"Cherokee Removal and the Land Lottery: Newspaper Coverage of the Cherokee in Hancock County and Milledgeville from 1820 – 1836"

Medha Mediratta, Georgia State University

This paper discusses newspaper coverage from Hancock County and Milledgeville about the Five Civilized Tribes and the land lottery in the decade and a half leading up to the Treaty of New Echota (1835). Although the Five Civilized Tribes were often seen as equal to white men because they incorporated certain settler practices, newspapers from this region painted the tribes as trespassers and advocated for Indian Removal so that their land could be sold off in land lotteries. This worldview was amplified after the Treaty of Indian Springs was signed, which led the Muscogee to cede their land to the US government. At the same time, there was a struggle between the state and federal government, where the Georgia state government resented the federal government’s decision to not intervere and enforce the 1802 Treaty of Cession, which would have forced the other tribes to cede their land. This period is significant because it emphasizes that no matter how much the Five Civilized Tribes tried to assimilate, their “Indianness” stopped them from becoming equal in the eyes of white men and made them targets of the state and federal government. Instead of viewing modernity through a narrow lens, this paper exposes fractured visions of modern governance within the United States itself. By studying Indian Removal through these newspapers, it reveals the narrow lens of modernity that the settlers subscribed to, and how the definition of being civilized evolved over time.

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 Presented in Session 195. Settler Colonialism, Indigenous Removal, and Displacement