Census Clues: Removal and the Cotton Frontier, 1803–1850

Use census data and a history fair board to trace westward expansion and Muscogee removal.

Read the history fair board

A student at a middle school in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, the capital of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, made a history fair board about westward expansion. Read its text. Then answer the questions.

Where Did the Land Come From?

1In 1803 the United States bought the Louisiana Territory from France for about $15 million, roughly doubling the nation's size. In 1804 President Thomas Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark up the Missouri River. Besides mapping rivers and recording plants and animals, they were told to inform the Native nations they met that the United States now claimed the land and wished to trade with them. Those nations had had no part in the sale.

2Jefferson also suggested that the new western land could someday hold Native nations moved from the East. In 1830 that idea became law. In the Southeast, the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole nations still held millions of acres. Cotton planters wanted these lands because cotton grew well in their rich soil and long, warm summers, and because mills in Britain and the North kept buying more cotton. The Indian Removal Act, signed by President Andrew Jackson in 1830, let the government trade land west of the Mississippi River for Native lands in the East.

3The Muscogee Nation's homeland covered much of what is now Alabama and Georgia. In an 1832 treaty, Muscogee leaders gave up their nation's remaining land in Alabama, but the treaty promised that Muscogee families could keep their own plots and live under Alabama law. Instead, land speculators and settlers used fraud and force to take many of those plots. After fighting broke out in 1836, the U.S. Army forced most Muscogee people west. Historians estimate that more than 20,000 Muscogee people were removed in 1836 and 1837, and thousands died from disease, hunger and cold on the way or soon after arriving.

4As the Muscogee, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Cherokee were forced out, settlers poured into the lands they left. Many brought enslaved African Americans with them. Others bought enslaved people who had been sold away from older states such as Virginia. Enslaved workers cleared the land and planted and picked the cotton. Census takers counted free and enslaved people, but they generally did not count Native people living in their own nations.

5In 1845 a newspaper editor, John O'Sullivan, wrote that it was America's "manifest destiny" to spread across the continent, and by 1848 the nation reached the Pacific. The removed nations rebuilt in Indian Territory. The Muscogee made Okmulgee their capital, naming it for the Ocmulgee River in their Georgia homeland, and in 1878 they built a stone council house there. Today the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, still governed from Okmulgee, is one of the largest tribal nations in the United States.

Use paragraph 1. What does Jefferson's instruction to Lewis and Clark show about how the U.S. government saw the Louisiana Purchase?

A. It saw the purchase as a U.S. claim that Native nations should accept.
B. It believed the land was empty and did not need to be explored.
C. It planned to return the land to France after the expedition.
D. It thought Native nations had sold the land to France earlier.

Which statement best explains how the Louisiana Purchase and Indian Removal were connected?

A. Lewis and Clark led the first Native nations west under the 1830 law.
B. France made removal a condition of the sale of the Louisiana Territory.
C. The purchase ended removal because there was now room for everyone in the East.
D. The purchase gave the government western land to trade for Native lands in the East.

Use paragraph 3. Why did the 1832 treaty fail to protect the Muscogee families who wanted to stay in Alabama?

A. It ordered the Muscogee to leave for the West within one year.
B. Fraud and force took many of the plots it had promised families.
C. It gave the Muscogee lands in Alabama to the state of Georgia.
D. Muscogee leaders refused to sign it until the fighting began.

Read the census

Use the census table and paragraph 4.

Census counts, Alabama and Mississippi, 1820–1850 (rounded to nearest thousand)
Census year	Alabama, all people	Alabama, enslaved	Mississippi, all people	Mississippi, enslaved
1820	128,000	42,000	75,000	33,000
1830	310,000	118,000	137,000	66,000
1840	591,000	254,000	376,000	195,000
1850	772,000	343,000	607,000	310,000

Use the table.

From 1830 to 1840, Mississippi's count of all people grew by about people.

In which census year did enslaved people first make up more than half of all the people counted in Mississippi?

A. 1820
B. 1830
C. 1840
D. 1850

Which conclusion does the table best support?

A. Mississippi counted more people than Alabama did by 1850.
B. Most of the people counted in Alabama in 1850 were enslaved.
C. Both states' enslaved populations more than doubled from 1830 to 1840.
D. Alabama's total count shrank after the Muscogee were removed.

Circle the sentence from paragraph 4 that tells where some of the enslaved people in these states had come from.

As the Muscogee, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Cherokee were forced out, settlers poured into the lands they left.Others bought enslaved people who had been sold away from older states such as Virginia.Enslaved workers cleared the land and planted and picked the cotton.Census takers counted free and enslaved people, but they generally did not count Native people living in their own nations.

Census takers generally did not count Native people living in their own nations. What does this mean for the table?

A. It makes the 1850 counts higher than the real number of people.
B. It counts Native people as part of the enslaved population.
C. It cannot show how many Native people lived in the states before removal.
D. It shows that the two states were nearly empty before settlers came.

Expansion and survival

Use the whole page.

O'Sullivan's phrase "manifest destiny" was printed in 1845. How would a Muscogee family living in Indian Territory that year most likely have seen this idea?

A. As a plan to give their nation new land on the Pacific coast
B. As a belief that had already cost them their homeland
C. As proof that the 1832 treaty had been carried out
D. As a promise that their Alabama plots would be returned

10.

The Muscogee named their new capital for a river in their Georgia homeland. What does this choice most likely show?

A. They kept ties to their homeland while rebuilding in the West.
B. They expected to move their capital back to Georgia within a few years.
C. Georgia had given the river to the Muscogee as part of the treaty.
D. Their people had not lived near the Ocmulgee River before removal.

11.

In 1840 a Mississippi newspaper could have pointed to the census as proof of "progress": the state's count of all people nearly tripled in ten years. Is this a complete picture of what happened? Make a claim, use evidence from the table and at least two details from the board, and explain your reasoning.