The Trail Of Tears
Gloria Jahoda, the author of The Trail of Tears talks about how Indian populations dropped and how white people are the ones responsible for the drop of their population. The white men are not responsible for the drop of the Indian population. Johoda makes all Indians sound like defenseless children. Johoda is making excuses for Indians because Indians let the white man take over their lives and life style.
Indians would do everything that was asked of them by the white man instead of standing up for themselves. The Choctaws were granted citizenship in the exception of them not living their everyday life style. Under citizenship, the tribal government of the Choctaws was abolished. Choctaws was given heavy fines and even jail time if the Choctaws dishonored the demands of the white man for their citizenship. Chief Moshulatubbee was shocked so he decided to run for congress. Mississippians took Moshulatubbee wanting to run for congress as a joke. Moshulatubbee lost. The lost started a civil war among the Choctaws. No matter what the Choctaws did they did not get their way. When leaving Mississippi some of the Choctaws died of diseases and of hunger. So the Choctaws gave in and again let the white man take control of them.
One of the presidents of the United States, Andrew Jackson went to war with Indians hopping to get rid of the Indians. Black Hawk was a 62-year-old Indian who hated Americans. Black Hawk says that American promises are empty. When ever Americans told Black Hawk that they would do something for the Indians the Americans would never do what they promised. Black Hawk decided to take the side of the British. When ever the British said they would do something for the Indians the British would always do what they promised. Black Hawk always carried a British medal around his neck he respected the British a great deal. Andrew Jackson the president of the United States at the time came face to face with Black Hawk. The president asked Black Hawk, “why did you go to war,” Black Hawk did not answer. It was said that maybe the sac chief did not understand the question, but I say it’s just another excuse for Indians being naïve and letting the Americans do what they would like with the Indians.
This book educates the audience on how there were brave Indians.
In the essay, “The Trail of Tears” by author Dee Brown explains that the Cherokees isn’t Native Americans that evaporate effectively from their tribal land, but the enormous measure of sympathy supported on their side that was abnormal. The Cherokees process towards culture also the treachery of both states and incorporated governments of the declaration and promises that contrived to the Cherokee nation. Dee Brown wraps up that the Cherokees had lost Kentucky and Tennessee, but a man who once consider their buddy named Andrew Jackson had begged the Cherokees to move to Mississippi but the bad part is the Indians and white settlers never get along together even if the government wanted to take care of them from harassment it shall be incapable to do that. The Cherokee families moved to the West, but the tribes were together and denied to give up more land but Jackson was running for President if the Georgians elects him as President he agreed that he should give his own support to open up the Cherokee lands for establishment.
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.
Fighting broke out after the Choctaw refused to supply the Spaniards with a guide and transportation. The Spaniards were wrong because the Choctaw Indians were friendly especially with the French and allied with them during the intercolonial wars between France and England. Some Choctaws fought with Jackson in New Orleans against the British. In 1830, the United States Government passed the Indian Removal Act. This act called for Eastern Indians to be moved West to make room for white settlers. The Government then forced the Choctaw to sign the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek.
Several Native Americans from the Cherokee tribe had feared that the whites would encroach upon their settlements in the near future so they moved west of the Mississippi many years before the Indian Removal Act was put into place. This good foresight and early movement allowed for them to pick the time that they wanted to leave and they allowed themselves the leisure of moving at their own pace and stopping when they wanted which cut down on casualties extremely and this also allowed them to allocate the appropriate amount of supplies for the trip before attempting to make it prematurely and causing catastrophe to hit. They established a government and worked out a peaceful way of life with the nearby surroundings and allowed themselves to blend into the area that they desired rather than an area that was designated for them. There was always a large tension building between the whites and Cherokee which had reached its climax after the discovery of gold in Georgia. This drove a frenzy that many people wanted in on to make out with a good sum of money as gold was in high demand and worth a lot at the time. When the gold was found it started a miniature gold rush and pulled in whites and
Democracy can be traced back before the coming of Christ. Throughout Greece during the sixth century democracy was in its earliest stages and as the millenniums would pass the power of government by the people would show distinct alterations. This is evident when analyzing The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears by Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green. These authors illustrate how the U.S government adjusts policies from that of assimilating the Native American Indians to that of removing them from their homelands and forcibly causing the Cherokee nation to relocate themselves west of the Mississippi. In further depth Perdue and Green portray though vivid description how the government would show disloyalty and how that caused division between the tribal members of the Cherokee people. This endeavor of travel and animosity of the Indians would become known as the Trail of Tears.
