nation within the
meaning of the Constitution, two justices dissenting from this opinion. 8
Shortly afterward, under the law which forbade any white man to
reside in the Cherokee Nation without taking an oath of allegiance to
Georgia, a number of arrests were made, including Wheeler, the
printer of the Cherokei Phmnix, and the missionaries. Worcester. But-
ler. Thompson, and Proctor, who. being there by permission of the
agent and feeling that plain American citizenship should hold good in
an\ part of the United States, refused to take the oath. Soi if
those arrested took the oath and were released, but Worcester and
Butler, still refusing, were dressed in prison garb and put at hard
labor among felons. Worcester had plead in his defense that he was a
citizen of Vermont, and had entered the Cherokee country by permis-
sion ofthe President of the United Statesand approval of the Cherokee
Nation: and that as the United States by several treaties had acknowl-
edged the Cherokee to be a nation with a guaranteed and definite ter-
ritory, the state had no right to interfere with him. 1 Ie was sentenced
to four year- in the penitentiary. On March 3, 1832, the matter was
appealed as a test ease to the Supreme Court of the United States,
which rendered a decision in favor of Worcester and the Cherokee
Nation and ordered his release. Georgia, however, through her ^n
ernor. had defied the summons with a threat of opposition, even tothe
i erokee Nation, Fifth Ann. Rep. Bureau of Ethnology, pp. 261,262,
2 Ibid., p. 262.
120 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [etb.ann.19
annihilation of the Union, and now ignored the decision, refusing to
release