What Happened to Native Americans as People From the United States Settled Lands in the West?
Andrew Jackson, from Tennessee, was a forceful proponent of Indian removal. In 1814 he commanded the U.South. military forces that defeated a faction of the Creek nation. In their defeat, the Creeks lost 22 million acres of state in southern Georgia and central Alabama. The U.S. acquired more land in 1818 when, spurred in part by the motivation to punish the Seminoles for their practice of harboring fugitive slaves, Jackson's troops invaded Spanish Florida.
From 1814 to 1824, Jackson was instrumental in negotiating nine out of eleven treaties which divested the southern tribes of their eastern lands in commutation for lands in the due west. The tribes agreed to the treaties for strategic reasons. They wanted to gratify the government in the hopes of retaining some of their land, and they wanted to protect themselves from white harassment. As a result of the treaties, the United States gained control over 3-quarters of Alabama and Florida, equally well every bit parts of Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky and North Carolina. This was a period of voluntary Indian migration, however, and only a small number of Creeks, Cherokee and Choctaws actually moved to the new lands.
In 1823 the Supreme Court handed down a decision which stated that Indians could occupy lands within the U.s., but could not hold championship to those lands. This was because their "correct of occupancy" was subordinate to the United states' "right of discovery." In response to the great threat this posed, the Creeks, Cherokee, and Chicasaw instituted policies of restricting land sales to the regime. They wanted to protect what remained of their land earlier information technology was too tardily.
Although the v Indian nations had made earlier attempts at resistance, many of their strategies were not-violent. 1 method was to adopt Anglo-American practices such as large-scale farming, Western pedagogy, and slave-belongings. This earned the nations the designation of the "Five Civilized Tribes." They adopted this policy of assimilation in an effort to coexist with settlers and ward off hostility. Only information technology but made whites jealous and resentful.
Other attempts involved ceding portions of their land to the The states with a view to retaining control over at to the lowest degree part of their territory, or of the new territory they received in exchange. Some Indian nations just refused to get out their land -- the Creeks and the Seminoles fifty-fifty waged war to protect their territory. The Showtime Seminole War lasted from 1817 to 1818. The Seminoles were aided by fugitive slaves who had found protection among them and had been living with them for years. The presence of the fugitives enraged white planters and fueled their want to defeat the Seminoles.
The Cherokee used legal means in their attempt to safeguard their rights. They sought protection from land-hungry white settlers, who continually harassed them by stealing their livestock, called-for their towns, and sqatting on their state. In 1827 the Cherokee adopted a written constitution declaring themselves to be a sovereign nation. They based this on U.s. policy; in former treaties, Indian nations had been declared sovereign so they would be legally capable of ceding their lands. Now the Cherokee hoped to use this condition to their reward. The country of Georgia, however, did not recognize their sovereign status, simply saw them as tenants living on state country. The Cherokee took their example to the Supreme Court, which ruled against them.
The Cherokee went to the Supreme Court once again in 1831. This time they based their appeal on an 1830 Georgia law which prohibited whites from living on Indian territory later March 31, 1831, without a license from the land. The state legislature had written this law to justify removing white missionaries who were helping the Indians resist removal. The courtroom this time decided in favor of the Cherokee. It stated that the Cherokee had the right to self-authorities, and declared Georgia'due south extension of country law over them to exist unconstitutional. The land of Georgia refused to abide by the Court determination, however, and President Jackson refused to enforce the law.
In 1830, just a year afterwards taking function, Jackson pushed a new piece of legislation called the "Indian Removal Act" through both houses of Congress. It gave the president ability to negotiate removal treaties with Indian tribes living e of the Mississippi. Nether these treaties, the Indians were to give up their lands eastward of the Mississippi in substitution for lands to the west. Those wishing to remain in the east would become citizens of their home state. This deed afflicted not only the southeastern nations, but many others further n. The removal was supposed to be voluntary and peaceful, and information technology was that manner for the tribes that agreed to the conditions. But the southeastern nations resisted, and Jackson forced them to leave.
