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Indian perspectives on the indian removal act
Indian removal act introduction
Indian removal act introduction
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On January 27th, 1825 the U.S Congress had its annual meeting to discuss issues going on in the country and on this day one of those issues was agreeing to set aside territory for Native Americans. This Indian Territory was land that was west of the Mississippi River, but did not include the states Louisiana or Missouri, and the Territory of Arkansas. The land was called Indian Territory because it was set aside by the United States government to move the Native Americans that they relocated from the southern part of the United States in order for white settlers to move into to live on. This territory will eventually be called the state of Oklahoma. By setting aside this land it allowed the United States government to relocate the Native Americans …show more content…
The Choctaw tribe was the first to sign a treaty and be relocated. Some decided to stay on their land, but were weary of being attacked and mistreated ultimately sold their land and moved westward. Even though the Indian Removal Act went through the United States still struggled in relocating all Native American tribes west. The Seminoles were tricked into signing a treaty and angered by this declared the treaty illegal. They refused to move which resulted in multiple wars between the U.S military and Seminoles. Thousands of lives were lost on both sides and ended up costing President Jackson close to 40-60 million dollars. Eventually, the United States ended up paying the remaining Seminoles money to pack up and move westward. The Creeks like the Seminoles refused to move from their land. The Creek did sign a treaty in March of 1832 which said that they were guaranteed protected ownership of a small portion of their land. Sadly though the government did help protect them like they said they would from land hungry white settlers. This resulted in over 15,000 Creeks migrating west. The Chickasaw tribe saw removal as something they could not avoid, and signed a treaty in 1832. This treaty said that the government would protect them until they moved to their land in the west. Like with the Choctaw the government backed out on their promise and the Chickasaw ended up having to pay the Choctaw to live on their land in the Indian territory. The Cherokee were tricked with an illegitimate treaty. In 1833, a group of Cherokee agreed to sign the Treaty of New Echota, but the people who signed were not the real leaders of the Cherokee tribe. The Cherokee tried to get the Supreme Court to appeal the treaty, but instead they ratified it saying that they had two years to move westward on their own. After the two years they would be forcibly moved out
As the frontier moved west, white settlers wanted to expand into territory, which was the ancestral land of many Indian tribes. Although this had been going on since the administration of George Washington, during the administration of Andrew Jackson the government supported the policy of resettlement, and persuaded many tribes to give up their claim to their land and move into areas set aside by Congress as Indian Territory. In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Resettlement Act, which provided for the removal of Indians to territory west of the Mississippi River. While Jackson was President, the government negotiated 94 treaties to end Indian titles to land in the existing states.
Andrew Jackson signed the indian removal act in 1830. This act allowed him to make treaties with the natives and steal their lands. The Trail of Tears was a forced relocation of more than 15,000 cherokee Indians. The white men/people gave the natives 2 options: 1. Leave or 2. Stay and Assimilate (learn our culture). The natives couldn’t have their own government. There were 5 civilized tribes including the cherokees. They learned english and went to american schools and when the cherokees went to court they won.
Back in 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act. This act required the government to negotiate treaties that would require the Native Americans to move to the west from their homelands. Native Americans would be moved to an area called the Indian Territory, which is Oklahoma and parts of Kansas and Nebraska. Some tribes that were to be moved are Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Choctaw, and Chickasaw. All of the other tribes had relocated in the fall of 1831 to the Indian Territory besides the Cherokee who did not relocate until the fall of 1838.
The generalization that, “The decision of the Jackson administration to remove the Cherokee Indians to lands west of the Mississippi River in the 1830s was more a reformulation of the national policy that had been in effect since the 1790s than a change in that policy,” is valid. Ever since the American people arrived at the New World they have continually driven the Native Americans out of their native lands. Many people wanted to contribute to this removal of the Cherokees and their society. Knox proposed a “civilization” of the Indians. President Monroe continued Knox’s plan by developing ways to rid of the Indians, claiming it would be beneficial to all. Andrew Jackson ultimately fulfilled the plan. First of all, the map [Document A] indicates the relationship between time, land, and policies, which affected the Indians. The Indian Tribes have been forced to give up their land as early as the 1720s. Between the years of 1721 and 1785, the Colonial and Confederation treaties forced the Indians to give up huge portions of their land. During Washington's, Monroe's, and Jefferson's administration, more and more Indian land was being commandeered by the colonists. The Washington administration signed the Treaty of Holston and other supplements between the time periods of 1791 until 1798 that made the Native Americans give up more of their homeland land. The administrations during the 1790's to the 1830's had gradually acquired more and more land from the Cherokee Indians. Jackson followed that precedent by the acquisition of more Cherokee lands. In later years, those speaking on behalf of the United States government believed that teaching the Indians how to live a more civilized life would only benefit them. Rather than only thinking of benefiting the Indians, we were also trying to benefit ourselves. We were looking to acquire the Indians’ land. In a letter to George Washington, Knox says we should first is to destroy the Indians with an army, and the second is to make peace with them. The Indian Trade and Intercourse Act of 1793 began to put Knox’s plan into effect. The federal government’s promise of supplying the Indians with animals, agricultural tool...
