George "Corn" Tassel
American murderer
George "Corn" Tassel, Utsi'dsata, Cherokee language (Cherokee: Tsalagi, Aniyvwiyaʔi), was known for being illegally tried, convicted, and executed for murder on December 24, 1830, by the State of Georgia. His case became the first Cherokee legal document to support Cherokee sovereignty, and by extension Native American sovereignty in general. As a result of this incident, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Worcester v. Georgia that the states do not have jurisdiction in Native American territories.
Murder charges
In 1830 George Corn Tassel was charged with the murder of another Cherokee man at Talking Rock, within Cherokee territory. Corn Tassel had allegedly waylaid and killed Sanders "Talking Rock" Ford while under the influence of alcohol.
Talking Rock (now Pickens County, Georgia) was within the territory of the Cherokee Nation. It was 50 miles from Hall County, where Tassel was taken to be tried. Since the Cherokee Nation was considered sovereign by U.S. law, Tassel should have been tried in a Cherokee court.
Trial and appeal
Tassel was tried on November 22, 1830, in the county seat, Gainesville, Georgia.
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This entry incorporates text from “George "Corn" Tassel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.