Indian Removal Act Research Paper

Is america ours? Well, let's start at the beginning. After the war of 1812 georgians wanted to take the cherokee and other indian tribes land. So they came up with the indian removal act of 1812 it is promising the cherokee land and 5 million dollars if they move west. But, the cherokee and all the other indian tribes did not want to move because we come over and cheat them kill them and steal their land then after the war of 1812 we expect them to just move over to the west peacefully using the indian removal act.

Lindsey Hernandez Johnson U.S. Honors 28 September 2015 The Indian Removal Act & Trail of Tears Picture this; someone is in their home with their family, they are the first people to ever settle in this land, Native American, with their own language, religion and one day white people come. The white people are treated with kindness and welcome, not out of dignity but out of fear. There is peace.

“One can never forget the sadness and solemnity of that morning of that morning… Many of the children rose to their feet and waved their little hands good-by to their mountain homes, knowing they were leaving them forever.” - John G. Burnett, US military interpreter during the Trail of Tears. In one of the blackest marks made in history by the United States, the Trail of Tears was the brutal removal of the Cherokee and many other tribes from their homes. While the Supreme Court had ruled that the Cherokee Nation had the right to the land, Andrew Jackson had forced nearly 1,600 Native Americans to march to Oklahoma from Georgia and surrounding areas instead, ignoring the court ruling. The Indian Removal Act was a step in the wrong direction for our

The Trail of tears was when Andrew Jackson forced the Cherokee tribe to give up all of their land east of the mississippi river. In 1829, Andrew Jackson signed the Indian removal policy, to make it so the Indians would get with drawn from the east of the Mississippi River and relocate them to the west of the Mississippi River. The tribes that were affected were the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole. These tribes had to leave their homeland and get relocated to the west of the Mississippi River against their will, so that slave owners could use their land for slavery. Andrew Jackson illegally forced the Cherokee tribe off of their land because the Supreme court ruled that the state of Mississippi couldn't make treaties or do anything that was on Cherokee land.

Robert Lindneux painting, Trail of Tears, depicts this unequal opportunity quite well showing miles of Cherokee Indians traveling along a narrow, treacherous road after being expelled from their ancestral homelands as a part of Andrew Jackson's Indian removal policy. These migrants faced hunger, disease, and exhaustion, which eventually killed around 4,000 of the original 15,000 Cherokees. This migration of the Indians was caused by the colonists greed and desire own the Indians fertile and prime land located in Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, Florida, and Tennessee. These colonist’s greed led them to steal Indian livestock; loot and burn their houses and towns; as well as establish property on their land.

Our homeland taken away Betrayed so easily at the thought of gold By those we thought would never sway The Indian Removal Act became a well-known name Relocating us west from our Cherokee homeland However, they weren’t all the same Some supported, while others pitied

The Indian Removal Act was signed in 1830 by President Andrew Jackson to remove the Cherokee Indians from their homes and force them to settle west of the Mississippi River. The act was passed in hopes to gain agrarian land that would replenish the cotton industry which had plummeted after the Panic of 1819. Andrew Jackson believed that effectively forcing the Cherokees to become more civilized and to christianize them would be beneficial to them. Therefore, he thought the journey westward was necessary. In late 1838, the Cherokees were removed from their homes and forced into a brutal journey westward in the bitter cold.

This act had good intentions but didn't completely work as expected. But some of the ideas to repair Native relations ended up doing the opposite and breaking the cultural circle. The trail of tears is now seen as a disastrous event killing over 4,000 Native Americans (Fischer,Leannah 1). But at the time according to Andrew Jackson the indian removal act would “enable them [Native Americans] to pursue happiness in their own way”. The Indian removal act was seen by some as a way to let Native Americans be free from the American government so they could be free like they were before European colonization.

This move, called the Trail of Tears, crushed the Native Americans as well as killing hundreds of them. Even though the Cherokee Indians court rulings did not help them directly, they did help to bring awareness to the fact that Indians need to have rights like the white

Between 1816 and 1840, Indian tribes signed more than 40 treaties to secure their lands. In 1829, President Jackson relocated the eastern Indians and in 1830 the Indian Removal Act forced the Indians to move west of Mississippi. Between 1830 and 1850, 100,000 Indians were were living between Michigan, Florida, and Louisiana. Many Indians was abused during the traveling to the west by the U.S. Army. The Cherokees traded with the European settlers that arrived here.

Under influence of president Andrew Jackson, the congress was urged in 1830 to pass the Indian Removal Act, with the goal of relocated many Native Americans in the East territory, the west of Mississippi river. The Trail of tears was made for the interest of the minorities. Indeed, if president Jackson wished to relocate the Native Americans, it was because he wanted to take advantage of the gold he found on their land. Then, even though the Cherokee won their case in front the supreme court, the president and congress pushed them out(Darrenkamp).

The Indian Removal Act and the forced relocation of the Cherokee Nation was a key step in the spread of slavery and therefore played an important role in the development of the nation and the course of the Civil War. The social aspect of this act had a lasting impact on the U.S. for its role in territorial expansion, the spread of slavery, and the belief in manifest destiny. This served as a justification for the government and individual settlers' actions leading to the displacement and oppression of indigenous peoples.

Furthermore, Natives occupied only a small portion of the territory as evident by the concentration of migrants in the southern most area (Doc 7). Naturally, this transition wasn’t seamless as some tribes refused to leave their sacred homeland. The Cherokees were a prominent opposer, having been forcibly removed and subjected to the infamous Trail of Tears in 1838. Despite being known as the tribe most assimilated to American society, the Cherokees were still forced to leave their ancestral home. Jackson and other politicians reasoned that the removal was for the Native Americans’ own safety and the preservation of their culture, but the removal only tore tribes away from the origins of their culture and

The Genocide: Trail of Tears/ The Indian removal act During the 1830s the united states congress and president Andrew Jackson created and passed the “Indian removal act”. Which allowed Jackson to forcibly remove the Indians from their native lands in the southeastern states, such as Florida and Mississippi, and send them to specific “Indian reservations” across the Mississippi river, so the whites could take over their land. From 1830-1839 the five civilized tribes (The Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole, and Chickasaw) were forced, sometimes by gun point, to march about 1,000 miles to what is present day Oklahoma.

“Native American Timeline of Events.” Legends of America, Mar. 2017, www.legendsofamerica.com/na-timeline.html. Kathy Weiser’s timeline helps to conceptualize the extent of forced migration and the cause and effect relationships between wars, laws, and removals. Her history includes information on the Indian Removal Act, the Trail of Tears, the Indian Indenture Act, the Homestead Act, the Navajo Wars, the Sioux Uprising, etc. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 forced the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, and Seminole to walk the 1,200 mile “Trail of Tears.”