Indian Policy and the Trail of Tears

Probably nothing defined Jackson’s presidency more than his efforts to solve what he saw as the Indian problem. Thousands of Indians lived in the South and the old Northwest, and many remained in New England and New York. In his first message to Congress in 1829, Jackson, famed for his battles with the Creek and Seminole tribes in the 1810s, declared that removing the Indians to territory west of the Mississippi was the only way to save them. White civilization destroyed Indian resources and thus doomed the Indians, he claimed: “That this fate surely awaits them if they remain within the limits of the states does not admit of a doubt. Humanity and national honor demand that every effort should be made to avert so great a calamity.” Jackson never publicly wavered from this seemingly noble theme, returning to it in his next seven annual messages.

image
VISUAL ACTIVITY Andrew Jackson as “The Great Father” In 1828, a new process of commercial lithography brought political cartooning to new prominence. Out of some sixty satirical cartoons lampooning Jackson, only one featured his controversial Indian policy. This cropped cartoon lacks the cartoonist’s caption, important for understanding the artist’s intent. Still, the visual humor of Jackson cradling Indians packs an immediate punch. William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan. READING THE IMAGE: Examine the body language conveyed in the various characters’ poses. Are the Indians depicted as children or as powerless, miniature adults? What is going on in the picture on the wall, and how does it relate to Jackson’s Indian removal policy? CONNECTIONS: Did the Jackson administration protect the Indians? How might Jackson have convinced himself that he was protecting the Indians from certain doom?

Prior administrations had experimented with different Indian policies. Starting in 1819, Congress funded missionary associations eager to “civilize” native peoples by converting them to Christianity and to whites’ agricultural practices. The federal government had also pursued aggressive treaty making with many tribes, dealing with the Indians as foreign nations (see “Creeks in the Southwest” in chapter 9 and “Osage and Comanche Indians” in chapter 10). In contrast, Jackson saw Indians as subjects of the United States (neither foreigners nor citizens) who needed to be relocated to assure their survival. Congress agreed and passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830. About 100 million acres of eastern land would be vacated for eventual white settlement under this act authorizing ethnic expulsion (Map 11.3).

image
MAP ACTIVITY Map 11.3 Indian Removal and the Trail of Tears The federal government under President Andrew Jackson pursued a vigorous policy of Indian removal in the 1830s, forcibly moving tribes west to land known as Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). In 1838, as many as a quarter of the Cherokee Indians died on the route known as the Trail of Tears. READING THE MAP: From which states were most of the Native Americans removed? Through which states did the Trail of Tears go? CONNECTIONS: Before Jackson’s presidency, how did the federal government view Native Americans, and what policy initiatives were undertaken by the government and private groups? How did Jackson change the government’s policy toward Native Americans?

The Indian Removal Act generated widespread controversy. Newspapers, public lecturers, and local clubs debated the expulsion law, and public opinion, especially in the North, was heated. “One would think that the guilt of African slavery was enough for the nation to bear, without the additional crime of injustice to the aborigines,” one writer declared in 1829. In an unprecedented move, thousands of northern white women signed antiremoval petitions. Between 1830 and 1832, women’s petitions rolled into Washington, arguing that sovereign peoples on the road to Christianity were entitled to stay on their land. Jackson ignored the petitions.

For many northern tribes, diminished by years of war, removal was already under way. But not all went quietly. In 1832 in western Illinois, Black Hawk, a leader of the Sauk and Fox Indians who had fought in alliance with Tecumseh in the War of 1812 (see “The War of 1812” in chapter 10), resisted removal. Volunteer militias attacked and chased the Indians into southern Wisconsin, where, after several skirmishes and a deadly battle (later called the Black Hawk War), Black Hawk was captured and some four hundred of his people were massacred.

image
Cherokee Deer Hide Coat Durable, supple, and nearly airtight, tanned deer hides made excellent clothing material. This knee-length coat, decorated with red buttons and fringe, dates from the first quarter of the nineteenth century and was still in the possession of Cherokees in Oklahoma in the 1930s. It very likely traveled to Oklahoma with its owner on the Trail of Tears in 1838. National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution (catalogue number 02/0353). Photo by David Heald.

The large southern tribes—the Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Seminole, and Cherokee—proved even more resistant to removal. Georgia Cherokees had already taken several assimilationist steps. They had adopted written laws, including, in 1827, a constitution modeled on the U.S. Constitution. Two hundred of the wealthiest Cherokee men had intermarried with whites, adopting white styles of housing, dress, and cotton agriculture, including the ownership of slaves. They developed a written alphabet and published a newspaper and Christian prayer books in their language. These features helped make their cause attractive to the northern white women who petitioned the government on their behalf. Yet most of the seventeen thousand Cherokees maintained cultural continuity with past traditions.

In 1831, when Georgia announced its plans to seize all Cherokee property, the tribal leadership took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court. In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the Court upheld the territorial sovereignty of the Cherokee people, recognizing their existence as “a distinct community, occupying its own territory, in which the laws of Georgia can have no force.” An angry President Jackson ignored the Court and pressed the Cherokee tribe to move west: “If they now refuse to accept the liberal terms offered, they can only be liable for whatever evils and difficulties may arise. I feel conscious of having done my duty to my red children.”

The Cherokee tribe remained in Georgia for two more years without significant violence. Then, in 1835, a small, unauthorized faction of the acculturated leaders signed a treaty selling all the tribal lands to the state, which rapidly resold the land to whites. Chief John Ross, backed by several thousand Cherokees, petitioned the U.S. Congress to ignore the bogus treaty to no avail. Most Cherokees refused to move, so in May 1838, the deadline for voluntary removal, federal troops arrived to remove them. Under armed guard, the Cherokees embarked on a 1,200-mile journey west that came to be called the Trail of Tears. Nearly a quarter of the Cherokees died en route from the hardship. Survivors joined the fifteen thousand Creek, twelve thousand Choctaw, five thousand Chickasaw, and several thousand Seminole Indians also forcibly relocated to Indian Territory (which became the state of Oklahoma in 1907).

In his farewell address to the nation in 1837, Jackson professed his belief in the humanitarian benefits of Indian removal: “This unhappy race . . . are now placed in a situation where we may well hope that they will share in the blessings of civilization and be saved from the degradation and destruction to which they were rapidly hastening while they remained in the states.” Perhaps Jackson genuinely believed that removal was necessary, but for the forcibly removed tribes, the costs of relocation were high.