Indian removal
Indian removal was a forced migration in the 19th century whereby Native Americans were forced by the United States government to leave their ancestral homelands in the eastern United States to lands west of the Mississippi River, specifically to a designated Indian Territory. The Indian Removal Act, the key law that forced the removal of the Indians, was signed by Andrew Jackson in 1830. Jackson took a hard line on Indian removal, but the law was put into effect primarily under the Martin van Buren administration.
Indian removal was a consequence of actions first by European settlers to North America in the colonial period, then by the United States government and its citizens until the mid-20th century. The policy traced its direct origins to the administration of James Monroe, though it addressed conflicts between European Americans and Native Americans that had been occurring since the 17th century, and were escalating into the early 19th century as white settlers were continually pushing westward.
The Revolutionary background
American leaders in the Revolutionary and Early National era debated whether the American Indians should be treated officially as individuals or as nations in their own right. Some of these views are summarized below.Benjamin Franklin
In a draft, "Proposed Articles of Confederation", presented to the Continental Congress on May 10, 1775, Benjamin Franklin called for a "perpetual Alliance" with the Indians for the nation about to take birth, especially with the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy:Thomas Jefferson
In his Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson defended American Indian culture and marveled at how the tribes of Virginia "never submitted themselves to any laws, any coercive power, any shadow of government" due to their "moral sense of right and wrong". He would later write to the Marquis de Chastellux in 1785, "I believe the Indian then to be in body and mind equal to the whiteman". His desire, as interpreted by Francis Paul Prucha, was for the Native Americans to intermix with European Americans and to become one people. To achieve that end, Jefferson would, as president, offer U.S. citizenship to some Indian nations, and propose offering credit to them to facilitate their trade.George Washington
President George Washington, in his address to the Seneca nation in 1790, describing the pre-Constitutional Indian land sale difficulties as "evils", asserted that the case was now entirely altered, and publicly pledged to uphold their "just rights". In March and April 1792, Washington met with 50 tribal chiefs in Philadelphia—including the Iroquois—to discuss closer friendship between them and the United States. Later that same year, in his Fourth Annual Message to Congress, Washington stressed the need for building peace, trust, and commerce with America's Indian neighbors:In 1795, in his Seventh Annual Message to Congress, Washington intimated that if the U.S. government wanted peace with the Indians, then it must give peace to them, and that if the U.S. wanted raids by Indians to stop, then raids by American "frontier inhabitants" must also stop.
Early Congressional Acts
The Confederation Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which would serve broadly as a precedent for the manner in which the United States' territorial expansion would occur for years to come, calling for the protection of Indians' "property, rights, and liberty": The U.S. Constitution of 1787 makes Congress responsible for regulating commerce with the Indian tribes. In 1790, the new U.S. Congress passed the Indian Nonintercourse Act to protect and codify the land rights of recognized tribes.Jeffersonian policy
As president, Thomas Jefferson developed a far-reaching Indian policy that had two primary goals. First, the security of the new United States was paramount, so Jefferson wanted to assure that the Native nations were tightly bound to the United States, and not other foreign nations. Second, he wanted "to civilize" them into adopting an agricultural, rather than a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. These goals would be achieved through the development of trade and the signing of treaties.Jefferson initially promoted an American policy that encouraged Native Americans to become assimilated, or "civilized". As president, Jefferson made sustained efforts to win the friendship and cooperation of many Native American tribes, repeatedly articulating his desire for a united nation of both whites and Indians, as in a letter to the Seneca spiritual leader, Handsome Lake, dated November 3, 1802:
When a delegation from the Upper Towns of the Cherokee Nation lobbied Jefferson for the full and equal citizenship George Washington had promised to Indians living in American territory, his response indicated that he was willing to accommodate citizenship for those Indian nations that sought it. In his Eighth Annual Message to Congress on November 8, 1808, he presented to the nation a vision of white and Indian unity:
As some of Jefferson's other writings illustrate, however, he was ambivalent about Indian assimilation, even going so far as to use the words "exterminate" and "extirpate" regarding tribes that resisted American expansion and were willing to fight to defend their lands. Jefferson's intention was to change Indian lifestyles from hunting and gathering to farming, largely through "the decrease of game rendering their subsistence by hunting insufficient". He expected that the switch to agriculture would make them dependent on white Americans for trade goods and therefore more likely to give up their land in exchange, or else be removed to lands west of the Mississippi. In a private 1803 letter to William Henry Harrison, Jefferson wrote:
Elsewhere in the same letter, Jefferson spoke of protecting the Indians from injustices perpetrated by whites:
By the terms of the treaty of February 27, 1819, the U.S. government would again offer citizenship to the Cherokees who lived east of the Mississippi River, along with 640 acres of land per family. Native American land was sometimes purchased, either via a treaty or under duress. The idea of land exchange, that is, that Native Americans would give up their land east of the Mississippi in exchange for a similar amount of territory west of the river, was first proposed by Jefferson in 1803 and had first been incorporated in treaties in 1817, years after the Jefferson presidency. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 incorporated this concept.
