Two Views of Indian Removal

A Growing Nation and the Nations Already There

1In 1803, the United States bought the Louisiana Territory from France for about $15 million. The purchase roughly doubled the size of the country. President Thomas Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the new land and look for a route to the Pacific Ocean. From 1804 to 1806, their Corps of Discovery met many Native nations, including the Mandan, Shoshone and Nez Perce. Sacagawea, a Lemhi Shoshone woman, helped the group as an interpreter.

2As settlers moved west, many white Americans came to believe that the United States was meant to spread across the whole continent. In 1845 a newspaper writer, John O'Sullivan, gave this belief a name: "manifest destiny." The Native nations already living on these lands saw them as their homes, and many of those lands were protected by treaties with the United States.

3In the Southeast, the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole nations held lands that settlers and state governments wanted. The Cherokee had farms, schools and a written constitution adopted in 1827. In 1828 they began printing a newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, in English and in Cherokee, using the writing system Sequoyah had created. After gold was found on Cherokee land in Georgia in the late 1820s, Georgia passed laws claiming control over that land.

4In 1830, Congress narrowly passed the Indian Removal Act, and President Andrew Jackson signed it. The law let the President offer Native nations land west of the Mississippi River, in what was called Indian Territory, in exchange for their lands in the East. In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the Supreme Court ruled that Georgia's laws had no force inside the Cherokee Nation, but the ruling was not enforced. In 1835, a small group of Cherokee who did not speak for the Cherokee government signed the Treaty of New Echota, agreeing to move. Principal Chief John Ross and more than 15,000 Cherokee signed a protest against the treaty, but the U.S. Senate approved it.

5In 1838, U.S. soldiers forced the Cherokee who remained into camps and then sent them west on a journey of more than 1,000 miles. Historians estimate that about 4,000 of roughly 16,000 Cherokee died from disease, hunger and cold during the removal. The Cherokee remember this journey as the Trail of Tears.

Account A: Adapted from President Andrew Jackson's message to Congress, December 1830

It gives me pleasure to report that the government's kind policy of moving the Indians beyond the white settlements is nearly complete. It will end conflicts between the national government and the states over Indian lands. It will open large areas to white settlers and make the states stronger. It will free the Indians from the power of the states and let them live in their own way, under their own leaders. Is it unkind for the government to buy their lands, pay for their move and support them in a new home?

Account B: Adapted from a petition the Cherokee Nation sent to Congress, July 1830

We wish to remain on the land of our fathers. We have a natural right to it, and treaties with the United States promised to protect it. The land in the west is unknown to us, and we hear that much of it lacks water and good timber. There we would be surrounded by other nations who may see us as strangers and enemies. Here we have built farms, schools and laws of our own. We ask Congress to keep the promises made in those treaties.