Native American Reading Georgia Creek and Cherokee
At the showtime of the 1830s, nearly 125,000 Native Americans lived on millions of acres of land in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Due north Carolina and Florida–land their ancestors had occupied and cultivated for generations. By the terminate of the decade, very few natives remained anywhere in the southeastern United States. Working on behalf of white settlers who wanted to grow cotton fiber on the Indians' land, the federal government forced them to get out their homelands and walk hundreds of miles to a specially designated "Indian territory" across the Mississippi River. This difficult and sometimes deadly journey is known as the Trail of Tears.
The 'Indian Problem'
White Americans, particularly those who lived on the western borderland, 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 as President George Washington, believed that the all-time style to solve this "Indian problem" was simply to "civilize" the Native Americans. The goal of this civilization campaign was to brand Native Americans as much like white Americans equally possible by encouraging them convert to Christianity, learn to speak and read English and adopt European-style economic practices such as the private ownership of country and other property (including, in some instances in the Due south, African slaves). In the southeastern U.s., many Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Creek and Cherokee people embraced these customs and became known as the "Five Civilized Tribes."
Only their land, located in parts of Georgia, Alabama, N Carolina, Florida and Tennessee, was valuable, and it grew to be more than coveted as white settlers flooded the region. Many of these whites yearned to make their fortunes by growing cotton, and often resorted to trigger-happy means 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 non vest to them.
State governments joined in this effort to drive Native Americans out of the Southward. Several states passed laws limiting Native American sovereignty and rights and encroaching on their territory. In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the U.South. Supreme Court objected to these practices and affirmed that native nations were sovereign nations "in which the laws of Georgia [and other states] tin have no force." Nevertheless, the maltreatment continued. As President Andrew Jackson noted in 1832, if no one intended to enforce the Supreme Court's rulings (which he certainly did not), and then the decisions would "[fall]…still born." Southern states were determined to take buying of Indian lands and would get to great lengths to secure this territory.
Indian Removal
Andrew Jackson had long been an abet of what he called "Indian removal." As an Army general, he had spent years leading brutal campaigns against the Creeks in Georgia and Alabama and the Seminoles in Florida–campaigns that resulted in the transfer of hundreds of thousands of acres of country from Indian nations to white farmers. As president, he connected this crusade. In 1830, he signed the Indian Removal Deed, which gave the federal government the power to exchange Native-held land in the cotton kingdom east of the Mississippi for land to the west, in the "Indian colonization zone" that the United states of america had caused equally part of the Louisiana Purchase. (This "Indian territory" was located in nowadays-24-hour interval Oklahoma.)
The law required the regime to negotiate removal treaties fairly, voluntarily and peacefully: Information technology did not let the president or anyone else to coerce Native nations into giving upwards their state. Yet, President Jackson and his government frequently ignored the letter of the law and forced Native Americans to vacate lands they had lived on for generations. In the winter of 1831, under threat of invasion by the U.Due south. Army, the Choctaw became the start nation to be expelled from its country altogether. They made the journey to Indian Territory on foot (some "spring in chains and marched double file," one historian writes) and without whatsoever food, supplies or other help from the regime. Thousands of people died forth the manner. 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 government collection the Creeks from their land for the last fourth dimension: 3,500 of the fifteen,000 Creeks who prepare out for Oklahoma did not survive the trip.
The Cherokee people were divided: What was the all-time way to handle the government's conclusion to get its easily on their territory? Some wanted to stay and fight. Others thought information technology was more than pragmatic to agree to leave in exchange for coin and other concessions. In 1835, a few cocky-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 authorities, the treaty was a done deal, but many of the Cherokee felt betrayed; after all, the negotiators did non represent the tribal government or anyone else. "The instrument in question is not the act of our nation," wrote the nation's main chief, John Ross, in a letter to the U.S. Senate protesting the treaty. "We are not parties to its covenants; information technology has not received the sanction of our people." Nearly sixteen,000 Cherokees signed Ross's petition, but Congress approved the treaty anyway.
By 1838, but about 2,000 Cherokees had left their Georgia homeland for Indian Territory. President Martin Van Buren sent General Winfield Scott and vii,000 soldiers to expedite the removal process. Scott and his troops forced the Cherokee into stockades at bayonet bespeak while his men looted their homes and belongings. So, they marched the Indians more than than 1,200 miles to Indian Territory. Whooping coughing, typhus, dysentery, cholera and starvation were epidemic along the mode, and historians estimate that more than 5,000 Cherokee died as 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 move beyond the Mississippi to Indian Territory. The federal authorities promised that their new land would remain unmolested forever, but as the line of white settlement pushed westward, "Indian Country" shrank and shrank. In 1907, Oklahoma became a country and Indian Territory was gone for adept.
Can Yous Walk The Trail of Tears?
The Trail of Tears is over 5,043 miles long and covers nine states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, N Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Today, the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail is run by the National Park Service and portions of it are accessible on human foot, past horse, by bike or by car.
Sources
Trail of Tears. NPS.gov.
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Source: https://www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/trail-of-tears
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