Jackson's attitude toward Native Americans was paternalistic and patronizing -- he described them as children in demand of guidance. and believed the removal policy was beneficial to the Indians. Nearly white Americans idea that the United states would never extend beyond the Mississippi. Removal would save Indian people from the depredations of whites, and would resettle them in an area where they could govern themselves in peace. But some Americans saw this as an alibi for a brutal and inhumane form of action, and protested loudly against removal.
Their protests did not save the southeastern nations from removal, nevertheless. The Choctaws were the first to sign a removal treaty, which they did in September of 1830. Some chose to stay in Mississippi under the terms of the Removal Act.. Only though the War Department made some attempts to protect those who stayed, it was no lucifer for the land-hungry whites who squatted on Choctaw territory or cheated them out of their holdings. Soon most of the remaining Choctaws, weary of mistreatment, sold their land and moved w.
For the next 28 years, the Us government struggled to force relocation of the southeastern nations. A small group of Seminoles was coerced into signing a removal treaty in 1833, but the bulk of the tribe declared the treaty illegitimate and refused to get out. The resulting struggle was the 2d Seminole War, which lasted from 1835 to 1842. As in the first state of war, fugitive slaves fought beside the Seminoles who had taken them in. Thousands of lives were lost in the war, which cost the Jackson assistants approximately xl to lx million dollars -- ten times the corporeality it had allotted for Indian removal. In the stop, most of the Seminoles moved to the new territory. The few who remained had to defend themselves in the Third Seminole War (1855-58), when the U.S. military attempted to drive them out. Finally, the Usa paid the remaining Seminoles to move west.
The Creeks likewise refused to emigrate. They signed a treaty in March, 1832, which opened a large portion of their Alabama land to white settlement, simply guaranteed them protected ownership of the remaining portion, which was divided amid the leading families. The government did non protect them from speculators, even so, who quickly cheated them out of their lands. By 1835 the destitute Creeks began stealing livestock and crops from white settlers. Some somewhen committed arson and murder in retaliation for their brutal treatment. In 1836 the Secretary of War ordered the removal of the Creeks as a military necessity. By 1837, approximately 15,000 Creeks had migrated due west. They had never signed a removal treaty.
The Chickasaws had seen removal as inevitable, and had non resisted. They signed a treaty in 1832 which stated that the federal government would provide them with suitable western land and would protect them until they moved. Merely in one case over again, the onslaught of white settlers proved also much for the State of war Department, and it backed down on its hope. The Chickasaws were forced to pay the Choctaws for the right to live on role of their western allotment. They migrated there in the winter of 1837-38.
The Cherokee, on the other manus, were tricked with an illegitimate treaty. In 1833, a small faction agreed to sign a removal agreement: the Treaty of New Echota. The leaders of this group were not the recognized leaders of the Cherokee nation, and over fifteen,000 Cherokees -- led by Chief John Ross -- signed a petition in protest. The Supreme Courtroom ignored their demands and ratified the treaty in 1836. The Cherokee were given two years to drift voluntarily, at the terminate of which fourth dimension they would be forcibly removed. By 1838 only 2,000 had migrated; 16,000 remained on their land. The U.South. government sent in vii,000 troops, who forced the Cherokees into stockades at bayonet point. They were not allowed fourth dimension to gather their belongings, and as they left, whites looted their homes. And then began the march known every bit the Trail of Tears, in which 4,000 Cherokee people died of common cold, hunger, and disease on their style to the western lands.
Past 1837, the Jackson administration had removed 46,000 Native American people from their land e of the Mississippi, and had secured treaties which led to the removal of a slightly larger number. Most members of the v southeastern nations had been relocated west, opening 25 million acres of country to white settlement and to slavery.
Source: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2959.html
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