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[[File:Trails_of_Tears_en.png|left|thumbnail|300px|left|Map showing the trails that Native Americans were forced to follow during Indian Removal]]
The Trail of Tears was a series of forced Indian removals by the United States government during, but the removal of the Cherokee nation from Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama is the most famous of these forced marches. While the Cherokee removal is the relocation that is most often associated with the Trail of Tears, but it was not the only one. The Seminoles (1832), the Choctaw (1830), the Chickasaw (1832), the Creek (1832), the Fox (1832), the Sauk and the Cherokee (1835) were all removed from their ancestral lands. Each of these removals resulted an appalling loss of life. ====US Treaties with Native Americans====The U.S. Government used treaties as one means to displace Indians from their tribal lands, a mechanism that was strengthened with the Removal Act of 1830. In cases where this failed, the government sometimes violated both treaties and Supreme Court rulings to facilitate the spread of European Americans westward across the continent. As the 19th century began, land-hungry Americans poured into the backcountry of the coastal South and began moving toward and into what would later become the states of Alabama and Mississippi. Since Indian tribes living there appeared to be the main obstacle to westward expansion, white settlers petitioned the federal government to remove them. Although Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe argued that the Indian tribes in the Southeast should exchange their land for lands west of the Mississippi River, they did not take steps to make this happen. Indeed, the first major transfer of land occurred only as the result of war. ====Native Americans faced increasing pressure from Western Expansion====In 1814, Major General Andrew Jackson led an expedition against the Creek Indians climaxing in the Battle of Horse Shoe Bend (in present day Alabama near the Georgia border), where Jackson’s force soundly defeated the Creeks and destroyed their military power. He then forced upon the Indians a treaty whereby they surrendered to the United States over twenty-million acres of their traditional land—about one-half of present day Alabama and one-fifth of Georgia. Over the next decade, Jackson led the way in the Indian removal campaign, helping to negotiate nine of the eleven major treaties to remove Indians. Under this kind of pressure, Native American tribes—specifically the Creek, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw—realized that they could not defeat the Americans in war. The appetite of the settlers for land would not abate, so the Indians adopted a strategy of appeasement. They hoped that if they gave up a good deal of their land, they could keep at least some a part of it. The Seminole tribe in Florida resisted, in the Second Seminole War (1835–1842) and the Third Seminole War (1855–1858), however, neither appeasement nor resistance worked. From a legal standpoint, the United States Constitution empowered Congress to “regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.” In early treaties negotiated between the federal government and the Indian tribes, the latter typically acknowledged themselves “to be under the protection of the United States of America, and of no other sovereign whosoever.” When Andrew Jackson became president (1829–1837), he decided to build a systematic approach to Indian removal on the basis of these legal precedents.
====Why Remove Native Americans?====
[[File:Andrew_Jackson_by_Ralph_E._W._Earl_1837.jpg|thumbnail|275px|left| Andrew Jackson (1837) by Ralph E. W. Earl]]
Why was Jackson so committed to removal? Jackson fundamentally believed that Native Americans represented a serious security risk to the United States. Jackson had taken part in the United States campaign against members of the Creek nation who followed Tecumseh in 1814. Tecumseh believed that the United States represented an existential threat to not only Creek tribe, but all Native Americans in the United States. Tecumseh lead a revolt against the United States to push back the advance of American settlers. Tecumseh's revolted was defeated at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814, but Jackson had already decided that Native Americans and US settlers could not live together peaceful. As a result the Tecumseh's defeat, Jackson imposed terms on the entire Creek nation that removed them from their ancestral lands.
Native Americans also held some of the farmlands in the Southeast United States. Several of these tribes had already begun to farm these lands and earnest and make them productive. Both states and settlers wanted to seize these agricultural lands from the Native Americans. The states, such as Georgia, cared little that Native Americans had placed farms on these lands, purchased slaves, or built homes. The tribes did not recognize the states authority over their lands, because they viewed themselves as independent nations.
====Andrew Jackson and The Removal Act 0f 1830====
Jackson strongly favored removing the 60,000 Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw and Creek and Seminole (the Civilized Tribes) from North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi. Indian Removal was one of Andrew Jackson's most important goals. It was so important that during Jackson’s first message to Congress, he asked for a bill and funds to move these tribes west of the Mississippi. Jackson's message was clear, Indians needed to permanently removed west of Louisiana.
The first piece of legislation passed after Jackson took office was also outraged by the claim by the Cherokees that they were a sovereign nation - unconstitutional and unrealisticHe believed that no new state could be created in the jurisdiction of a state ====Opposition to 1830 Indian Removal====Triggered the creation of Act. The 1830 Act was just a reform movement - Catherine Beecher (later Stowe) started first step in a the largest petition movement at the long process that time.“The William Penn Essays” was a anti-removal Treatise and became extremely well-known.Martin Van Buren was surprised by the level of opposition.Anti-removal reform movement led many activists forced Native American off their land to abolitionismmake way white settlers.
