Relationship Between Natives And The Whites

The Natives had once had a decent relationship with the Europeans. They helped them thrive in this new world unknown to them. Throughout the years however, they became involved in many of their wars and soon suffered the consequences of their greed. The whites started to claim their lands and forced them to move away, specifically to the West. It was hard for the whites to do this until Jackson became President. His efforts, along with others such as Lewis Cass made it possible to exploit and trick the Natives into moving to the territory he wanted them to be in. The methods and rationale these individuals used to remove them from their lands were not legally or morally validity.
The growing conflicts between the Natives and the whites did

not just suddenly appear. Neither did the whites desire for the Natives to be removed from their lands. In the seventeenth century to the eighteenth, colonial powers wanted to control and monopolize the fur trade. Keep in mind, the Natives had been exchanging fur, along with other goods, with the Europeans for their manufactured goods. For the Europeans, fur was immensely important and they were in high value because they were short in supplies. This of course led to the Natives overhunting in their lands to keep up with the demand which also led to them hunt farther from home and to “trespass on other people’s hunting grounds, thus inviting violent retaliation” (Wallace 23). It created a competition between Indian tribes, causing wars. Later on, after the French and Indian War, and also other wars during this time, the Europeans had changed their desire of furs to land. The British gained more land during the 1760s when the Northern tribes started attacking their forts. It was a failed attempt because “within a year British troops recaptured the other outposts and the war was over” (Wallace 26). The Southern tribes had no part in it, however, did not want to face future retaliation and so made treaties that “ceded most of their lands east of the proclamation line” (Wallace 26).