In December 1829, President Andrew Jackson issued his first annual address to the U.S. Congress. Jackson devoted a substantial portion of that address to the state of Indian affairs and specifically discussed what he viewed to be the failures of federal government policy up to that point. Toward the end of his address, he urged Congress to draft and pass legislation that would arrange for the emigration of American Indians still living in the eastern half of the country to lands west of the Mississippi River.
The document that follows provides excerpts from a congressional report written in response to Jackson’s call for action on this issue. In total, the report made by the Committee on Indian Affairs encompassed thirty-two pages and included a draft of the bill later known as the Indian Removal Act. Although it was intended to provide members of Congress with the background information necessary to engage in a proper debate of the proposed legislation, the government printed ten thousand copies of the report, which implies that the government expected more than just congressmen to read it.
Mr. Bell, from the Committee on Indian Affairs, made the following
REPORT:
The causes which have led to those embarassments in the condition of the Southern tribes of Indians, which are understood to require the attention of the Government, will be noticed in the general views hereafter presented; but the preliminary remark may be indulged, that the questions which have grown out of those embarassments, appear to involve the interpretation of various compacts, some of which are supposed to be conflicting, between the Federal Government and the Indian tribes, besides a variety of other considerations of a less inflexible character. Regarding the nature of the questions presented, and the rights and interests to be affected by their decision, some general rules of interpretation suggest themselves, which, by their reasonableness, and the sanction they have received in practice, claim the rank of fixed principles, in settling the duties and obligations of all political societies. The committee suppose they will not be required to show, by any illustration or reference to authorities, that the faith of a Government should, in all cases, be inviolably observed, and that, in attending to that indispensable duty, all its obligations should be considered; that all just and reasonable expectations, besides what may be expressly stipulated in a compact, should be allowed; and that the obligation is equal, whether a treaty or compact be made with a foreign State, with dependent or subject communities, or with individuals, citizens, or aliens….
The most active and extraordinary means have been employed to misrepresent the intentions of the Government, on the one hand, and the condition of the Indians on the other. The vivid representations of the progress of Indian civilization, which have been so industriously circulated by the party among themselves opposed to emigration and by their agents, have had the effect of engaging the sympathies, and exciting the zeal, of many benevolent individuals and societies, who have manifested scarcely less talents than perseverance in resisting the views of the Government. Whether those who have been thus employed, can claim to have been the most judicious friends of the Indians, remains to be tested by time. The effect of these indications of favor and protection has been to encourage them in the most extravagant pretensions. They have been taught to have new views of their rights. The Cherokees have decreed the integrity of their territory, and claimed to be as sovereign within their limits, as the States are in theirs. They have actually asserted such attributes of sovereignty, as, if indulged, must subvert the influence, and effect a radical change of the policy and interests of the Government, in relation to their affairs. Some of the States, within whose limits those tribes are situated, have determined, by the exercise of their rights of jurisdiction within their territorial limits, to repress, while it may be done with the least inconvenience, a spirit which they foresee, may, in time, produce the most serious mischiefs. This exercise of authority by the States has been remonstrated against by those who control the affairs of the Indians, and application has been made to the Federal Government to interpose its authority in defence of their claim to sovereignty. As the course pursued by the President, in regard to this application, appears to the committee to have been founded upon a correct construction of the duties and powers of the Federal Government, they would not have considered it necessary to extend their inquiries beyond that part of the message, which recommends the policy of giving further encouragement to the emigration of the Indians, but for the opposite views contained in several memorials, which have also been referred to them. A due respect for the opinions of a number of respectable citizens in various sections of the Union, requires that some notice should be taken of the grounds which have been assumed in support of the pretensions of the Indians, and of the obstacles which, in the opinion of the committee, lie in the way of their indulgence by the Government….
The Committee do not understand, that, either the States or the Federal Government, ever acted upon the principle, that it was necessary to obtain the consent of the Indians, before the right to exclude all competitors from the market of their lands could be asserted. It is asserted, upon the ground of ownership and political sovereignty, and can be sustained upon no other principles than those which our ancestors supposed to be well founded, when they denied to the Indians any right to more land than they required for their subsistence by agriculture. The Indians are paid for their unimproved lands as much as the privilege of hunting and taking game upon them is supposed to be worth, and the Government sells them for what they are worth to the cultivator. The difference between those values is the profit made by asserting the original rights of discovery and conquest. The rigor of the original rule has been mitigated in the exercise of this right of pre-emption, in regard to such lands as have been improved by the Indians, for the same reason, that their right to such as they had subdued, was respected by the colonists in the early period of their history. Improved lands, or small reservations in the States are, in general, purchased at their full value to the cultivator. To pay an Indian tribe what their ancient hunting grounds are worth to them, after the game is fled or destroyed, as a mode of appropriating wild lands, claimed by Indians, has been found more convenient, and certainly it is more agreeable to the forms of justice, as well as more merciful, than to assert the possession of them by the sword. Thus, the practice of buying Indian titles is but the substitute which humanity and expediency have imposed, in place of the sword, in arriving at the actual enjoyment of property claimed by the right of discovery, and sanctioned by the natural superiority allowed to the claims of civilized communities over those of savage tribes.
Source: H.R. Rep. No. 227, 21st Cong., 1st Sess. (1830), 1–3, 6–7.
Evaluating the Evidence