Worcester v. Georgia

What happened

Samuel A. Worcester, a citizen of Vermont, entered the Cherokee Nation as a missionary. He said he had the authority of the president of the United States and the permission and approval of the Cherokee Nation. A Georgia court indicted him for residing, on July 15, 1831, in the part of the Cherokee Nation that Georgia had attached to Gwinnett County, without a state license and without taking an oath to support Georgia's constitution and laws.

He pleaded that Georgia could not prosecute him. He cited several treaties in which the United States acknowledged the Cherokee Nation as a sovereign nation and guaranteed the territory it occupied. He said the Georgia laws were repugnant to those treaties, to the Constitution, and to the federal Trade and Intercourse Act. The Gwinnett court overruled his plea, convicted him, and sentenced him to hard labour in the penitentiary for four years.

In the January 1832 term, Chief Justice Marshall wrote for the Supreme Court. The Court said the "right given by discovery among the European discoverers" could not "affect the rights of those already in possession." It pointed to the treaties of Hopewell and Holston, which recognized the Cherokees' national character and right of self-government.

"The Cherokee nation, then, is a distinct community, occupying its own territory," Marshall wrote, "in which the laws of Georgia can have no force." The Court held Worcester's sentence was pronounced under a law that is void and ought to be reversed and annulled.

Summarized with AI assistance from 3 sources and checked against their words; not yet reviewed by historians or by the nations. Report an error