New Echota - History

History

Prior to relocating to Gansagi and building there for New Echota, since 1788 the Cherokee had used the nearby town of Ustanali on the Coosawattee River as the seat of the Cherokee people. It was established there in 1777 by refugees from the Cherokee Lower Towns in northwestern South Carolina. That was the year in which Old Tassel and several other Cherokee leaders were murdered while on an embassy to the State of Franklin. Warriors across the frontier increased attacks on European-American settlers, in addition to the Chickamauga followers of Dragging Canoe, who were already in the midst of the Chickamauga wars. Following the murders, Little Turkey was elected chief of the Cherokee. They moved the seat of the council from Chota to Ustanali.

New Echota was named after Chota, the former capital of the Overhill Cherokee, which with the region of the Overhill Towns had been ceded to the United States the year before. In the 1820s, the old capital had been enveloped by the waters of Tellico Lake in Monroe County. "Chota" and "Echota" were later names for Itsati, the original Creek name of the town. Itsati is the name that Hitchiti Creek call themselves. Chota is the Creek word for "frog." Itsati/Chota had been a major Muskogean town in eastern Tennessee before they migrated south and west. It was later occupied by the Cherokee.

A common English name for New Echota was "Newtown" or "New Town". These names are still used for the area around the State Park. Later Anglo-American settlers called the area "The Fork" and "Fork Ferry."

By 1823 the government of the Cherokee Nation was meeting in New Echota. On November 12, 1825, New Echota was officially designated the capital of the Cherokee Nation. At that time, the tribal council also began a building program that included construction of a two-story Council House, a Supreme Court, and later the office (Printer Shop) of the first Indian language and Cherokee newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix.

Here Elias Boudinot wrote and a printer laid out the first Native American newspaper. Boudinot wrote it in English and Cherokee, using for the latter the new syllabary recently created by Sequoyah. Private homes, stores, a ferry and mission station were built in the outlying area of New Echota. The town was quiet most of the year, but Cherokee Council meetings provided the opportunity for great social gatherings. During these meetings, several hundred Cherokees filled the town, arriving by foot, on horseback or in stylish carriages.

In 1832, after Congressional passage of the Indian Removal Act, Georgia included Cherokee territory in its Sixth Land Lottery, allocating Cherokee land to white settlers. The Cherokee Nation had never ceded the land to the state. Over the next six years, the Georgia Guard operated against the Cherokee, evicting them from their properties. By 1834, New Echota was becoming a ghost town. Council meetings were moved to Red Clay, Cherokee Nation (now Tennessee). The United States urged the Cherokee to remove to Indian Territory, in exchange for their lands in Georgia.

In May 1835, a small group of Cherokee (300–500 Cherokee known as Ridgeites or the Treaty Party) signed the Treaty of New Echota in the home of Elias Boudinot. Signers included Major Ridge, John Ridge, and Andrew Ross, a brother of John Ross, the principal chief. Struggling to preserve some rights for the Cherokee, they agreed to removal in exchange for lands west of the Mississippi River, with the Cherokee to have sovereignty in that western territory. Despite objections from John Ross to the US government, Congress ratified the treaty. The following year Ross had the treaty invalidated, and settled a new one, but Georgia proceeded before that. The US government encouraged the Cherokee to migrate west and eventually forced them out.

In 1838 the U.S. Army, under the command of Winfield Scott, began the forced removal of Cherokee from the state of Georgia. A Cherokee removal fort was located at New Echota. It was called Fort Wool. The fort held Cherokee from Gordon County, Georgia and Pickens County, Georgia until their removal. As the first group of Cherokee began their exodus to Rattlesnake Springs, Cherokee Nation (4 miles south of Charleston, Tennessee), the Cherokee from counties south and east of the area also were housed here.