Treaty of New Echota

The Treaty of New Echota (7 Stat. 488) was a treaty signed on December 29, 1835, in New Echota, Georgia by officials of the United States government and representatives of a minority Cherokee political faction, the Treaty Party.

The treaty established terms under which the entire Cherokee Nation ceded its territory in the southeast and agreed to move west to the Indian Territory. Although the treaty was not approved by the Cherokee National Council nor signed by Principal Chief John Ross, it was amended and ratified by the U.S. Senate in March 1836, and became the legal basis for the forcible removal known as the Trail of Tears.

By the late 1720s, the territory of the Cherokee Indian nation lay almost entirely in northwestern Georgia, with small parts in Tennessee, Alabama, and North Carolina. It extended across most of the northern border and all of the border with Tennessee. An estimated 16,000 Cherokee people lived in this territory. Others had emigrated west to present-day Texas and Arkansas. In 1826, the Georgia legislature asked President John Quincy Adams to negotiate a removal treaty.

Adams, a supporter of Indian sovereignty, initially refused, but when Georgia threatened to nullify the current treaty, he approached the Cherokee to negotiate. A year passed without any progress toward removal. Andrew Jackson, a Democrat and supporter of Indian removal, was elected president in 1828.

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