Jacksonland: President Andrew Jackson, Cherokee Chief John Ross, and a Great American Land Grab

by Steve Inskeep,
Tulsa World, July 26, 2015

In 1819, two years after Gen. Andrew Jackson forced the Cherokees to sign a treaty that included incentives for the tribes to leave their ancestral lands and move west, John Ross, a leader of the Cherokee Nation, expressed the hope (in a letter to President James Monroe) that “the Government will now strictly protect us from the intrusions of her bad citizens and not solicit us for more land — as we positively believe the comfort and convenience of our nation requires us to retain our present limits.”