On Indian Removal

Content Warning: This section discusses ethnic cleansing.

A number of factors resulted in the United States’s policy of forced removal of Indigenous peoples off their lands. Since its inception, the United States sought to expand its footprint in North America. Some of the region’s earliest European settlers (e.g., the Puritans) felt a divine calling to establish and grow a model society; others sought land for economic gain, and for new immigrants in particular, it was often easier to gain a foothold in the territories than in the more urbanized states. The US government had pragmatic reasons for supporting such expansion, as it feared the possibility of European powers claiming land adjacent to the US and threatening the new nation’s existence—a concern Jackson alludes to when he speaks of “strengthen[ing] the southwestern frontier and render[ing] the adjacent States strong enough to repel future invasions without remote aid” (2).

this expansionism led to many conflicts with Indigenous peoples. While many believed that the conversion of the Indigenous Americans to Christianity would help to alleviate the skirmishes, others believed that Indigenous Americans did not and could not share in the United States’s developing identity. Conflicts intensified in many southern states due to these regions’ agrarian lifestyles and economies, and United States citizens and landowners seeking to drive out Indigenous peoples reverted to vigilantism. The conflict resulted in three landmark Supreme Court cases. In the Supreme Court decision of Johnson v. M’Instosh, the court determined that Indigenous Americans could not sell land titles to anyone but the federal government. Further limiting states’ authority over Indigenous peoples and their lands, the Supreme Court Cases of Cherokee Nation v. Georgia and Worcester v. Georgia established the Cherokee Nation as a domestic nation—essentially a sovereign state within the US. These cases also established “federal primacy,” or the federal government’s primary authority over such sovereign states. While individual states had no legal authority over the Cherokee people, the federal government could therefore intercede when it deemed necessary. As Jackson alludes to in his speech, some state governments resented such limitations on their ability to deal with Indigenous Americans, generating friction with the federal government.

However, while these Supreme Court decisions might seem to have protected the rights of Indigenous people, they were actually used as footholds for the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The federal government used federal primacy to negotiate the relocation of Indigenous tribes off land it deemed essential to The Expansion of American Culture, territory, and economy. These policies were bolstered by the US policy of westward expansion, as the government negotiated a purchase of tribal lands east of the Mississippi and relocated Indigenous peoples to designated areas west of the Mississippi known as “Indian Territory.”

Among the tribes most affected by Jackson’s policies were the Cherokee, who inhabited lands throughout the southern United States in the early 1800s. In 1835, men representing the Cherokee Nation (a fact disputed by modern Cherokees) brokered a deal with the United States government to move to the lands west of the Mississippi in exchange for $5 million. The Treaty of Echota was ratified in 1836, and the tribes were given two years to move voluntarily; those who remained would be forced from their land by the federal government. Between 1838-1839, approximately 16,000 people were forcibly relocated from areas in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. As the Cherokee were not the only tribe impacted by the policy, it is likely that a total of roughly 100,000 Indigenous Americans were forced to relocate, with some 15% of them dying along the journey known as the Trail of Tears. This reality contrasts markedly with Jackson’s claim that the proposed ethnic cleansing would in fact slow down the “decay” of Indigenous tribes.