Calhoun's plan
Under President James Monroe, Secretary of War John C. Calhoun devised the first plans for Indian removal. By late 1824, Monroe approved Calhoun's plans and in a special message to the Senate on January 27, 1825, requested the creation of the Arkansaw Territory and Indian Territory. The Indians east of the Mississippi were to voluntarily exchange their lands for lands west of the river. The Senate accepted Monroe's request and asked Calhoun to draft a bill, which was killed in the House of Representatives by the Georgia delegation. President John Quincy Adams assumed the Calhoun–Monroe policy and was determined to remove the Indians by non-forceful means, but Georgia refused to submit to Adams' request, forcing Adams to make a treaty with the Cherokees granting Georgia the Cherokee lands. On July 26, 1827, the Cherokee Nation adopted a written constitution modeled after that of the United States which declared they were an independent nation with jurisdiction over their own lands. Georgia contended that it would not countenance a sovereign state within its own territory, and proceeded to assert its authority over Cherokee territory. When Andrew Jackson became president as the candidate of the newly organized Democratic Party, he agreed that the Indians should be forced to exchange their eastern lands for western lands and relocate to them, and enforced Indian removal policy vigorously.Indian Removal Act
When Andrew Jackson assumed office as president of the United States in 1829, his government took a hard line on Indian Removal policy. Jackson abandoned the policy of his predecessors of treating different Indian groups as separate nations. Instead, he aggressively pursued plans against all Indian tribes which claimed constitutional sovereignty and independence from state laws, and which were based east of the Mississippi River. They were to be removed to reservations in Indian Territory west of the Mississippi, where their laws could be sovereign without any state interference. At Jackson's request, the United States Congress opened a debate on an Indian Removal Bill. After fierce disagreements, the Senate passed the measure 28–19, the House 102–97. Jackson signed the legislation into law May 30, 1830.In 1830, the majority of the "Five Civilized Tribes"—the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole, and Cherokee—were living east of the Mississippi. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 implemented the federal government's policy towards the Indian populations, which called for moving Native American tribes living east of the Mississippi River to lands west of the river. While it did not authorize the forced removal of the indigenous tribes, it authorized the president to negotiate land exchange treaties with tribes located in lands of the United States.
Choctaw
On September 27, 1830, the Choctaw signed the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek and by concession, became the first Native American tribe to be removed. The agreement represented one of the largest transfers of land that was signed between the U.S. Government and Native Americans without being instigated by warfare. By the treaty, the Choctaw signed away their remaining traditional homelands, opening them up for European-American settlement in Mississippi Territory. When the Choctaw reached Little Rock, a Choctaw chief referred to the trek as a "trail of tears and death".In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville, the French historian and political thinker, witnessed an exhausted group of Choctaw men, women and children emerging from the forest during an exceptionally cold winter near Memphis, Tennessee, on their way to the Mississippi to be loaded onto a steamboat, and wrote:
Cherokee
While the Indian Removal Act made the move of the tribes voluntary, it was often abused by government officials. The best-known example is the Treaty of New Echota, which was negotiated and signed by a small faction of only twenty Cherokee tribal members, not the tribal leadership, on December 29, 1835. Most of the Cherokees later blamed them and the treaty for the forced relocation of the tribe in 1838. An estimated 4,000 Cherokees died in the march, now known as the Trail of Tears. Missionary organizer Jeremiah Evarts urged the Cherokee Nation to take their case to the U.S. Supreme Court.The Marshall court heard the case in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, but declined to rule on its merits, instead declaring that the Native American tribes were not sovereign nations, and had no status to "maintain an action" in the courts of the United States. In Worcester v. Georgia, the court held, in an opinion written by Chief Justice Marshall, that individual states had no authority in American Indian affairs.
Yet the state of Georgia defied the Supreme Court ruling, and the desire of white settlers and land speculators for Indian lands continued unabated. Some whites claimed that the Indian presence was a threat to peace and security; the Georgia legislature passed a law that after March 31, 1831, forbade whites from living on Indian territory without a license from the state, in order to exclude white missionaries who opposed Indian removal.
