More handpicked essays just for you.
What was a consequence of the indian removal act
What was the impact on native americans about the indian removal
Essays against indian removal
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
I was in attendance at your speech last night, subsequently hearing your thoughts on Indian Removal. You explained a myriad of ideas that I, as a Cherokee reporter, strongly disagree with. One of your initial points was that the migration westward was a fair exchange, and if anything, was at the expense of the United States. You elaborated by stating that Indians were in an enviable position due to our land was being purchased and relocated to, in your grandiose words, “a new and extensive territory”. Furthermore, you mention that Indians in actuality have a choice whether or not we wish to leave the state. Spreading the epitome of a fallacy, can you feel no shame? If we were in such a pleasurable situation, there would not be so much strife between you and Indians. While it is true that you are purchasing land, that fact solely applies to the possessors of land. The majority of Indians still live a nomadic lifestyle, gaining no merit from your purchasing. Additionally, your declaration that we have a choice in our removal is utter nonsense. In reality, this act leaves all Indians at the mercy of the states and eventually, will all be completely forced out. Your speech doesn’t deliver the truth to outsiders, you have simply distorted the facts in such a …show more content…
way that our position is perceived as favorable. Another argument I have against Indian Removal is that it’s blatantly unconstitutional. You are coercing Indians out of the land we inhabited first and threatening annihilation if we don’t leave. Through this Indian Removal, your avarice is fully displayed for everyone to behold. In the first place, the removal of Indians was never necessary. There was already sufficient land for everyone to inhabit, and the relationship between Whites and Indians were beginning to mellow down. You could even say that our relationship was healthy, one of mutual benefit. Moreover, you ignored the Cherokees’ lawsuits, one particular standout being Worcester v. Georgia. This case gained the support of the Supreme Court, yet you paid it no heed and continued your Indian Removal plans. This court case only further supports that the Indian Removal is unconstitutional. My final aggravation is your last paragraph in your speech.
You refer to the Indians as “children of the forest”, a clearly derogatory description. You view yourself as being infinitely superior to Indians and seem to be under the disconcerting impression that you are in some such way omnipotent. Additionally, further into the paragraph, you proceed to express your desire for a speedy removal of the Indians away from all evil. Undoubtedly, this desire did not manifest itself as The Trail of Tears you would force the Indians to tread would cause greater than 10,000 Indian deaths. Instead of assisting the Indians and ridding of the evils, you instead exposed them to a macabre extermination masquerading as
“migration”.
Andrew Jackson believed that the only way to save the Natives from extinction was to remove them from their current homes and push them across the Mississippi River. “And when removal was accomplished he felt he had done the American people a great service. He felt he had followed the ‘dictates of humanity’ and saved the Indi...
In the Holocaust, the jews lost their rights (Nuremberg Laws), Loss of home (ghettos/concentration camps), and Loss of life…. Jewish people Couldn’t marry, lost businesses, couldn’t move away, Homes looted and taken, forced to march or to board trains/convos to get, concentration camps, Mobile gas vans, gas chambers, and they were murdered by SS. All of the people who helped exterminate the jews caused and helped this. Not just them, they didn't have but a few people helping them and saying what's right and what's wrong in this case. They would say that they didn't know that all of these horrific things were occurring. Unlike the holocaust, the indians had people fighting for what's right. The indians did have to walk miles on foot, but they did have supporters. People trying to end the madness. The indians lost their land, lost their rights, and lost privileges. Andrew Jackson offered the indians five million dollars upon a successful relocation. The indians agreed, but when they were related, he didn't give them anything.... He lied to the
The rhetor for this text is Luther Standing Bear. He was born in 1868 on the Pine Ridge Reservation. He was raised as a Native American until the age on eleven when he was taken to Carlisle Indian Industrial School: an Indian boarding school. After graduating from the boarding school, he returned to his reservation and now realized the terrible conditions under which they were living. Standing Bear was then elected as chief of his tribe and it became his responsibility to induce change (Luther Standing Bear). The boarding schools, like the one he went to, were not a fair place to be. The Native American children were forced to go there and they were not taught how to live as a European American; they were taught low level jobs like how to mop and take out trash. Also, these school were very brutal with punishment and how the kids were treated. In the passage he states, “More than one tragedy has resulted when a young boy or girl has returned home again almost an utter stranger. I have seen these happenings with my own eyes and I know they can cause naught but suffering.” (Standing Bear 276). Standing Bear is fighting for the Indians to be taught by Indians. He does not want their young to lose the culture taught to them from the elders. Standing Bear also states, “The old people do not speak English and never will be English-speaking.” (Standing Bear 276). He is reinforcing the point that he believes that they
...convince us Indians that our removal was necessary and beneficial. In my eyes, the agreement only benefited Andrew Jackson. It is apparent that Jackson neglected to realize how the Indian Removal act would affect us Indians. When is the government justified in forcibly removing people from the land they occupy? If you were a Native American, how would you have respond to Jackson? These questions need to be taken into consideration when determining whether or not Jackson was justified. After carefully examining these questions and considering both the pros and cons of this act, I’m sure you would agree that the removal of Native Americans was not justified under the administration of Andrew Jackson. Jackson was not able to see the damaging consequences of the Indian removal act because of his restricted perspective.
middle of paper ... ... I firmly believe that the betterment of one group of people is not worth the destruction of another. Works Cited Anderson, William L. Cherokee removal before and after. Athens: University of Georgia, 1991.
