04d: Trails of TearsAs we have seen, the United States was managing its expansion well. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 had allowed for the orderly assimilation of new territory on an equal basis with the existing states. Most of the new territory added came via diplomacy, as did the Louisiana Territory in 1803, and Florida in 1819. The informal alliance with Great Britain, implied in the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, meant that the US would have a largely free hand in conducting its external affairs. Yet America's expansion brought other intermal problems. The first and most dangerous, which concerned the expansion of slavery, will be treated in the next lecture. Smaller but no less shameful was the question of how to treat the Native Americans.
The population of America exploded in the first half of the nineteenth century. The population of the original colonists continued to multiply rapidly. but immigrants from all over Europe poured in to America, lured on by cheap fares and poverty at home. Some of these new Americans were city dwellers, looking for factory work, but most were looking for farmland. Officially, there was plenty of land for the taking in the Northwest Territory, Louisiana, and/or Florida. But the Indians, who had been living in these lands for centuries, were not inclined to move out. Even though the white settlers were constantly pushing the Indians west, the United States itself had not dealt with the Indians. Some Indians chose of their own free will to become Americans, and were assimilated into the proverbial melting pot. Some chose to migrate to places where they could live their tribal lives. Many, however, wanted to pursue their tribal life, liberty, and happiness as inhabitants of the United States. Supposedly, the Constitution granted them that right. The So-Called "Indian Question"
The conflict over Indian removal started in 1802 when the Georgia legislature gave up all claims to territory west of the state. In return, the United States government pledged to eliminate all Indian titles to land inside Georgia. The Georgians were particularly concerned with the Cherokee tribe, which occupied a large chunk of the land inside their state. The Cherokee had adopted many Western ways (including the enslavement of blacks), and had even settled into the South's cotton planter economy. In 1827 the Cherokee adopted a written constitution declaring themselves a sovereign nation with complete jurisdiction over its territory and people. Georgia did not recognize the Cherokee constitution, seeing the Cherokees as nothing more than illegal squatters. In 1827 the Supreme Court ruled against the Cherokee, supporting Georgia's claim. The Cherokee returned to the Supreme Court in 1831. This time the Cherokee got a judgement granting them self government and declaring Georgia's opposition unconstitutional. However, Georgia refused to abide by the Supreme Court's decree. President Andrew Jackson, an old Indian fighter himself, refused to enforce it. Apparently the Constitution's pattern of checks and balances didn't apply when it came to American Indians.
The Jackson Administration's answer to the Indian question was the Indian Removal Act, signed by President Andrew Jackson in 1830. This act enabled the President to "negotiate" removal treaties with all Indian tribes east of the Mississippi River. The Indians would trade their lands east of the Mississippi in exchange for western lands. Those who wished to stay in their ancestral home would fall under the legal jurisdiction of the state which claimed that territory. Jackson claimed that the Indian Removal Act would protect the Indians and allow them to "become civilized" by adopting Western ways. Eventually, almost all of the Native Americans were forced to move west.
Ethnic Cleansing, American Style
The most famous of these removals became known as the Trail of Tears, in which 12,000 Cherokee were forced to trek over 800 miles to their new lands. Along the way, over 4,000 died of famine and disease. Between 1830 and 1840 over 70,000 Native Americans were driven west as a result of the Indian Removal Act. Yet the United States did not reserve this treatment for Indians. A fascinating sidelight of American history is the so called Mormon Trek, which began in 1847. The Mormons were threatened by religious intolerance in the Midwest; individual Mormons were murdered in Illinois, and Governor Boggs of Missouri had even called in 1838 for the extermination of all Mormons within the state. Consequently, more than 70,000 Mormons walked or rode in wagons to their new homeland in the Utah Territory. There, unlike the Indians, the Mormons were left alone by the US government and allowed to become a full part of the American people. The forced relocations of Indians and Mormons is an example of what is now called "ethnic cleansing." A group of people whose presence is undesirable to the reigning power is moved out - lock, stock, and barrel. Ethnic cleansing has gone on since the dawn of civilization. It goes on around the world, to this day. Relocation of the Indians and Mormons would not be the last time the US practiced ethnic cleansing.
When the Indian Removal Act was signed in 1830, most Americans never dreamed that the United States would ever extend too far west of the Mississippi. The one exception was Missouri, which entered the Union in 1821, but was settled by whites mainly along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. The government promised the Indians they could keep their new land "as long as grass shall grow and rivers run." But after the Civil War, the United States again resorted to ethnic cleansing to run the Indian tribes off of their reservations or their native lands. The Sioux and Cheyenne managed a victory against the US Army at the 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn. But in the long run, the United States forces were too well equipped and too determined. If there was any land anywhere that white people wanted for any reason, the Indians were driven off. By 1906 most of the tribes that had been moved west of the Mississippi were forced to move again thanks to another round of shameful wars and deceitful treaties.
Lecture 04 Homepage
04a: Introduction
04b: The Northwest Ordinance
04c: The Monroe Doctrine
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04e: Conclusions | 