The Indian Removal Act
In the beginning, The United States recognized Indian tribes as separate nations of people entitled to their own lands that could only be obtained from them through treaties. Due to inexorable pressures of expansion, settlement, and commerce, however, treaties made with good intentions were often perceived as unsustainable within just a few years. The Indians felt betrayed and frequently reacted with violence when land promised to them forever was taken away. For the most part, however, they directed their energies toward maintaining their tribal identity while living in the new order. The United States under the leadership of President Andrew Jackson dealt with settling the Indians the most humane possible way, for
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“The doom of the Cherokee was sealed. Washington, D.C., had decreed that they must be driven West and their lands given to the white man, and in May 1838, an army of 4000 regulars, and 3000 volunteer soldiers under command of General Winfield Scott, marched into the Indian country and wrote the blackest chapter on the pages of American history.”
Said Private John G. Burnett, of Captain Abraham McClellan’s Company, 2nd Regiment, 2nd Brigade, Mounted Infantry. This primary source is to give perspective on the soldiers behalf, not to defend the contrary, but to look from a more broad perspective. Being able to use the time period as a reason for justification that it was the most humane way to deal with the Indians for that time. The United States gave the Indians time to move west and those that had not done so by choice were forced.
The removal of the Indians was a long going issue for The United States, that no one knew just how to deal with.
“Some officials in the early years of the American republic, such as President George Washington, believed that the best way to solve this “Indian problem” was simply to “civilize” the Native
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He made decisions based on the interest of those settled Americans who feared the Indians, and also wanted to give the Indians the sovereignty they deserved being a functioning society that was entailed by The United States. He had negotiated the Treaty of New Echota that agreed the Cherokee would sell the remainder of their land west of the Mississippi to the white men for 5 million dollars. Although it was not signed by the Indians chief official, it was negotiated by a Cherokee leader, Major Ridge, who at the time claimed to represent the Cherokee
White residents of the United States clashed with the Indigenous people on land, food, and rights, without a permanent compromise. In 1829, President Andrew Jackson proposes to move all Indigenous people within America’s current territory to reservations. After being pursued for nearly thirty years, the Choctaw and the Chickasaw tribes agreed for their removal. This would allow whites to live their civilized lives as the Indigenous people cast off their savage habits in remote reservations. President Jackson’s Case for the Removal Act shows that those of power and majority decide the terms of segregation.
"Dee Brown shows clearly in this book the way Indian tribes been manipulated by the whites during the second half of the nineteenth century. With personal interviews of cheefs and indian warriors, Brown points right to the target the ways that white men used to minimize the influence that tribes had to the west and the unfair battle that indians had to involved during the present of the white men. It is a clear view of how indians leave their home lands in favor of the whites.
The Act led to an array of legal and moral arguments for and against the need to relocate the Indians westward from the agriculturally productive lands of the Mississippi in Georgia and parts of Alabama. This paper compares and contrasts the major arguments for and against the
The US government wanted the indians to take come into “white ways”. Chief Luther Standing Bear tells his experience after leaving the reservation. He explains how he unexpectedly learned the ways of the white man instead of his original idea of doing a “brave deed”. Also, in Powell’s report, he pushes for Native children to be put into schools to learn english and american ways to work. He pushed for houses to be built to encourage indians to convert to american traditions and ways of life.
Indian Removal Act(1814-1858)- http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/Indian.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2959.html https://history.state.gov/milestones/1830-1860/indian-treaties Was a law passed on May 28, 1830 by the president of the United States(Andrew Jackson) that gave the authorization for him to grant the uncolonized lands west the the Mississippi river in exchange for the Indian lands within the already existing state borders. A small number of tribes went peacefully, but many resisted the relocation policy. Andrew Jackson was a potent advocate of the Indian Removal. In the very first year of the Removal, he commanded the U.S. military forces that defeated a faction of the Creek Nation. In their insuccess, they lost 22 million acres of land.
The Western Indian Wars was a conflict between “the Western tribes and the U. S troops ended with the 1886 surrender of Apache leader Geronimo in Arizona and the 1890 overthrow of the Sioux at Wounded Knee in South Dakota (“America’s Wars”, 2004).” Throughout the history of the United States, American Indians were treated poorly. Ever since the white men crossed the Atlantic Ocean 200 years ago till the mid 1900’s the poor treatment and killing of Indians never ceased. U.S polices passed between the Revolutionary war and the mid 1900’s hurt American Indians and put them at an extreme disadvantage. There were series of wars, before the western Indian wars in the United States.
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.
In debating Indian Removal, Congress was discussing the dispossession and expulsion of independent Indian communities in the eastern half of North America. The debate was not a new one, but was set in terms of the principles and experience of a country with
The Indian Removal Act is an important event in the development of early U.S. history, and continues to have a lasting impact on our world today. The Indian Removal Act affected the land Americans had access to. It changed the culture of Native Americans tribes nearby and relocated them off their sacred land. Americans then took this opportunity to move West beyond the Appalachian Mountain and into the fertile land to start more farms that made the Us economy even better. This is because the main economy in the US at the time was agriculture.
This treaty was known as the Treaty of New Echota. Not all Cherokees were happy about this treaty and joined Cherokee leader, Chief John Ross, in a bitter, fierce, but futile
Native Americans flourished in North America, but over time white settlers came and started invading their territory. Native Americans were constantly being thrown and pushed off their land. Sorrowfully this continued as the Americans looked for new opportunities and land in the West. When the whites came to the west, it changed the Native American’s lives forever. The Native Americans had to adapt to the whites, which was difficult for them.
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.
During the “Gilded Age” period of American history, development of the Trans-Mississippi west was crucial to fulfilling the American dream of manifest destiny and creating an identity which was distinctly American. Since the west is often associated with rugged pioneers and frontiersmen, there is an overarching idea of hardy American individualism. However, although these settlers were brave and helped to make America into what it is today, they heavily relied on federal support. It would not have been possible for white Americans to settle the Trans-Mississippi west without the US government removing Native Americans from their lands and placing them on reservations, offering land grants and incentives for people to move out west, and the
Many Native Americans tried to fit in with American culture, by learning to write and read, establishing governments similar to those of the United States, develop their own written languages, and start a plantation system with slavery. However, it was not sufficient. The New American still did not like the Native Americans, and wanted them to go. President Andrew Jackson was the one who thought of immediate solutions to the problem. Indian threaten westward expansion in the mid-nineteenth century with Second Seminole War, Treaty of New Echota, and Trail of Tears, To begin with, the Second Seminole War started after the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830.
Throughout the 19th century Native Americans were treated far less than respectful by the United States’ government. This was the time when the United States wanted to expand and grow rapidly as a land, and to achieve this goal, the Native Americans were “pushed” westward. It was a memorable and tricky time in the Natives’ history, and the US government made many treatments with the Native Americans, making big changes on the Indian nation. Native Americans wanted to live peacefully with the white men, but the result of treatments and agreements was not quite peaceful. This precedent of mistreatment of minorities began with Andrew Jackson’s indian removal policies to the tribes of Oklahoma (specifically the Cherokee indians) in 1829 because of the lack of respect given to the indians during the removal laws.