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.
Prior to 1830 the Cherokee people in the Southern states were land and business owners, many owned plantations and kept slaves to work the land, others were hunters and fishermen who ran businesses and blended in well with their white neighbors, but after Andrew Jackson took office as President, the government adopted a strict policy of Indian removal, which Jackson aggressively pursued by eliminating native American land titles and relocating American Indians west of the Mississippi. That same year, Congress passed the Indian R...
The Indians were being confined to crowed reservations that were poorly run, had scarce game, alcohol was plentiful, the soil was poor, and the ancient religious practices were prohibited. The Indians were not happy that they had been kicked off there land and were now forced to live on a reservation. The Indians then began to Ghost Dance a form of religion it is said that if the Indians were to do this trance like dance the country would be cleansed of white intruders. Also dead ancestors and slaughtered buffalo would return and the old ways would be reborn in a fruitful land. Once the Bureau of Indian affairs noticed what was going on they began to fear this new religion would lead to warfare. The white peoplewere scared that this new dance was a war dance. They called for army protection. Army was called in to try to curbed this new religion before it could start a war.
The trail of tears was a hideous harsh horrible time that the Native Americans will not forget the 1830s about 100,000 Native Americans peacefully lived on 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 of akers. They have been on this land generations before the wight men arrived. There was gold found in Gorga and the land was for ital. They used huge cotton plantations because the people would get rich off of them. In 1830 Andrew Jackson privily sinned the removal act. Te removal act gave the Government the power to trade the land for the land that the Native Americans were on. The Native Americans did not want to move, but the precedent sent troops to force the removal. Solders who looted there homes traveled 15,000 Cherokees, and gunpoint marched over 12,000
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.
At the beginning of the 1830s there was nearly 125,000 native Americans that lived on “millions of acres of the land of Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida”.(history.com) These lands had been occupied and cultivated by their ancestors for generations before. Then because of The Trail of Tears was an “800-mile forced journey marked by the cruelty of soldiers”. (Tindall P.434) and by the end of the forced relocations very few Native Americans remained anywhere in the southwest. “working on behave of the white settlers federal government forced them to leave their lands and walk miles to an “Indian territory””.(history.com) .This all happened because of the Indian Removal act of 1930, which authorized the relocation of the eastern Indians to the west of the Mississippi river. The Cherokee Indians tried to fight the relocation and even with the Supreme Court’s support Andrew Jackson still forced them to leave their land. By the 1840s there wasn't many Cherokee Indians that still remained in the southwest.
The book “Lakota Woman,” is an autobiography that depicts Mary Crow Dog and Indians’ Lives. Because I only had a limited knowledge on Indians, the book was full of surprising incidents. Moreover, she starts out her story by describing how her Indian friends died in miserable and unjustifiable ways. After reading first few pages, I was able to tell that Indians were mistreated in the same manners as African-Americans by whites. The only facts that make it look worse are, Indians got their land stolen and prejudice and inequality for them still exists.
The Trail of Tears was a hard battled journey for the Cherokee Nation. The Cherokee were driven to move west. They had to compromise and sign treaties, which drove them out of their land by the U.S. government. This was unfair to the Cherokees; the white settlers wanted the land for gold. Trail of tears is historically monumental because it shows the U.S. government cruelty to the Native Americans. It was unfair rights because they basically stole Cherokees land to satisfy their hunger for gold.
Sturgis, Amy. The Trails of tears and Indian Removal. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group,2007.
I walked into the room on New Year’s Day and felt a sudden twinge of fear. My eyes already hurt from the tears I had shed and those tears would not stop even then the last viewing before we had to leave. She lay quietly on the bed with her face as void of emotion as a sheet of paper without the writing. Slowly, I approached the cold lifeless form that was once my mother and gave her a goodbye kiss.