Indian Policy and Removal

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Indian Policy and Removal
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• 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).

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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

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• 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.

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• 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 Marshalls 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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 societysome even
  assimilated!

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• 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.

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