In the years around 1800, Ridge built a homestead on Oothcalooga Creek near present day Adairsville, Georgia. Ridge married a Cherokee named Susanna (Sehoya) Wickett and was chosen to be a representative to the Cherokee Council. There he began to work with others to preserve the Cherokee culture while adopting important aspects of Euro-American culture learned through increased contact with traders, missionaries and visitors to the Cherokee Nation.
During the war of 1812, the Cherokee sent a contingent to fight alongside the American forces against the British and the Creek Red Sticks. In 1814, Ridge's troops were a decisive factor in the defeat of the Creeks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Because of his brave role in recruiting and leading the Cherokee, Ridge was awarded the rank of major by General Andrew Jackson. Ridge would soon begin to use his rank as his first name, forever becoming "Major Ridge".
Back home after the war, Major Ridge continued his rise in political power, eventually becoming Speaker of the Tribal Council. Ridge worked tirelessly to set-up an organized government patterned after that of the United States. He helped defeat obsolete laws such as the blood law, and he pushed new laws through the council. Ridge also encouraged the acceptance of missionaries into the nation and the education of the Cherokee people.
Sometime in the early 1800's Ridge moved his family to a two-story dogtrot log cabin on the Oostanaula River near present day Rome. In 1828, Ridge decided his family deserved something even better, so his son John, who had been to school in New England, oversaw renovations of the cabin. When the work was finished, the cabin had become a white clapboard plantation home. Here the Ridge family oversaw a ferry, trading post and a working plantation complete with numerous crops, orchards and slaves.
Despite Ridge's best efforts, his people were still viewed as uneducated savages by many Americans. In 1830, the state of Georgia, hungry for the fertile valleys and gold deposits of Cherokee land, extended its laws over much of the Cherokee Nation. In addition, the state legislature declared the Cherokee laws null and void and forbade the Cherokee to meet in council. Two years later, Georgia held a land lottery and gave all of the Cherokee land to white people. Major Ridge's home was given to a widow named Rachel Ferguson. Unlike many Georgians, Mrs. Ferguson made no effort to settle on her new property in advance of Cherokee removal.
The Cherokee fought Georgia through the United States court system. In Worcester v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Cherokee were a nation separate and independent from the U.S. The U.S. should help and protect the Cherokees, but neither the federal government nor the individual states had legal jurisdiction over them. This seeming victory was turned into defeat when President Andrew Jackson refused to honor or enforce the ruling. He not only allowed Georgia to take the land, he encouraged them to do so.
By 1835, Major Ridge, his son John, and nephew Elias Boudinot along with a small number of influential Cherokees were convinced their people had only one chance for survival. On December 29, 1835, Ridge and the others signed the Treaty of New Echota selling the Cherokee land to the United States in exchange for land in modern-day Oklahoma. The treaty gave the Cherokee two years to move. The treaty was unsanctioned by the Cherokee government and thus considered illegal by most Cherokee. Ironically, years before, John Ridge had pushed a law through the Cherokee Council setting death as the penalty for selling tribal lands.
The Treaty Party and the Ridge family packed up their belongings in 1837 and moved to the Oklahoma Territory. There they started over. John Ross told the remaining Cherokee not to worry. He thought that he could go to Washington and plan a way for the Cherokee to stay or at least get a better deal for the land. Ross was wrong.
In May of 1838, the United States government started rounding up the Cherokee and placing them in stockades. By fall they were forced to leave for Oklahoma. They were not given enough supplies or transportation for the trip, and they traveled through one of the worst winters on record. By the time they arrived in Oklahoma, it was March of 1839, several thousand had died, escaped, or otherwise went missing.
The embittered survivors blamed the Treaty Party and especially the Ridge family for their suffering on what they came to call the "Trail of Tears". A small group met in secret, held a trial and declared all of the treaty signers guilty of treason. On June 22, 1839, Major Ridge was ambushed and shot five times. John Ridge was dragged from his bed and, in front of his wife and children, he was stabbed twenty-five times, had his throat slit, was thrown into the air and then trampled by his assailants. Major Ridge's nephew, Elias Boudinot was struck in the head multiple times with an axe and then stabbed several times. These men truly paid the ultimate sacrifice for their people. No one was ever arrested for the murders of the Ridge men. John Ross claimed no knowledge of the deeds and eventually pardoned all involved, including his son. After the murders, many of the Ridge family moved to Texas where their descendants live today.
The former home of the Ridge family on the eastern bank of the Oostanaula River still stands today. Later occupants of the house began calling their home “Chieftains” in recognition of its significance to Native American history. It has served as the home of the Verdereys, Wrights, Jones, Jeffries, and Porters. It also functioned as the residence of the various managers of the synthetic fibers mill constructed near the site in 1930. In 1969, the Celanese Corporation donated the house to the Junior Service League of Rome. It has been preserved and utilized as a museum ever since. Chieftains is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is a National Historic Landmark, and is a designated site on the National Park Service Trail of Tears National Trail, the first private site to be so designated. Since 1987, the museum has been operated by Chieftains Museum, Inc., an independent, nonprofit, membership organization. In 2002, the name became Chieftains Museum/Major Ridge Home.
501 Riverside Parkway, P.O. Box 373 • Rome, Georgia 30162-0373
Office: 706/291-9494 • Fax: 706/291-2410 • Email: info@chieftainsmuseum.org
Director: Claudia M. Oakes • Programs Coordinator: Debby Brown