On the forty-second page of “Crow Dog's Case: American Indian Sovereignty, Tribal Law, and United States Law in the Nineteenth Century”—a book whose title is taken from the very interesting life and story of Chief Crow Dog—author Sidney L. Harring wrote (hyperlink & some emphasis added):
![Crow Dog's Case: American Indian Sovereignty, Tribal Law, and United States Law in the Nineteenth Century [cover]](http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/imageDB.cgi?isbn=9780521467155)
Creeks could have given any white a more ignbole trial than Georgia had provided Corn Tassel.
The 1833 Tennessee statute that extended state criminal jurisdiction over the Cherokee Nation was a model of moderation when compared with those of Alabama and Georgia. As the federal government would later do in the Major Crimes Act of 1885, Tennessee limited its criminal jurisdiction over Indians to the specific crimes of murder, rape, and larceny. The statute specifically recognized "all other usages and customs of the Cherokee," granting legitimacy to Indian customary law by statute. The law went on to prohibit settlement by whites "on the lands of the Indians" and required that the act not be construed "to invalidate any law or treaty of the United States made in pursuance of the constitution thereof."68 The lattern provision represents an explicit acknowledgement of the Worcester case and distinguishes Tennessee from Georgia and Alabama in the state's unwillingness to defy federal authority directly.
State v. Forman, Tennessee's parallel case to Caldwell and Corn Tassel, followed those cases' same general arguments, but it was handed down in 1835 and was therefore the first case to confirm state criminal jurisdiction over Indian tribes in direct contradiction to the clear holding of Worcester.69 Since President Andrew Jackson was Tennessee's most dominant political figure and at that time was anxious to avoid the constitutional crisis that the Cherokee cases had created, it is not inconceivable that Forman represents an effort by southern nationalists to find a middle ground between Corn Tassel and Caldwell on the one hand and Worcester on the other and thereby avoid the sectional strife the Cherokee cases had caused.70
James Forman, a Cherokee, was indicted for killing John Walker, another Cherokee, within the boundaries of the Cherokee Nation. Forman's defense was that he was a Cherokee and not under the jurisdiction of Tennessee. The local state court rejected this argument and convicted him. Forman's appeal, like Caldwell's, resulted in a lengthy analysis of the state's claims to jurisdiction over the Indian nations. Nearly half of the Tennessee Supreme Court's 115-page opinion is a historical analysis of the history of Indian-white relations in North American that closely follows the interpretation of Caldwell. It further provides a detailed history of Cherokee-white relations
- State v. Forman, 8 Yerg. 256 (1835).
- Ibid.
- Michael Green argues that President Jackson's role in these southern Indian matters was a complex one. While fully agreeing with Georgia that no Cherokee Nation could be allowed to function within Georgia's borders, he later used federal troops to protect the rights of Creeks in Alabama against white encroachment. The key difference was that the Creeks had ceded their lands to the whites and had agreed to move West; hence Jackson was protecting Indians who were not challenging the authority of any state. Green, Politics of Indian Removal, 174–81.
More information about “Crow Dog's Case: American Indian Sovereignty, Tribal Law, and United States Law in the Nineteenth Century” (and the book itself) is available from:
(Cambridge University Press, February 1994. Paperback, 317 pages. ISBN: 0521467152; EAN: 9780521467155.)
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