Unfortunately, this great relationship that was built between the natives and the colonists of mutual respect and gain was coming to a screeching halt. In the start of the 1830s, the United States government began to realize it’s newfound strength and stability. It was decided that the nation had new and growing needs and aspirations, one of these being the idea of “Manifest Destiny”. Its continuous growth in population began to require much more resources and ultimately, land. The government started off as simply bargaining and persuading the Indian tribes to push west from their homeland. The Indians began to disagree and peacefully object and fight back. The United States government then felt they had no other option but to use force. In Indian Removal Act was signed by Andrew Jackson on May 18, 1830. This ultimately resulted in the relocation of the Eastern tribes out west, even as far as to the edge of the Great Plains. A copy of this act is laid out for you in the book, Th...
The federal government proceeded to find a way around this decision and had three minor Cherokee chief’s sign the “Treaty of New Echota” in 1835 giving the Cherokee lands to the government for 5.6 million dollars and free passage west. Congress got the treaty ratified by only one vote. Members of their tribes murdered all three chiefs who took part in the signing of the treaty. After this event there was not much the Cherokee’s could do and were forcibly moved west on what they called and are known today as the ‘Trail of Tears,’ which became a constitutional crisis in our history. In this instance the lack of cooperation between the branches of the government was the downfall for the Cherokee nation. The way the Cherokee’s were forced west caused losses of up to twenty percent of the nation. This figure is only a guess and scholar’s think it was more a third of the nation was lost. The ‘Trail of Tears’ was also a morale issue in the United States, later having an impact on our history the way other Native American races in general are treated in the future.
Whites thought Indians were savages or odd people and they had all the lands. Georgia wanted the federal government to give land to the Cherokee in the Appalachian Mountain and the government approved Georgia’s request. In 1817 6,000 Cherokee were convinced by Jackson to move voluntarily to the Arkansas Territory, but most of them refused. When Jackson was elected as a President, he was committed to move the Cherokee by force. After that, congress passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830 and the other Indians tribes went, but the Cherokee planned to stay and fight back politically and legally.
Andrew Jackson, who was the 7th President of the United States, signed the Indian Removal Act in May 28th, 1832 and this policy granted Andrew Jackson the right to forcibly move the Native Americans to land west of the Mississippi. Even though “it is presumed that any explanation of Jackson’s purposes is an attempt to justify the mass killing of innocent people…” (Remini, 45) some would say his childhood affected him; seeing and hearing Indians Attacking places near his home. Or how he was the second President to make it into the business without an education. Some people thought that with gold being found in Georgia, this led many new white settlers looking to buy land from the Cherokee Indians. Although a lot could be said about Andrew Jackson’s Removal Policy one thing is for certain, the way the Policy was carried out was a horror. If you could just imagine this with your heart and soul how the policy was carried out, then you could see how terribly the Indians were treated. All because they occupied the land they were given in a treaty. The policy affected many people, some in good ways; some in bad. Obviously the only people this policy affected in a good way were the white settlers looking to buy the Indians land. The Chickasaw Indians were the only Tribe to not have land in the New Territory even though they were promised it. They sold their land for $500,000 to the United States Government, and when they showed up and had no land they decided to lease land from Choctaws. The purchase of the land from the other tribe created a trust fund that gave the Chickasaw Indians up to $75,000 a year, and then enabled them to have a cash economy and not rely on the natural environment (Kidwell). The unfortunate situation in this enti...
