of American history. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 172.131.149.122 (talk) 20:46, 3 March 2007 (UTC).

Complete fabrication
Nearly all of this article is fiction. In fact, the delegation that met with Schermerhorn at New Echota was the official delegation chosen to meet with him by the Cherokee National Council in their meeting of October 1835. It's true that only the representatives from the Upper Towns and the Lower Towns attended (and they waited a week for those from the Hill and Valley Towns to arrive, but they never did), but they were unanimous in their agreement that the Treaty should be signed. It's true none were elected, at least not according to their Constitution; they had been elected in 1828, and retained their offices after the elections that were supposed to take place in 1832 were suspended, at the suggestion of no less than John Ross himself, just as he retained his own. Had the elections been held in 1832, John Ridge would likely have defeated him. Natty4bumpo, 2109, 17 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Natty,do your homework. The historical sources are completely against your rendition.  Perhaps as a primer you could try reading the two volume edition of John Ross's letters and a guide to documenting your claims.  In order to call something a fiction or a complete fabrication, you need to have legitimate sources to back your claims up.  You have none.  You cite none.  You don't have a leg to stand on.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.113.176.61 (talk) 04:46, 15 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Dear "unsigned": Your version does agree with popular history I'll admit, but it doesn't match the facts nor the records of the Cherokee National Council.  That much I discovered while doing actual research in an ultimately futile attempt to refute what I'd been told by Raymond Evans, one of the two founders of the Journal of Cherokee Studies, about the events surrounding the treaty and the removal.  No doubt the non-Cherokee speaking John Ross is your hero, but you'd probably be astonished to find out just how much it was he rather than the Ridges who betrayed the Cherokee.  I should probably confess that my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was David Watie, or Uwati, Major Ridge's brother, but that was something I didn't discover until some time after actual historical facts force me to abandon my previous misbeliefs and accept Ray's version.  Natty4bumpo, 2109, 17 January 2008 (UTC)


 * In addition, this is the "Discussion" page, not the article which is the proper place for citing sources, as I have done after correcting the most aggregious myths. Natty4bumpo, 1640 EDT, 15 May 2008  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.60.15.209 (talk) 20:41, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Re: "Ridge Band of Cherokee" and "Southern Cherokee Nation"
Both these entities are fictions of a group of white people going by the latter name. Neither existed in reality, though the faction following Stand Watie during the Civil War, which included most of the Nation, was sometimes referred to by that name since they were part of the Confederacy. Since treaties ending both the American Civil War and the Cherokee Civil War were signed by all parties in 1866, the term "Southern Cherokee Nation" is meaningless. Part of the mythology of the group of white people belonging to the organization calling itself by that name is that the "Southern Cherokee Nation" is a continuation of the "Ridge Band", which never existed as a separate entity. Furthermore, in 1834, there was no federal or state recognition of any Indian nation in the modern sense, and state recognition has zero validity anyway. Chuck Hamilton (talk) 18:03, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * P.S.: After John Ross and company left the Cherokee Nation for Washington City, D.C. in 1863, Stand Watie was elected Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. Chuck Hamilton (talk) 13:44, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

A note on nomenclature
The Cherokee legislative body was the "National Council", not the "General Council". A "General Council" is an ecumenical convocation of the whole church, a possibility that has not existed since 1054. Chuck Hamilton (talk) 18:22, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Newer sources
Some of these sources seem dated. I will be checking later histories for interpretation of the events, as this is a different version in some respects and seems to rely heavily on Wilkins (1970). I believe later historians have additional insights.Parkwells (talk) 18:53, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Multiple Issues
I have added a multiple issues tag to the article to reflect the challenges to its veracity in the talk page. WalshGiarrusso (talk) 18:43, 23 May 2024 (UTC)