With overwhelming support in the South, war hero and renowned Indian fighter Andrew Jackson was elected to the presidency in 1828. He wasted little time setting forth the Indian policy his administration would follow. In his first address to Congress, Jackson called for federal legislation to formalize Removal— the relocation of eastern Indians to lands west of the Mississippi River. After much discussion, Congress responded with the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which allowed Jackson to put his plan in motion.
During the decade that followed, many tribes were compelled to abandon their homelands by intimidation and sometimes by force. Victims of Removal included the Sac and Fox, the Potawatomi, and the large southeastern groups popularly known as the Five Civilized Tribes (the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole). Many Indians resisted their relocation. The Sac and Fox, led by Black Hawk, for instance, launched a full-scale rebellion in the summer of 1832. A more successful resistance effort was staged by the Seminole of Florida. In a conflict known as the Second Seminole War, a tribal faction retreated to the Everglades and waged a guerrilla war on U. S. troops for seven years. After spending $20 million on the campaign against the Seminole renegades, the United States declared the war unwinnable and allowed the rebels to remain in Florida.
The Cherokee took another tactic in the battle against Removal. Believing their legal right to their land was clear, they took their cause to court to force the state of Georgia from imposing its laws on the tribe. In the landmark case Worcester v. Georgia, the Supreme Court determined that the Cherokee constituted a “domestic dependent nation” that was entitled to federal protection from Georgia. The decision, however, had little impact. Jackson flatly declared that he would ignore the Court’s mandate and allowed Georgia free reign in its efforts to expel the Cherokee from the state.
Despite the Court’s finding, the Cherokee and the other Five Civilized Tribes were all eventually forced to relocate to Indian Territory, in what is now Oklahoma. Many officials in charge of organizing their removals were corrupt or incompetent. Their mismanagement left the Indians without adequate food and supplies. As a result, the journeys west were difficult for all relocatees and fatal for some. On the Cherokee’s removal, known today as the Trail ofTears, as many as one in four tribe members did not survive. Ill, starving, and stripped of their possessions, those who did had to take on the nearly impossible job of reestablishing their society in a foreign land.
Adding to their problems, the Five Civilized Tribes were also faced with the resentment of Plains tribes, such as the Pawnee and the Lakota, who did not appreciate having to compete with these newcomers for the resources of Indian Territory. At the same time, the Plains Indians had to cope with the ever-increasing traffic of settlers traveling across their territory. Through its acquisition of Oregon Territory in 1846 and victory in the Mexican-American War in 1848, the United States extended its borders to the Pacific coast. The fertile farmlands of Oregon and the gold fields of California themselves were enough to lure thousands of Americans west. But the concept of Manifest Destiny, first set forth by journalist John O’Sullivan in 1846, added a sense of moral obligation to their quest. “Our manifest destiny [is] to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us,” O’Sullivan wrote, implying it was God’s will that Americans settle the West without regard to Indian claims to this land.
As western expansion continued, it became clear that Removal was no longer a viable policy. With fewer and fewer unsettled lands left in which to relocate Indians, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) sought to confine tribes in smaller and smaller portions of their aboriginal lands. Through treaties, BIA officials chipped away at tribal territories in order to open up more lands for white settlement and to make way for railroad lines. All too often, the Indian leaders who signed the treaties did not understand their provisions, and corrupt Indian agents pocketed the goods and money the agreements intended as compensation for the lost lands.
Alarmed by the flood of whites into their territories, western Indians increasingly raided westward-bound wagon trains and attacked nonIndian settlements. The continual atmosphere of fear exploded into terror during such highly publicized revolts as the Whitman massacre of 1847 and the Dakota Sioux uprising of 1862, during which Indians murdered white families, including women and children. Incidents such as these allowed whites to demonize Indians (fighting to protect their lands) as subhuman savages who, for the sake of God and progress, non-Indians had an obligation to exterminate.
This fury helped fuel the western military campaigns launched against Indians during the Civil War. Troops led by Kit Carson mercilessly pursued the Navajo (Dineh) and Mescalero Apache to stop their raiding. Once subdued, the groups were forced to relocate under military guard to Bosque Redondo, a barren area in what is now east-central New Mexico. During the Navajo’s journey to Bosque Redondo— now known as the Long Walk—and their four-year confinement there, more than 10 percent of the tribal population died of disease and starvation.
In Colorado Territory, the Third Colorado Cavalry, a group of undisciplined volunteers, was formed by the territorial government to protect whites from Indian attack. When after three months the soldiers had not fired a shot, they were branded the “Bloodless Third” by local journalists. Humiliated by this nickname, the volunteers set upon a group of Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho peacefully camped along Sand Creek. Nearly 200 men, women, and children were slaughtered by the soldiers, who were then celebrated as heroes by Colorado settlers.
In Indian Territory, the Five Civilized Tribes were drawn into the Civil War itself. At the start of the war, representatives of the Confederacy pressured these tribes to ally themselves to the South. Left with little choice, the tribes joined the Confederate cause—a decision that would cost them dearly. During the war, their lands became a battlefield, and their peoples were plagued with death, disease, and hunger. Despite the extent of their suffering, they were shown no mercy by the Union following their surrender. In their punishing peace treaties with the United States, the Indians were forced to give up their lands in western Indian Territory—lands that their Removal treaties had guaranteed to them for all time. Their villages and fields destroyed and their populations decimated, the Indians were then faced for the second time in only 30 years with the daunting task of rebuilding their nations.
World History
