WORCESTER V. GEORGIA

Samuel A. Worcester was a prominent American missionary and publisher who saw the infringement of American settlement in the state of Georgia as a direct threat to the sovereignty of the Cherokee people. Worcester was one of roughly a dozen missionaries who wished to protest a Georgia law prohibiting white men from establishing residency on Cherokee land with permission from the Cherokee but without a license from the state. Worcester argued that by obeying such a law, the Cherokee had de facto surrendered their sovereignty to the state of Georgia. The missionaries established residency and began to publish a newspaper, The Cherokee Phoenix, that publicized their actions and advocated for the rights of the Cherokee as protected under federal law. Worcester brought two suits to the Supreme Court in 1830 and 1831, which established federal primacy over relations with Native American tribes and recognized the tribes as “domestic dependent nations.” However, Georgians disagreed with the decisions and saw Worcester and his fellow missionaries as revolutionaries and ordered their arrest by militia forces in 1831. While several missionaries accepted pardons, Worcester and another missionary took sentences of hard labor to put the case again before the Court. The Court again upheld the unconstitutionality of Georgia law and, in so doing, created the legal doctrine of tribal sovereignty within the United States.