Indian Policy and Removal
• Relationships between the Indians and the
Americans were marred by racism, greed, and
ethnocentrism.
• Americans gained a great deal of confidence
and a sense that they were destined to expand
throughout the American continent.
• This was the first time that the Americans had
won a war on American soil against a European
power without the aid of another European
power. (War of 1812).
• Dubious treaties and broken promises had all
but eliminated the Indians from the northern
territories.
• In the south, it would be gold that eventually
sign the death knell for Indian society.
• The invention of the cotton gin ensured the
enslavement of the African Americans and
wetted the appetite for cotton lands westward.
• Gold, however, became the catalyst to begin the
removal process.
• May 28th, 1830, the Indian Removal Act was
passed so white gold seekers could legally get to
the gold claims that were in the middle of
Indian lands.
• The Indians were to moved west beyond the
Mississippi River to a new land called
Oklahoma.
• The Choctaw were the first to be transported
west. Almost one third died on the trail
westward. Eventually the others would follow.
• The Cherokees are the highest profile of all the
southern tribes. They have assimilated white
culture down to a syllabary (Sequoyah) and a
credible and recognized constitution.
• They own slaves and farm huge cotton
plantations; they run a newspaper and send
delegates to Washington to converse with
President Jackson on Indian policy.
• Their respective leaders are John Ross and
Major Ridge. Both are Indian war veterans
who fought with Jackson against the Indians in
the southern theater
• What they really want is to be left alone; remain as a
people and on the lands of their birth.
• They were granted their lands by the great creator;
lived on them for hundreds of years;
• the Americans were granted the land by a British
King who never even saw the land or owned them.
• The Americans, in the view of the Indians, had little
legitimate claim to the land.
• Jackson saw the Indians as part of the old British
empire and hated all things British.
• Ross the chief of the Cherokee tried to forestall
removal. He wrote many letters, petitioned congress,
parlayed with Jackson, and even brought a law suit
against congress.
• John Marshall, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme
Court, ruled that the Cherokee nation was a
legitimate and sovereign nation with rights to be
recognized by the United States.
• Jackson flagrantly disobeyed Marshall’s ruling. He
stated, “now that Marshall ruled on the law, let him
try now to enforce it.” It spelled the end for the
Cherokees east of the Mississippi.
• Major Ridge traveled to Washington and
privately negotiated a treaty with Congress for
five(5)million dollars, land preference in
Oklahoma, and removal assistance.
• He possessed no authority to speak for the
Cherokee Nation. The Council of Elders
rejected the treaty upon hearing about it.
• Ridge and his sons signed the treaty anyway.
• General Winfield Scott was authorized by Jackson
and the federal government along with the support of
seven thousand troops to secure the removal of the
Cherokee people by any means necessary.
• Scott beseeched the Cherokee to avoid confrontation
and to accept the terms of the Removal Act. He did not
want to exact the horrors and bloodshed of combat
upon the Cherokee Nation.
• If necessary, he would follow his orders to the grisly
end but hoped to avoid such effusion of blood.
• Thousands were rounded up at bayonet point and
brutally herded to holding camps awaiting
transportation west.
• Those who resisted were systematically exterminated.
• Many Cherokee and other tribes were not even
allowed to gather necessities and essentials for the trip
west.
• With nothing but the barest of essentials they were
placed into stockades where many died before the trek
west.
• A total of sixteen thousand Cherokee were
removed from the land of their ancestors.
• John Ross left on the last convoy. His wife and
son died on the trip west.
• The trip west was not a caravan that moved
straight to their destination.
• It took many circuitous routes and took many
months and in the dead of winter. Over four
thousand died on the journey.
• Removal was problematic at best. Newly arriving Indians
were not assured security or prosperity in the new Indian
lands.
• Federal authorities had little if any authority across the
Mississippi.
• Indigenous Indians had little intention of giving up or sharing
their hunting and village grounds with eastern Indians. It
created a tenuous environment.
• Again, we see the ignorance of the American government.
They assumed that all Indians were the same.
• It never dawned on them that there were ancient and
traditional enemies and suspicions between the many Indian
groups.
• Putting them together created a cauldron for
trouble. The Americans would not be the first
nor the last to make this mistake when dealing
with alien peoples.
• Seven months after arriving in the new lands,
Major Ridge and sons were assassinated for
selling out the Cherokee people.
• It was a sad end to a mighty people and a
mighty nation who in all its dealings with the
American government had acted in nothing but
honorable terms.
• They were ridiculed and labeled sub-human.
They were treated unfairly and savagely; lied
to and mistreated; murdered and
exterminated.
• It is in my opinion the darkest chapter in
American History; even African slaves had
more control over their environment and
society than the Native Indians;
• truly a sad epitaph to a great people and great
culture.
 the U.S. subdued a
segment of its own
population whose
only crime was an
insistence on
maintaining their
cultural identity
rather than
assimilate into a
Euro-centric
society—some
even assimilated!
• The United States of America; the richest
nation on the planet; the greatest in
technological advancements;
• From the atom to the moon, to super
computers, it is a legacy to our children;
• Everyone including African Americans and
Latinos experience some legacy and success;
• Our legacy to the native Americans, whom
Jefferson referred to as ‘Noble Savages.’