MAJOR RIDGE AND JOHN RIDGE

Cherokee leaders, like Major Ridge, tried to adapt to the new Europeanized world around them.  Major Ridge sent his son, John Ridge, to be educated at the Moravian mission school at Spring Place, Georgia.  He sent his daughters to the Salem Academy here in Salem, North Carolina.  

By 1835 Major and John Ridge were convinced that the Cherokee Nation’s only hope for survival was migration.  They were among the signers of the Treaty of New Echota which exchanged Cherokee land for land in Oklahoma.  In 1837 the Ridge family left Georgia for their new home.  In 1838 the United States Government forced the remaining Cherokee from their lands. Thousands died along the Trail of Tears west.  In 1839 angry survivors of the forced migration to Oklahoma murdered Major and John Ridge.