Cherokee The Noisy Neighbor ✦ Validated & Confirmed

Second, the noise was legal. When the state of Georgia passed laws stripping Cherokee rights, the tribe sued. Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) and Worcester v. Georgia (1832) reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In the latter, Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the Cherokee were a “domestic dependent nation” with a right to their land. The noise of ink on parchment, of subpoenas and arguments, was deafening in Washington. Andrew Jackson famously ignored the ruling, allegedly saying, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”

First, it was the sound of sovereignty. Unlike tribes decimated or displaced by disease and war, the Cherokee adapted. They built schools, adopted a written constitution (1827), and published their own newspaper, The Cherokee Phoenix . That printing press was noisy. It clattered out arguments for land rights, legal petitions, and sermons in both English and Sequoyah’s syllabary. To Georgia planters eyeing Cherokee gold and cotton fields, that noise was a provocation. cherokee the noisy neighbor

Third, the noise was resistance. In 1835, a small faction signed the Treaty of New Echota, ceding all Cherokee land for $5 million. The vast majority rejected it. Chief John Ross delivered petitions with over 15,000 signatures—almost every Cherokee man, woman, and child. That collective voice, rising in council houses and church meetings, was the loudest noise of all. It said: We are a people. You cannot sell us. Second, the noise was legal