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The Indian Removal Act was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson in 1830, requiring all Native American tribes east of the Mississippi River (primarily Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Cherokee) to cede their tribal and privately owned lands to the U.S. government.
The Cherokee nation challenged their removal from the state of Georgia in 1831 (Cherokee Nation v. the State of Georgia), claiming rights as a "foriegn nation." The Supreme Court initially ruled against the Cherokee, but one year later overturned that decision, stating that the Cherokee were indeed a sovereign and seperate nation, immune from Georgia law. President Jackson, who had made his own name in the "Seminole Wars" against native peoples, defended the state's rights and chose to ignore the court's decision. He manuevered a treaty between Congress and a small minority of Cherokee leaders.
Moving from fertile farm lands the native people were relocated on the windswept and often barren lands of Oklahoma Territory. The forced removal resulted in the deaths of one-third of the peoples migrating along what has become known as the "Trail of Tears."
1. Select one or more of the following review sites to learn more about the events surrounding the Trail of Tears.
Use ABC-CLIO's American History or eLibrary's History Study Center to learn more about these events. Visit Issues and Controversies in American History and U.S. at War: Understanding Conflict and Society for documents and indepth analysis. You might also visit these websites sponsored by Native Americans.com and the Trail of Tears Association
2. Find and print one article in the "news of the day," that represents how the removal of natives was presented to the American People.
Access Newspaper Archives
2. Consider the following treaty Articles, taken from the text of the "Treaty with the Choctaw, 1830" and the related information. Write a reaction to one or more of these in your journal.
ARTICLE IV...so that no Territory or State shall ever have a right to pass laws for the government of the Choctaw Nation of Red People and their descendants; and that no part of the land granted them shall ever be embraced in any Territory or State...
The Indian Removal Act Examined: Land Speculation and The Trail of Tears |
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ARTICLE XVI... In wagons; and with steam boats as may be found necessary -- the U. S. agree to remove the Indians to their new homes at their expense and under the care of discreet and careful persons, who will be kind and brotherly to them. They agree to furnish them with ample corn and beef, or pork for themselves and families for twelve months after reaching their new homes.
"I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their
homes,
and driven at the bayonet point into the stockades. And in the chill
of
a
drizzling rain
on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle
or sheep into six hundred and forty-five wagons and started toward
the west....The trail of the exiles was a trail of death."
~Private John G. Burnett, Mounted Infantry
Trail of Tears Trees
Indian Country Diaries: Trail of Tears (PBS) |
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ARTICLE XX....that for the benefit and advantage of the Choctaw people, and to improve their condition, their shall be educated under the direction of the President and at the expense of the U. S. forty Choctaw youths for twenty years. This number shall be kept at school...twenty-five hundred dollars annually shall be given for the support of three teachers of schools for twenty years.
ARTICLE XXII. The Chiefs of the Choctaws who have suggested that their people are in a state of rapid advancement in education and refinement, and have expressed a solicitude that they might have the privilege of a Delegate on the floor of the House of Representatives extended to them. The Commissioners do not feel that they can under a treaty stipulation accede to the request, but at their desire, present it in the Treaty, that Congress may consider of, and decide the application.
Cherokee Alphabet
English to Cherokee Online Translator |
Pathfinder by L. Cowell, HUHS 2007
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