Asa Kowals-Rose | Blog for RFILP

Chapters four and five covered the incredibly destructive decisions delivered in Johnson v. M’intosh and Cherokee Nation v. Georgia. The former declared that the United States government had exclusive control over transactions involving Indian land, thereby putting Indian land rights at their mercy. In Cherokee Nation, Justice John Marshall ruled that Indian tribes were “domestic dependent nations,” and could not sue the state of Georgia for violating their sovereignty. This ruling would deny Indians access to the U.S. legal system for decades. Together, Johnson and Cherokee Nation laid the foundation for decades of unchecked aggression toward Indian tribes; the former robbed them of control over their land, and the latter left them with no legal recourse to fight this injustice.

These chapters revealed the extent of the American government’s hypocrisy in its treatment of Indigenous peoples. While Indians had previously been treated as responsible parties for the purposes of selling land and making treaties, the Supreme Court declared them racially and culturally inferior, and therefore unworthy of full legal rights. This decision was made in spite of incredible evidence otherwise. In many ways, the Cherokee Nation had acquiesced to European notions of civilization: they developed a written language, a constitutional government, and even began publishing a newspaper. If Westerners had truly wanted to “civilize” Indians, it seems they would have touted the Cherokees as a model for other tribes. The cases explored in chapters four and five show their true motive: the desire to “civilize” Indians was a way of justifying land seizure, not an genuine ideological concern.