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Explore the dark history of Indian removal in America marked by racism, greed, and broken promises, with devastating consequences for Native American tribes.
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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).
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.’
