Native American removal

Tribes affected: Tribes located east of the Mississippi River

Significance: Removal of the eastern Indian tribes marked the culmination of two centuries of dispossession of American Indians east of the Mississippi River

First suggested by President Thomas Jefferson in 1803, Indian removal, or the exchange of land by tribes east of the Mississippi for western lands, was originally intended by some as a means of protecting Indians from corruption and demoralization resulting from white encroachment. Among its proponents were several prominent humanitarians seeking to protect Indian culture. Removal was made policy, however, by President Andrew Jackson in 1830 as a direct response to pressures mounted by individual states to acquire Indian lands within their borders.

Removal Act

The impetus for removal legislation came principally from Georgia, which in 1802 had ceded its western land claims in exchange for a federal promise to extinguish Cherokee claims within its borders. The spread of cotton agriculture, facilitated by the invention of the cotton gin in 1796, and the discovery of gold on Cherokee land in 1829 exacerbated Georgia’s impatience. After passing legislation which extended Georgia law to the Cherokee Nation, Georgia’s bid to gain Cherokee land was sanctioned by Jackson. He was unsympathetic to the Cherokees, who had lodged their objections in Congress. The Indian Removal Act, signed into law on May 28, 1830, provided for the removal of all Indian tribes east of the Mississippi, thus culminating a process of dispossession begun with the earliest English settlement of North America. Disease, wars, demoralization, land speculation, and treaty violations had already severely depopulated Indians in the east by the end of the eighteenth century. Dense settlements of Indians still remained in the nineteenth century, however, including the Five Civilized Tribes of the southeast.

Cherokee Land Cases

The most strenuous resistance to the Indian Removal Act sprang from the most thoroughly “civilized” of the eastern Indian tribes, the Cherokee. In 1819, acquiescing to missionary lobbying, Congress passed an act which provided for “civilizing” the Indians. Mission schools were founded to teach Indians the purported benefits of sedentary agriculture, private property, and American social customs. The Cherokee Nation, in an effort to retain its ancestral lands, successfully embraced white traditions. Through the aid of a self-educated Cherokee, Sequoyah, who invented a syllabary, the Cherokees published a newspaper, adopted a representative government, and drafted a constitution patterned after that of the United States. When Georgia extended its state laws to the Cherokee Nation and seized Cherokee land, the Cherokees first protested to Congress and subsequently appealed to the United States Supreme Court. While previously the federal government had made treaties with Indian tribes as if they were sovereign nations, the constitutional status of Indians was nebulous. In two Supreme Court cases, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) and Worcester v. Georgia (1832), Chief Justice John Marshall defined Indian tribes as distinct political nations whose land was to be federally protected. Jackson, however, refused to exercise his executive authority in enforcing the Court’s decision, and the Cherokees ultimately were forced to abandon their lands.

Impact

Ostensibly, removal was designed to protect Indian culture by providing tribes with land which they would forever retain that was far enough removed from white settlement to ensure non-interference. In practice, however, Indians ceded their ancestral lands for land in the west which was often of marginal quality or was in many cases already populated. Some tribes were forced to negotiate repeatedly, often moving several times after their initial relocation. Furthermore, Indians were virtually powerless to protect their treaty rights, and the American government was unwilling to uphold treaties in the face of white land hunger. Not all Indians were forced to move. Individuals could accept land allotments and remain east as American citizens; however, the fate of those choosing to remain was often precarious, as land speculators and squatters frequently cheated Indians of their land.

While the Indian Removal Act applied to all eastern Indian tribes, the Cherokee ordeal illustrates the brutality of Jackson’s policy and his determination to enforce removal against Indian resistance. In 1832, celebrating an apparent victory in Marshall’s decision in Worcester v. Georgia, the majority of Cherokees refused to negotiate for removal. Jackson nevertheless authorized a treaty with an Indian minority party that favored swift removal. Thus in 1835 the Treaty Party, led by Elias Boudinot, Stand Watie, and Major Ridge signed a removal treaty which was clearly illegal but was enforced by Jackson. The subsequent forced marches of the Cherokees to Indian Territory became known as the Trail of Tears as a consequence of deprivation and brutality resulting in several thousand deaths.

While nineteenth century controversies surrounding removal focused on the Five Civilized Tribes, the small but numerous bands of Indians living in the north were also subject to removal. With the exception of some who migrated to Canada, their fate differed little materially from that of the southern tribes, and many also were forced to relocate several times before reaching their final destinations.

The impact of removal on Indian culture was demoralization and destruction. Shifts in geographical locations often eroded their culture and rendered subsistence patterns obsolete. In addition, Indians often faced hostile welcomes from western tribes. Ultimately, treaties were broken by the United States government as the whites’ inexorable population growth and westward movement stimulated their interest in even the most marginal Indian lands.

Bibliography

Anderson, William L., ed. Cherokee Removal: Before and After. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991.

Burke, Joseph C. “The Cherokee Cases: A Study in Law, Politics, and Morality.” Stanford Law Review 21 (1969): 500-531.

McLoughlin, William G. After the Trail of Tears: The Cherokees Struggle for Sovereignty, 1839-1880. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.

Prucha, Francis Paul. The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians. Vol 1. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Indian Policy in the United States: Historical Essays. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981.

Satz, Ronald N. American Indian Policy in the Jacksonian Era. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1975.