Lindsey Hernandez Johnson U.S. Honors 28 September 2015 The Indian Removal Act & Trail of Tears Picture this; someone is in their home with their family, they are the first people to ever settle in this land, Native American, with their own language, religion and one day white people come. The white people are treated with kindness and welcome, not out of dignity but out of fear. There is peace. But one morning, the white people force said natives out of their homes, they beat them, driving them out of the stability and comfort they were once in, on to a 1,000-mile march. In 1830, Andrew Jackson began such actions. This period in American history is known as the “Removal Era”, from the 1830’s to as long as the 1870’s (Stockdale). The Era’s
Andrew Jackson really liked power, some would say he is obsessed with it. Andrew Jackson had an idea called the Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears and what it did was that it kicked out the indians from west of the Mississippi. The indians felt very strongly about protecting their land because if you you think about it, what if you had just 1 day to pack up all of the things in your house and had to leave forever. Plus what if on that journey to find a new home, along the way you lost some people like family that you love and care about. That is what the indians had to go through and that changed their lives forever.
The Trail of tears was when Andrew Jackson forced the Cherokee tribe to give up all of their land east of the mississippi river. In 1829, Andrew Jackson signed the Indian removal policy, to make it so the Indians would get with drawn from the east of the Mississippi River and relocate them to the west of the Mississippi River. The tribes that were affected were the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole. These tribes had to leave their homeland and get relocated to the west of the Mississippi River against their will, so that slave owners could use their land for slavery. Andrew Jackson illegally forced the Cherokee tribe off of their land because the Supreme court ruled that the state of Mississippi couldn't make treaties or do anything that was on Cherokee land.
After many excruciating and bloody battles, one example being the Battle of Horse Show Bend, Native American tribes began to realize they couldn’t defeat Americans in war. Instead they developed a strategy of appeasement. This plan consisted of the Native Americans giving up a large portion of their land, in hopes that they could retain some of it. However, appeasement and resistance did not work. Following, Andrew Jackson convinced congress to pass the Removal Act of 1830.
The Native American's, during the Jacksonian Era, were the people who suffered the worst treatment during Andrew Jackson's vison. Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Policy show's the brutal mistreatment of the Native American's who were forced to leave their homelands. Jackson's plan/vision was to remove all the Indian's whom resided on lands east of the Mississippi River in order for American Settlers to live, and for speculators to sell and make profit from these lands as well (ushistory.org, 2014). Many American settlers viewed the Indians as savages, and less than whites. They wanted the lands that the tribes lived on to have more space to produce cotton.
stood to gain copious amounts of land and in return the American government would sacrifice its honor. The Trail of Tears and the 1830 Indian Removal would be the beginning of a great division that would occur within the U.S. Americans would later watch in disgust WWII would occur speaking to the similarities of the events and the comparisons of leaders. But what remains a fact is the 1830 Indian Removal was nothing short of ethnic cleansing. The loss of thousands of Cherokee people had to be answered for and balanced out according to Cherokee Law.
Our homeland taken away Betrayed so easily at the thought of gold By those we thought would never sway The Indian Removal Act became a well-known name Relocating us west from our Cherokee homeland However, they weren’t all the same Some supported, while others pitied
Thousands of Native Americans were shoved out of their homes by the Indian Removal act of 1830, and thousands of pioneers died on the way Westward. During this time of expansion strife was growing between the North and South. A way of life run by industrialization and working clashed with a way
America is a country where tenacious individuals unified, and took control over the land that is now rightfully ours. The grueling hardships of my ancestors must not go unnoticed and disregarded- we must take control back over our country. The savages are hindering our progress in the expansion of land ownership, and therefore hindering our progress as a maturing nation. Indian habitation immobilizes the advancement of population, wealth, and power, and the Removal Act will in turn correct these derailments. Andrew Jackson, who I support fully, made several important points about the aboriginal population and the importance of relocating them.
The Indian Removal Act The Indian Removal Act was signed as a law by President Andrew Jackson in 1830. This law was to remove and settle the Native Americans from East of the Mississippi River to the West, known as Indian Territory. This law also prohibited white people to settle in the nation. Thousands of Indians made attempts which were not violent. Many Indians refused to leave from their lands because they worked for them really hard to just be removed like that.
On May 28, 1830, President Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act. Native Americans who didn’t want to relocate would become citizens of their home state. The Indian Removal Act separated Indians from immediate contact with settlements of whites. free them from the power of the States; enable them to pursue happiness in their own way and under their own rude institutions.
The Indian Removal Act was signed in 1830 by President Andrew Jackson to remove the Cherokee Indians from their homes and force them to settle west of the Mississippi River. The act was passed in hopes to gain agrarian land that would replenish the cotton industry which had plummeted after the Panic of 1819. Andrew Jackson believed that effectively forcing the Cherokees to become more civilized and to christianize them would be beneficial to them. Therefore, he thought the journey westward was necessary. In late 1838, the Cherokees were removed from their homes and forced into a brutal journey westward in the bitter cold.
During one of his powerful speeches, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said “Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race.” Scholars talk of what happened to the Indians as a great tragedy, but never anything further. We deny what happened to the Indians, particularly the Cherokees. During the 1830’s, the United States government set out to remove all Cherokee individuals from their homes and relocate them west. Relocation meant ending up on a land foreign to them, and presented with environmental conditions that posed difficulties for human living.
On July 17, 1830, the Cherokee nation published an appeal to all of the American people. United States government paid little thought to the Native Americans’ previous letters of their concerns. It came to the point where they turned to the everyday people to help them. They were desperate. Their withdrawal of their homeland was being caused by Andrew Jackson signing the Indian Removal Act into law on May 28, 1830.
When the Europeans began colonizing the New World, they had a problematic relationship with the Native Americans. The Europeans sought to control a land that the Natives inhabited all their lives. They came and decided to take whatever they wanted regardless of how it affected the Native Americans. They legislated several laws, such as the Indian Removal Act, to establish their authority. The Indian Removal Act had a negative impact on the Native Americans because they were driven away from their ancestral homes, forced to adopt a different lifestyle, and their journey westwards caused the deaths of many Native Americans.
The Genocide: Trail of Tears/ The Indian removal act During the 1830s the united states congress and president Andrew Jackson created and passed the “Indian removal act”. Which allowed Jackson to forcibly remove the Indians from their native lands in the southeastern states, such as Florida and Mississippi, and send them to specific “Indian reservations” across the Mississippi river, so the whites could take over their land. From 1830-1839 the five civilized tribes (The Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole, and Chickasaw) were forced, sometimes by gun point, to march about 1,000 miles to what is present day Oklahoma.