Despite the fact that these agreements were a clear violation of existing British law, they were used later to justify the American takeover of the region. The Shawnee also claimed these lands but, of course, were never consulted. With the Iroquois selling the Shawnee lands north of the Ohio, and the Cherokee selling the Shawnee lands south, where could they go? Not surprisingly, the Shawnee stayed and fought the Americans for 40 years. Both the Cherokee and Iroquois were fully aware of the problem they were creating. After he had signed, a Cherokee chief reputedly took Daniel Boone aside to say, "We have sold you much fine land, but I am afraid you will have trouble if you try to live there."
Oklahoma, in its earliest organized forms, consisted of over forty independent Native American Nations, though they arrived through a complex process. Native American migration predated European contact but by the mid eighteenth century Native American nations saw their lands being progressively threatened by Euro-American settlement. Migratory push/pull factors such as warfare, famine, and encroachment resulted in movements of native cultures for centuries. However, by the beginning of the nineteenth century Native American migratory patterns began to be forced and regulated on European terms. Treaties, lands sales, and forced relocations onto predetermined reservations changed the way Native Americans would relate to the land and their environment, as well as, intertribal relations. By the 1820s and 1830s most Native American nations had ceded their lands east of the Mississippi River to the newly created United States by treaty or ultimately through the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The Trade and Intercourse Act of 1834 further defined ‘Indian Territory’ as “all that part of the United States west of the Mississippi and not within the states of Missouri, Louisiana, or Arkansas Territory, or any other organized territory.” Over time, this vast reserved land shrank to the limits of Eastern Oklahoma as the insatiable demand for cheap land for white settlers increased.
Can you imagine soldiers from a foreign place coming to your door and forcing you and your family to leave your home to never return again? The Cherokee did not expect this to happen to them either. The Indian Removal Act was formally adopted in 1825 during the presidency of John Quincy Adams. In the reelection of 1828, Andrew Jackson would take the presidential seat after defeating John Quincy Adams. In 1830, President Jackson would sign and set the Indian Removal Act into motion. This legalized the moving of the Indians into the western Indian colonization zone in order to open up the southern cotton lands. In the beginning of the 1830’s there were around 125,000 Native Americans that lived on the land that their ancestors had maintained,
In 1783, the American Revolution ended. Since most of the Cherokees helped the British in the Revolutionary War, the Americans needed to make peace with them. Then in1785, the treaty of Hopewell was signed (Perdue 8). This was a peace treaty between the Cherokee and the Americans. This treaty defined the Cherokees’ boundaries and it gave them the right to get rid of unwanted settlers. The states of Georgia and North Carolina ignored this treaty. The people of these states expanded into Cherokee land, and the Cherokees continued to resist.
First, the Cherokees don’t want to move to their new territory. According to Joan Marshall in the article “Allow the Cherokee To Stay” that, they were treated horrible, and they didn’t get the treaties said when they moved. The Cherokees decided to ring their problems to the U.S. Supreme Court which is just fair. The U.S. Supreme Court didn’t really favor on the Cherokees but
Natives were forcefully removed from their land in the 1800’s by America. In the 1820’s and 30’s Georgia issued a campaign to remove the Cherokees from their land. The Cherokee Indians were one of the largest tribes in America at the time. Originally the Cherokee’s were settled near the great lakes, but overtime they moved to the eastern portion of North America. After being threatened by American expansion, Cherokee leaders re-organized their government and adopted a constitution written by a convention, led by Chief John Ross (Cherokee Removal). In 1828 gold was discovered in their land. This made the Cherokee’s land even more desirable. During the spring and winter of 1838- 1839, 20,000 Cherokees were removed and began their journey to Oklahoma. Even if natives wished to assimilate into America, by law they were neither citizens nor could they hold property in the state they were in. Principal Chief, John Ross and Major Ridge were leaders of the Cherokee Nation. The Eastern band of Cherokee Indians lost many due to smallpox. It was a year later that a Treaty was signed for cession of Cherokee land in Texas. A small number of Cherokee Indians assimilated into Florida, in o...
In 1814-1824 Jackson was able to negotiate treaties with many tribes in exchange of land in the west. Tribes agreed to this as a result of planned reasons so that they can keep rest of their land and also protect themselves from white harassment. Due to these treaties the government was able to control three-quarters of Alabama and Florida, some part of Georgia, Mississippi and North Carolina. This was the time of voluntary Indian migration but only a small group of people moved from Creeks, Cherokee and Choctaw tribes. Andrew Jackson ordered “Indian removal Act” from which all the misery of the Indian tribe started. In order to survive, coexist and resist the five tribes also adopted western civilization of farming, keeping slaves and edu...