Major Ridge

Major Ridge
ᎦᏅᏓᏞᎩ (Cherokee)
1834 portrait of Major Ridge by Charles Bird King, in History of the Indian Tribes of North America.
Born	1771, exact date unknown Great Hiwassee, present-day Tennessee
Died	June 22, 1839 (aged 67 or 68) White Rock Creek, Little Branch Creek near White Rock Cemetery, Washington County, AR
Cause of death	Assassination
Nationality	Cherokee
Citizenship	Cherokee Nation (1794–1907)
Occupation	Cherokee Leader
Spouse(s)	Sehoyah (Susannah Catherine Wickett) Kate Parris
Children	John Ridge Sarah (Sally) Ridge

The Ridge, later known as Major Ridge (c. 1771 – 22 June 1839; known in Cherokee as Nunnehidihi, and later Ganundalegi [ᎦᏅᏓᏞᎩ]^[1]) was a Cherokee leader, a member of the tribal council, and a lawmaker. As a warrior, he fought in the Cherokee–American wars against American frontiersmen. Later, Major Ridge led the Cherokee in alliances with General Andrew Jackson and the United States in the Creek and Seminole wars of the early 19th century.

Along with Charles R. Hicks and James Vann, Ridge was part of the "Cherokee triumvirate," a group of rising younger chiefs in the early nineteenth-century Cherokee Nation who supported acculturation and other changes in how the people dealt with the United States. All identified as Cherokee; they were of mixed race, though Ridge was nearly full blood, and had extensive personal and professional experience and understanding of the European-American culture surrounding the Cherokee homeland. Ridge became a wealthy planter, and ferryman in Georgia. Like many Cherokee leaders, including John Ross with whom he would come to greatly disagree with on how the Cherokee tribe should respond the United States’ passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, Ridge had become a wealthy plantation and slave owner.

Under increasing pressure for removal from the federal government, Ridge and others of the Treaty Party signed the controversial Treaty of New Echota of 1835. They believed removal was inevitable and tried to protect Cherokee rights in the process. It required the Cherokee to cede their remaining lands in the Southeast to the US and to relocate to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. Opponents strongly protested to the US government and negotiated a new treaty the following year, but were still forced to accept removal. Blamed for the ceding of communal land and the deaths of the Trail of Tears, Ridge was assassinated in 1839 by members of the Ross faction who believed they were acting in accordance with the Cherokee Blood Law.