====Cherokee Legal Opposition====
The Cherokee Nation resisted, however, challenging in court the Georgia laws that restricted their freedoms on tribal lands. In his 1831 ruling on Cherokee Nation v. the State of Georgia, Chief Justice John Marshall found declared that the court lacked jurisdiction “the Indian territory is admitted to hear the case because the Cherokee nation was compose a “domestic, dependent nation.”Cherokee Nation was not sovereign authority under Article 3 of Constitution and were wards part of the federal governmentIn Worcester v. GeorgiaUnited States, Marshall somewhat challenged his own ruling from a year before ” and held affirmed that Georgia laws violated Cherokee treaties, commerce clause, and sovereign authority of the Cherokee nation. Georgia had created a law that required whites on Cherokee lands to register with state authoritiesSeven missionaries tribes were arrested for being in Cherokee lands “domestic dependent nations” and sentenced “their relation to 4 years hard labor Marshall created the United States resembles that of a mess with ward to his two contradictory rulingsguardian.Did not require ” However, the law to be enforcedBest described as an effort by Marshall to avoid staining his legacy without creating a direct conflict with following year the Executive BranchSupreme Court reversed itself and ruled that Indian tribes were indeed sovereign and immune from Georgia laws. President Jackson nonetheless refused to accept heed the Worcester ruling and essentially ignored itCourt’s decision. Became moot when Marshall died and he was replaced by Jackson ally and pro-removal Roger TaneyMissionaries were freed after a few months
====Early RemovalThe Treaty of New Echota Splits the Cherokee Nation====A minority faction of the Cherokee nation led by John Ridge realized that there was little they could do to prevent removal from their lands. Instead of fighting it, they decided to negotiate a treaty with the United States to get the best terms possible. The Cherokee Nation divided on between Ridge's Treaty Party and John Ross's National Party. A delegation was sent to negotiate a Treaty and they ultimately were promised $5 million dollars and the right to hold the lands in modern-day Oklahoma in perpetuity. Ridge's group agreed to the terms and received approval from the Treaty Party in New Echota. Congress then ratified against the protests of Daniel Webster and Henry Clay in 1835. The Cherokee signing party represented only a faction of the Cherokee, and the majority followed Principal Chief John Ross in a desperate attempt to hold onto their land. This attempt faltered in 1838, when, under the guns of federal troops and Georgia state militia, the Cherokee tribe were forced to the dry plains across the Mississippi.
====Conclusion====
To achieve his purpose, Jackson encouraged Congress to adopt the Removal Act of 1830. The Cherokees were removed in 1835 despite Act established a Supreme Court decision, <i>Worchester vprocess whereby the President could grant land west of the Mississippi River to Indian tribes that agreed to give up their homelands. Georgia</i>As incentives, the law allowed the Indians financial and material assistance to travel to their new locations and start new lives and guaranteed that found that Cherokee was a sovereign nation that had rights the Indians would live on their new property under existing treatiesthe protection of the United States Government forever. Forcibly removing With the Cherokees violated these Act in place, Jackson and his followers were free to persuade, bribe, and threaten tribes into signing removal treatiesand leaving the Southeast. Andrew Jackson ignored With the courts rulings and pushed with Indian exception of a small number of Seminoles still resisting removal. Ultimatelyin Florida, by the 1840s, over 4from the Atlantic to the Mississippi,000 Cherokees were killed during their march westno Indian tribes resided in the American South. In a history full general terms, Jackson’s government succeeded. By the end of his presidency, he had signed into law almost seventy removal treaties, the result of civil rights violations - which was to move nearly 50,000 eastern Indians to Indian Removal was one Territory—defined as the region belonging to the United States west of the most egregiousIndians were removed simply because Mississippi River but excluding the states wanted of Missouri and Iowa as well as the Territory of Arkansas—and open millions of acres of rich land east of the Mississippi to take over productive farming operations created by Indianswhite settlers. Despite the vastness of the Indian Territory, the government intended that the Indians’ destination would be a more confined area—what later became eastern Oklahoma. Through a combination of coerced treaties and the contravention of treaties and judicial determination, especially Georgiathe United States Government succeeded in paving the way for the westward expansion and the incorporation of new territories as part of the United States.Numbers [[Category:US State Department]] [[Category:Wikis]][[Category:United States History]] [[Category:History of the Early Republic]] [[Category:19th Century History]] [[Category:Political History]] [[Category:Diplomatic History]][[Category:Native American History]] * Select portions of this article are republished from [https://history.state.gov/| Office of Indians east the Historian, United States Department of State]* Article: [https://history.state.gov/milestones/1830-1860/indian-treaties| Indian Treaties and the Mississippi was minimal after removalRemoval Act of 1830]
