page_title: Timeline of Cherokee history
section_title: 1833–1835
hierarchical_section_title: Timeline of Cherokee history / 1830s / 1833–1835
caption_attribution_description: English: Trail of Tears sign at New Echota Historic Site
context_page_description: This timeline events in the history of the Cherokee Nation, from its earliest appearance in historical records to modern court cases in the United States. Some basic content about the removal of other southeastern tribes to lands west of the Mississippi River is included. In a series of treaties, these tribes ceded land to the United States.
context_section_description: 1833: Tatsi led a party to join the Texas Cherokee in what was then Mexico. Among the party was Sam Houston, adopted son of John Jolly.
  February 1833: President Jackson offered John Ross $3 million and equivalent land in the west for the removal of the Cherokee Nation East; Ross refused.
  February 14, 1833: The Treaty of Fort Gibson corrected conflicts between land guarantees to the Cherokee and to the Muscogee.
  November 1833: A group of Cherokee who decided to emigrate, including most of the Treaty Party, met the Cherokee Agency at Calhoun, Tennessee, where they elected William Hicks as principal chief of their faction and John McIntosh as his assistant. They sent a delegation including Andrew Ross to Washington to represent their interests.
  March 13, 1834: Lieutenant Joseph Harris departed from the Cherokee Agency with an emigration party. With new arrivals along the way, the party eventually numbered 903.
  Spring 1834: John Ross proposed to Secretary Cass that the Nation be allowed to remain in the East on a small part of their land, subject to the laws of the states, with a goal of eventually assimilating into American society. His brother Andrew, on the other hand, signed a removal treaty with terms so poor, even advocates of removal boycotted it. Major Ridge condemned both extremes, citing to John Ross the extreme destitution of the Catawba, who followed a similar course.
  May 16, 1834: Harris's party arrived at the Cherokee Nation West. An epidemic of typhus had killed 120 of the party along the way.
  June 19, 1834: The United States concluded the treaty with Andrew Ross, over the objections of Ross, Ridge, and their allies. The treaty was rejected by the United States Senate and the Cherokee National Council.
  June 24, 1834: John Walker, Jr., a leading advocate of removal, was assassinated by James Foreman and his half-brother Anderson Springston while returning home from a meeting of the National Council.
  August 1834: Elijah Hicks presented to the National Council a petition charging Major Ridge, John Ridge, and David Vann with treason, calling for their impeachment and removal from office. They were never tried, although the charged were never dropped.
  November 27, 1834: The Treaty Party holds its own council at Running Waters, the plantation of John Ridge, not far from Oothcaloga (present day Calhoun, Georgia).
  The 1835 Census of the Cherokee Nation estimated 5000 Cherokee in the west counted the following people in the east:
  Georgia: 8946 Indians, 776 slaves, 68 whites
  North Carolina: 3644 Indians, 37 slaves, 22 whites (this excluded the Oconaluftee under Yonaguska in Haywood County, North Carolina, who were considered state citizens)
  Tennessee: 2528 Indians, 480 slaves, 79 whites; and
  Alabama: 1424 Indians, 299 slaves, 32 whites
  Total: 16,542 Indians, 1592 slaves, and 201 whites (18,335 people)
  March 14, 1835: US envoy John F. Schermerhorn offered the Ridge delegation $3.25 million for the lands of the Cherokee Nation East. The Ross delegation countered with a demand of $20 million, which was rejected outright. The delegation promised to accept an amount set by the US Senate. The Senate almost immediately offered $5 million but the Ross delegation rejected it. Schermerhorn eventually concluded a preliminary treaty delegation offering $4.5 million plus other financial considerations.
  July 18, 1835: Hundreds of Cherokee from both internal parties converged on John Ridge's plantation Running Waters, a few miles from New Echota, to meet with Shermerhorn, Return J. Meigs, Jr., and other officials representing the United States. Following the conclave, members of the National Party began murdering members of the Treaty Party at least weekly.
  August 24, 1835: John Ridge held a Green Corn Dance at Running Waters attended by hundreds, primarily to build support for a removal treaty. John Ross attempts to hold dances elsewhere in opposition, but the Georgia Guard dispersed them.
  October 1835: The Cherokee Council rejected the treaty offered in March. The council appoints twenty men, including John Ross and treaty advocates
caption: Detail of memorial at New Echota
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