In 1829, the Native American newspaper The Cherokee Phoenix wrote a letter to The United States Congress called the Cherokee Memorial. The Cherokee Memorial was written to petition Congress against both the forcible removal of Native Americans from their lands and well as the more general corrosion of Native American rights. The specific act which spurred this letter was the state of Georgia’s requiring Native Americans to leave their homelands and move west.

The substance of the letter reminded the government that Native Americans played a key role in the survival of the early settlers and urged the government to recognize Native Americans as valid inhabitants of their land. Instead the government took the view that Native Americans were living on land belonging to the government.

Upon delivery to Congress, the Cherokee Memorial was tabled. Shortly after, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act which was signed into law by Andrew Jackson and then led to the Trail of Tears.

The Cherokee Memorial’s historical significance is as a harbinger for the lack of regard showed by the government to the Native Americans. By refusing to acknowledge the rights of Native Americans, the government would be able to carry out forced removal which resulted in immense and senseless disease and death.

There were several memorials sent by the Cherokee nation in the nineteenth century to the United States Congress. These memorials were sent to petition congress to take action against the infringement on Cherokee rights and lands by the state of Georgia and by Andrew Jackson. The first of the series of Cherokee Memorials was a petition written and sent to the United States 21st Congress in 1829 by members of the Cherokee Nation. The letter was sent specifically by The Cherokee Phoenix, a newspaper written and operated by members of the Cherokee Nation.

They petitioned Congress to defend and protect the Cherokee people from Andrew Jackson's plan to forcibly remove Cherokee people from their lands and move them into lands west of the Mississippi River. They also wanted to arrest Georgia's attempts to exert control and ownership over Cherokee lands. The memorial was tabled by House Speaker, Andrew Stevenson, on February 8th, 1830. These memorials were an attempt by the Cherokee to legally fight against their forced removal and cultural genocide. These attempts proved to be ineffective, even after a US court ruled removal to be unconstitutional.

The Cherokee Memorial was a letter written to the United States Congress by The Cherokee Phoenix, an American Indian newspaper. It was written in 1829 as a petition for Cherokee rights due to the restrictions and legal changes being made against the American Indians.

The letter outlines the history of the United States with the "red man," or the American Indians, and how when the European settlers came, they reached out for the American Indians' help. However, in recent years, the United States government had been progressively limiting the Cherokee nation and other tribes and pushing them to the brink of extinction. They were losing land and the ability to provide for themselves, and it was concerning.

The main point of the letter is a petition in the final paragraph to change the provisions in the law which saw American Indians as tenants of the land. They were being treated as if they were simply borrowing the land from the American government, when they had as much, if not more, right to it as the United States government did. The letter implores the moral, Christian leaders of the country to reconsider the actions that were being taken that were forcibly removing American Indians from their homeland.

A memorial letter is a written request to a legislature to petition that action be taken regarding a specific matter. The Memorial of the Cherokee Nation was directed to Congress in 1829 to protest the state of Georgia's demand that the Cherokee move west and relinquish their ancestral lands. The letter was tabled, or disregarded without debate, by the House of Representatives on February 8, 1830, less than four months prior to the House's passage of the Indian Removal Act on May 26 of the same year.* The lack of action taken regarding this letter and other memorials from the Cherokee Nation, as well as the short timeline between this protest and passage of the law directly leading to the Trail of Tears, tragically impacted the history of the Cherokee tribe.

The Cherokee Memorial (original document available at the first link below) first addresses the history between American colonists and indigenous Americans, pointing out the benevolent reception extended to early settlers by natives. The letter relates the long history of the Cherokee nation in Georgia and asserts inherent rights to lands occupied by ancestors, reminding its lawmaker audience of treaties ensuring the rights of the Cherokee as a separate people. The most significant aspect of this letter is that it concretely illustrates the profound indifference of the United States government to the voices, history, and overall well-being of American Indian tribes in its systematic efforts to remove them from native lands in the southeast. The Indian Removal Act authorized the displacement of the Cherokee from ancestral lands in Georgia to territory west of the Mississippi River, disregarding the concerns expressed in this memorial letter and stripping the Cherokee nation of culturally significant land.

*President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act on May 28, 1830, two days after the House passed it.