Cherokees and Methodists, 1824–1834

On 29 May 1831, the Reverend James Jenkins Trott, a Methodist missionary to the Cherokee, was arrested in the Cherokee Nation by the Georgia Guard and forced to march 110 miles to prison at Camp Gilmer. Released after four days, he was required to post a five-hundred-dollar bond and ordered to keep out of that part of the Indian nation within the territorial limits of the state of Georgia. He refused to obey the order. Married to a Cherokee who lived near his mission station at New Echota, he went to visit his wife and two children in July. On 6 July he again was arrested and forced to march 110 miles back to prison. With him this time were two Presbyterian missionaries, the Reverend Samuel A. Worcester and Dr. Elizur Butler. Two of Trott's friends, the Reverend Dickson C. McLeod and the Reverend Martin Wells, who were also Methodist circuit riders within the Cherokee Nation, heard of his arrest. They saddled up and rode after him. When they caught up with the prisoners along the road, the officer in charge, Col. C. H. Nelson, ordered them curtly to “flank off!.” When McLeod made some disparaging remarks about the treatment of the missionaries, Nelson ordered him off his horse, arrested him and made him march with the prisoners. Wells, who was left holding McLeod's horse, also was ordered with oaths to flank off. When he refused, “Col. Nelson cut a stick and making up to Mr. Wells gave him a severe blow on the head.”1