CLAIMS

After the Treaty of New Echota in 1835, Cherokees began making claims to the US for homes, farms and ferries that had been taken from them starting in 1829. In 1836 and 1837, as some Cherokee families began to move west to Indian Territory in Arkansas and what is now Oklahoma, more claims were filed. For the most part, those claims were either ignored or rejected. After removal, a huge number of claims were filed in 1842. Each was dictated to a bilingual Cherokee clerk, with details about their lost farms, homes, animals, crops and ferries, as well as their farm tools and household items. Thus, those claims tell individual Cherokee stories about what they owned in their homeland, and what they suffered, in a direct way that no other source captures.