Chieftains Museum

Chieftains Museum
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. National Historic Landmark
Chieftain House
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Location	501 Riverside Pkwy NE, Rome, Georgia
Coordinates	34°16′38″N 85°10′13″W / 34.27710°N 85.17019°W / 34.27710; -85.17019
Built	1819
Architect	Major Ridge
NRHP reference No.	71000273
Significant dates
Added to NRHP	April 7, 1971[1]
Designated NHL	November 7, 1973[2]

Chieftains Museum, also known as the Major Ridge Home, is a two-story white frame house built around a log house of 1819 in Cherokee country (today it is within present-day Rome, Georgia, United States of America). It was the home of the Cherokee leader Major Ridge. He was notable for his role in negotiating and signing the Treaty of New Echota of 1835, which ceded the remainder of Cherokee lands in the Southeast to the United States. He was part of a minority group known as the Treaty Party, who believed that relocation was inevitable and wanted to negotiate the best deal with the United States for their people.

The chiefs had agreed they could not go to war against the United States on the removal issue, but most other Cherokee opposed Ridge and the Treaty Party. He and some other members of the Treaty Party were assassinated after most of the tribe was removed to what became the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory, for having ceded the tribe's communal lands, as this was considered a capital crime.