Indian Removal Dbq

When America looks back on the years of Andrew Jacksons presidency, they may think of many things about his tenure as the leader of our nation. They may think of his ample use of the veto power or perhaps they remember him as “the people’s president.” However, the thing all modern Americans should remember and attribute to him is the signing of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. This act would set the stage for, and be one of the direct causes of, one of the great atrocities in American history.
The Indian Removal Act gave power to President Jackson to remove Native Americans living east of the Mississippi River from their home lands and resettle them1 in what is present day Oklahoma.
These “treaties” focused in particular on removing the Cherokee,

This failure caused the death of many Choctaw people, who died of malnutrition, exposure or disease while being forced to travel with insufficient supplies. Some peoples, like the Seminole, resisted the relocation and tried to defend their land. When the majority of the Seminole nation resisted it started a conflict that would be known as the Second Seminole War. This war would last from 1835 to 1842 and ultimately ended with a large portion of Seminole people being relocated.
The Cherokee Nation had been an earlier adopter of the new American culture. They learned English, many had converted to Christianity, and individuals owned slaves like the majority of the white male land-owners. Perhaps it is because of their assimilation to the new world culture that they tried to resist in a different way.
The Cherokee Nation sued the U.S. Government and two cases were brought before the Supreme Court. The first case, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, claimed that they should be treated as an independent foreign nation. The second case, Worcester v. Georgia, fought for the right of non-natives to live on land held by Native Americans. In both of these cases the Supreme Court made it clear that it did not see the Cherokee Nation as its own independent