Once the white men decided that they wanted lands belonging to the Native Americans (Indians), the United States Government did everything in its power to help the white men acquire Indian land. The US Government did everything from turning a blind eye to passing legislature requiring the Indians to give up their land (see Indian Removal Bill of 1828). Aided by his bias against the Indians, General Jackson set the Indian removal into effect in the war of 1812 when he battled the great Tecumseh and conquered him.
American Indians shaped their critique of modern America through their exposure to and experience with “civilized,” non-Indian American people. Because these Euro-Americans considered traditional Indian lifestyle savage, they sought to assimilate the Indians into their civilized culture. With the increase in industrialization, transportation systems, and the desire for valuable resources (such as coal, gold, etc.) on Indian-occupied land, modern Americans had an excuse for “the advancement of the human race” (9). Euro-Americans moved Indians onto reservations, controlled their education and practice of religion, depleted their land, and erased many of their freedoms. The national result of this “conquest of Indian communities” was a steady decrease of Indian populations and drastic increase in non-Indian populations during the nineteenth century (9). It is natural that many American Indians felt fearful that their culture and people were slowly vanishing. Modern America to American Indians meant the destruction of their cultural pride and demise of their way of life.
Author and Indian Activist, Vine Deloria makes compelling statements in chapters one and five of his Indiana Manifesto, “Custer Died for Your Sins.” Although published in 1969 this work lays important historic ground work for understanding the plight of the Indian in the United States. Written during the turbulent civil rights movement, Deloria makes interesting comparisons to the Black struggle for equal rights in the United States. He condemns the contemporary views toward Indians widely help by Whites and argues that Indians are wrongly seen through the historic lens of a pipe smoking, bow and arrow wielding savage. Deloria forcefully views the oppressors and conquerors of the Indian mainly as the United States federal government and Christian missionaries. The author’s overall thesis is that Whites view Indians the way they want to see them which is not based in reality. The resulting behavior of Whites towards Indians shows its affects in the false perception in law and culture.
Author and Indian Activist, Vine Deloria makes compelling statements in chapters 1 and 5 of his Indiana Manifesto, “Custer Died For Your Sins.” Although published in 1969 this work lays important historical ground work for understanding the plight of the Indian. Written during the turbulent civil rights movement, Deloria makes many comparisons to the Black plight in the United States. He condemns the contemporary views toward Indians widely help by Whites. He argues that Indians are wrongly seen through the historical lens of a pipe smoking, bow and arrow wielding savage. Deloria views the oppressors and conquerors of the Indian mainly in the form of the United States federal government and Christian missionaries. The author’s overall thesis is that whites view Indians the way they want to see them which is not based in reality. The behavior of whites towards Indians reflects this false perception in law, culture and public awareness.
The Indian Removal Act drove thousands of natives off their tribal lands and forced them west to new reservations. Then again, there are those who defend Jackson's decision stating that Indian removal was necessary for the advancement of the United States. However, the cost and way of removing the natives was brutal and cruel. The opposition fails to recognize the fact that Jackson’s removal act had promised the natives payment, food, and protection for their cooperation, but Jackson fails to deliver any of these promises. Furthermore, in “Indian removal,” an article from the Public Broadcasting Service, a description of the removal of the Cherokee nation is given.
The removal of Indian tribes was one of the tragic times in America’s history. Native Americans endured hard times when immigrants came to the New World. Their land was stolen, people were treated poorly, tricked, harassed, bullied, and much more. The mistreatment was caused mostly by the white settlers, who wanted the Indians land. The Indians removal was pushed to benefit the settlers, which in turn, caused the Indians to be treated as less than a person and pushed off of their lands. MOREEE
Congress , Indian Removal. "Jackson’s Message to Congress on Indian Removal." PBS. Community Television of Southern California , 16 May 2008. Web. 16 Jan 2014. .
Andrew Jackson was not a great president. He supported slavery, and he brandished his power as president by opposing Supreme Court rulings, especially regarding the removal of Native Americans. Thus, Jackson would have disagreed with the excerpt by Henry Miller that favored a “private destiny.” Through his approval of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, Andrew Jackson goes against the isolationistic implications of Henry Miller’s excerpt. When viewed during Jackson’s time period, the passage supports a moral stance of racial equality. Henry Miller’s expressions promote unity in independence, and the forceful removal of the Native Americans reveals its necessity.
Within a year of taking office, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act on May 28, 1830. A longtime supporter of removing Indians from the lands they occupied, Jackson’s Indian Removal Act gave him the authority to negotiate directly with Native American Indian tribes to exchange their land with land west of the Mississippi River. Within ten years of the signing of the Act more than 70,000 Indians were relocated, many with force, and thousands died during the process. Those that benefited most from the Indian Removal Act were the State of Georgia, the Country as a whole and Indians.
The Cherokee Indians thrived for thousand of years in the southern part of the continent we now call the United States. They learned how to farm the land, hunt, and fish. They were a peaceful, self-sufficient people when the settlers came. With the arrival of the new inhabitants, the Cherokees soon taught them how to farm, hunt, and fish. “By the 1820s, many Cherokees had adopted some of the cultural patterns of the white settlers as well” (National Park Service, n.d.). In 1827, two leaders of the Cherokee nation devised a constitution that was based primarily on the American Constitution. “Even as Major Ridge and John Ross were planning for the future of New Echota and an educated, well-governed tribe, the state of Georgia increased its pressure on the federal government to release Cherokee lands for white settlement” (National Park Service, n.d.). Once gold was discovered in Georgia, the white settlers could not resist owning the land for themselves at any cost.