Yes. The treaty-mandated delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives is unique to the Cherokee Nation.
There were only two parties to the 1835 Treaty of New Echota: the United States and the Cherokee Nation. They alone are accountable for delivering on their commitments. Article 7 of the Treaty is definitive, ‘Cherokee Nation …shall be entitled to a delegate in the House of Representatives.’
The Cherokee Nation is the holder of all U.S.-Cherokee treaties dating back to 1785 and the sole beneficiary of the commitments made by the United States to the Cherokee Nation through the Treaty of New Echota and other treaties. Courts are clear on this issue. Federal courts have held time and time again that the Cherokee Nation, and only the Cherokee Nation, entered into and is bound today by treaties signed with the United States.
Congress is clear on this issue. In 2002, through Public Law 107-331, Congress plainly said that the Cherokee Nation “has maintained a continuous government-to-government relationship with the United States since the earliest years of the Union.”
The Cherokee Nation, a federally recognized Indian tribe with its present tribal headquarters south of Tahlequah, Oklahoma, having adopted its most recent constitution on June 26, 1976, and having entered into various treaties with the United States, including but not limited to the Treaty at Hopewell, executed on November 28, 1785 (7 Stat. 18), and the Treaty at Washington, D.C., executed on July 19, 1866 (14 Stat. 799), has maintained a continuous government-to-government relationship with the United States since the earliest years of the Union.
This formal determination by Congress that Cherokee Nation has had a “continuous” relationship with the United States dating back to the signing of the treaties is a complete rebuttal to claims that other tribes—tribes who came into existence long after the Treaty of New Echota was ratified—are successors to this treaty and share this right.