Readings in United States History 7th Edition Volume 2
At the offset of the 1830s, nearly 125,000 Native Americans lived on millions of acres of land in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida–land their ancestors had occupied and cultivated for generations. By the finish of the decade, very few natives remained anywhere in the southeastern United States. Working on behalf of white settlers who wanted to grow cotton on the Indians' land, the federal government forced them to leave their homelands and walk hundreds of miles to a specially designated "Indian territory" beyond the Mississippi River. This difficult and sometimes deadly journey is known as the Trail of Tears.
The 'Indian Trouble'
White Americans, particularly those who lived on the western frontier, often feared and resented the Native Americans they encountered: To them, American Indians seemed to be an unfamiliar, alien people who occupied land that white settlers wanted (and believed they deserved). Some officials in the early years of the American republic, such every bit President George Washington, believed that the all-time fashion to solve this "Indian problem" was only to "acculturate" the Native Americans. The goal of this civilisation campaign was to brand Native Americans every bit much like white Americans as possible by encouraging them convert to Christianity, larn to speak and read English and adopt European-fashion economic practices such every bit the private ownership of land and other property (including, in some instances in the Due south, African slaves). In the southeastern Us, many Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Creek and Cherokee people embraced these customs and became known every bit the "Five Civilized Tribes."
Just their state, located in parts of Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, Florida and Tennessee, was valuable, and it grew to exist more than coveted every bit white settlers flooded the region. Many of these whites yearned to make their fortunes past growing cotton, and ofttimes resorted to violent ways to take land from their Indigenous neighbors. They stole livestock; burned and looted houses and towns; committed mass murder; and squatted on land that did not belong to them.
State governments joined in this effort to drive Native Americans out of the S. Several states passed laws limiting Native American sovereignty and rights and encroaching on their territory. In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the U.S. Supreme Court objected to these practices and affirmed that native nations were sovereign nations "in which the laws of Georgia [and other states] can have no strength." Even then, the maltreatment continued. Equally President Andrew Jackson noted in 1832, if no one intended to enforce the Supreme Court's rulings (which he certainly did non), then the decisions would "[fall]…still built-in." Southern states were determined to take ownership of Indian lands and would become to neat lengths to secure this territory.
Indian Removal
Andrew Jackson had long been an advocate of what he chosen "Indian removal." As an Army full general, he had spent years leading brutal campaigns confronting the Creeks in Georgia and Alabama and the Seminoles in Florida–campaigns that resulted in the transfer of hundreds of thousands of acres of land from Indian nations to white farmers. As president, he connected this crusade. In 1830, he signed the Indian Removal Act, which gave the federal authorities the power to substitution Native-held land in the cotton kingdom east of the Mississippi for land to the west, in the "Indian colonization zone" that the U.s.a. had acquired as function of the Louisiana Purchase. (This "Indian territory" was located in present-twenty-four hours Oklahoma.)
The law required the authorities to negotiate removal treaties fairly, voluntarily and peacefully: It did non let the president or anyone else to coerce Native nations into giving upwards their country. However, President Jackson and his government frequently ignored the alphabetic character of the law and forced Native Americans to vacate lands they had lived on for generations. In the wintertime of 1831, under threat of invasion by the U.S. Ground forces, the Choctaw became the first nation to exist expelled from its state altogether. They made the journeying to Indian Territory on foot (some "spring in chains and marched double file," i historian writes) and without any food, supplies or other assist from the government. Thousands of people died along the way. It was, one Choctaw leader told an Alabama newspaper, a "trail of tears and death."
The Trail of Tears
The Indian-removal process continued. In 1836, the federal authorities drove the Creeks from their state for the last fourth dimension: 3,500 of the fifteen,000 Creeks who set out for Oklahoma did not survive the trip.
The Cherokee people were divided: What was the best way to handle the regime's determination to become its hands on their territory? Some wanted to stay and fight. Others idea it was more pragmatic to agree to leave in exchange for money and other concessions. In 1835, a few self-appointed representatives of the Cherokee nation negotiated the Treaty of New Echota, which traded all Cherokee land east of the Mississippi for $5 1000000, relocation assistance and compensation for lost property. To the federal regime, the treaty was a done deal, merely many of the Cherokee felt betrayed; later on all, the negotiators did not correspond the tribal government or anyone else. "The instrument in question is not the act of our nation," wrote the nation'south primary chief, John Ross, in a alphabetic character to the U.S. Senate protesting the treaty. "Nosotros are not parties to its covenants; information technology has not received the sanction of our people." Well-nigh sixteen,000 Cherokees signed Ross'south petition, but Congress canonical the treaty anyway.
Past 1838, only about ii,000 Cherokees had left their Georgia homeland for Indian Territory. President Martin Van Buren sent General Winfield Scott and 7,000 soldiers to expedite the removal procedure. Scott and his troops forced the Cherokee into stockades at bayonet point while his men looted their homes and belongings. So, they marched the Indians more than 1,200 miles to Indian Territory. Whooping cough, typhus, dysentery, cholera and starvation were epidemic along the way, and historians gauge that more than 5,000 Cherokee died every bit a result of the journeying.
By 1840, tens of thousands of Native Americans had been driven off of their land in the southeastern states and forced to motion across the Mississippi to Indian Territory. The federal authorities promised that their new state would remain unmolested forever, but as the line of white settlement pushed westward, "Indian Country" shrank and shrank. In 1907, Oklahoma became a land and Indian Territory was gone for good.
Can Y'all Walk The Trail of Tears?
The Trail of Tears is over v,043 miles long and covers nine states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Today, the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail is run by the National Park Service and portions of it are attainable on pes, by horse, by cycle or by car.
Sources
Trail of Tears. NPS.gov.
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Readings in United States History 7th Edition Volume 2
Source: https://www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/trail-of-tears