The legal status of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians

The legal status of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians

Cherokee Indian Reservation (N.C.)

Cherokee Indians -- Legal status, laws, etc.

Cherokee law

Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians

Frizzell, George E., 1954-

1981

Perdue, Theda, 1949-

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/CNE/1.0/

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61697

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This study traces the development of the legal status of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina in relation to the dominant white society of the United States. The determination of the Eastern Band�s legal status required extensive use and analysis of legislative acts and judicial decisions from all levels of government. This study provides an historical perspective within which to interpret official government acts in conjunction with prevailing attitudes, concerns, and policies among the whites regarding Indians in general and the Eastern Band situation specifically. During its formative period, in the years prior to the Civil War, the Eastern Band managed to avoid the general removal of Indians to Indian Territory in 1830 and to organize a settled agricultural community in North Carolina�s mountain region. Due to their isolation and separation from significant white population centers, the Indians remained an ignored community left to its own devices for survival, unless involved in some infraction of law involving whites. The Cherokees charted a policy based on state citizenship to secure acceptance of their permanent residency in the state. However, they cautiously avoided participation in areas normally associated with citizenship, such as politics, which the whites might construe as an unwanted infringement. Immediately following the Civil War, the United States began re-exerting its authority over the Eastern Band in steadily increasing measures, to the detriment of North Carolina�s formerly preeminent position. Between 1868 and 1900, the primary debate over the Eastern Band�s status revolved around the primacy of federal versus state authority. By the late 1890s, the federal government successfully proved its contention that the Cherokees represented a tribe under the guardianship of the United States. Federal victory in the matter, however, cost the Cherokees their privileges previously held as citizens of North Carolina. After 1900, the Cherokees has to fight to regain the privileges abrogated by tribal status. A long and bitter struggle ensued over the legality of disfranchising the Indians en masse, and questions involving Cherokee participation in the white political community consistently raised debates over their status. Ultimately, by 1931, the Eastern Band emerged as a federally recognized tribe occupying lands held in trust by the United States, thought also acknowledged as citizens of the state and nation. The extensive alteration in the Eastern Band�s status between 1838 and the present resulted from two major factors. In determining its status, whites treated the Eastern Band as a homogeneous group and did not provide for differences in status among the Cherokees as individuals. Also, Cherokee status possessed a malleable quality which allowed the whites considerable flexibility in revising their status. The Cherokees� legal status, as Indians, has placed them in a special context regarding the white community. This context has constantly changed and therefore the legal status of the Indians has changed and rendered them subject to the prevailing political, economic, and intellectual climate.

2014-05-08

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