Seminole
In 1835, the Seminole people refused to leave their lands in Florida, leading to the Second Seminole War. Osceola was a war leader of the Seminole in their fight against removal. Based in the Everglades of Florida, Osceola and his band used surprise attacks to defeat the U.S. Army in many battles. In 1837, Osceola was seized by deceit upon the orders of U.S. General Thomas Jesup when Osceola came under a flag of truce to negotiate a peace near Fort Peyton. Osceola died in prison of illness. The war would result in over 1,500 U.S. deaths and cost the government $20 million. Some Seminole traveled deeper into the Everglades, while others moved west. Removal continued out west and numerous wars ensued over land.Muskogee (Creek)
In the aftermath of the Treaty of Fort Jackson and the Treaty of Washington, the Muscogee were confined to a small strip of land in present-day east central Alabama. Following the Indian Removal Act, in 1832 the Creek National Council signed the Treaty of Cusseta, ceding their remaining lands east of the Mississippi to the U.S., and accepting relocation to the Indian Territory. Most Muscogee were removed to Indian Territory during the Trail of Tears in 1834, although some remained behind.Chickasaw
Unlike other tribes who exchanged land grants, the Chickasaw were to receive mostly financial compensation of $3 million from the United States for their lands east of the Mississippi River. In 1836, the Chickasaw reached an agreement that purchased land from the previously removed Choctaw after a bitter five-year debate, paying them $530,000 for the westernmost part of Choctaw land. Most of the Chickasaw moved in 1837–1838. The $3,000,000 that the U.S. owed the Chickasaw went unpaid for nearly 30 years.Aftermath
As a result, the Five Civilized Tribes were resettled in the new Indian Territory in modern-day Oklahoma. The Cherokee occupied the northeast corner of the Territory, as well as a strip of land seventy miles wide in Kansas on the border between the two. Some indigenous nations resisted forced migration more strongly. Those few that stayed behind eventually formed tribal groups, including the Eastern Band of Cherokee based in North Carolina, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, the Seminole Tribe of Florida, and the Creeks in Alabama, including the Poarch Band.Details on removals
The North
Tribes in the Old Northwest were far smaller and more fragmented than the Five Civilized Tribes, so the treaty and emigration process was more piecemeal. Bands of Shawnee, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Sauk, and Meskwaki signed treaties and relocated to the Indian Territory. In 1832, a Sauk leader named Black Hawk led a band of Sauk and Fox back to their lands in Illinois; in the ensuing Black Hawk War, the U.S. Army and Illinois militia defeated Black Hawk and his warriors, resulting in the Sauk and Fox being relocated into what would become present day Iowa.Tribes further to the east, such as the already displaced Lenape, as well as the Kickapoo and Shawnee, were removed from Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio in the 1820s. The Potawatomi were forced out in late 1838 and resettled in Kansas Territory. Many Miami were resettled to Indian Territory in the 1840s. Communities in present-day Ohio were forced to move to Louisiana, which was then controlled by Spain.
By the terms of the Second Treaty of Buffalo Creek, the Senecas transferred all their land in New York, excepting one small reservation, in exchange for 200,000 acres of land in Indian Territory. The U.S. federal government would be responsible for the removal of those Senecas who opted to go west, while the Ogden Land company would acquire their lands in New York. The lands were sold by government officials, however, and the money deposited in the U.S. Treasury. The Senecas asserted that they had been defrauded, and sued for redress in the U.S. Court of Claims. The case was not resolved until 1898, when the United States awarded $1,998,714.46 in compensation to "the New York Indians". In 1842 and 1857, the U.S. signed treaties with the Senecas and the Tonawanda Senecas, respectively. Under the treaty of 1857, the Tonawandas renounced all claim to lands west of the Mississippi in exchange for the right to buy back the lands of the Tonawanda reservation from the Ogden Land Company. Over a century later, the Senecas purchased a nine-acre plot in downtown Buffalo to build the "Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino".
The South
The following is a compilation of the statistics, many containing rounded figures, regarding the Southern removals.| Nation | Population east of the Mississippi before removal treaty | Removal treaty & year signed | Years of major emigration | Total number emigrated or forcibly removed | Number stayed in Southeast | Deaths during removal | Deaths from warfare |
| Choctaw | 19,554 + white citizens of the Choctaw Nation + 500 black slaves | Dancing Rabbit Creek | 1831–1836 | 12,500 | 7,000 | 2,000–4,000+ | none |
| Creek | 22,700 + 900 black slaves | Cusseta | 1834–1837 | 19,600 | 100s | 3,500 | ? |
| Chickasaw | 4,914 + 1,156 black slaves | Pontotoc Creek | 1837–1847 | over 4,000 | 100s | 500–800 | none |
| Cherokee | 21,500 + 2,000 black slaves | New Echota | 1836–1838 | 20,000 + 2,000 slaves | 1,000 | 2,000–8,000 | none |
| Seminole | 5,000 + fugitive slaves | Payne's Landing | 1832–1842 | 2,833 | 250 500 | 700 |