Aim: How did the federal government organize the “removal“ of Native Americans in the 19 th century?

   A Tennessee political leader, judge, and land spectator.

A war “Hero” fighting Indians and defeating the British at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815.

After the War of 1812 he served as a federal commissioner to negotiate treaties with the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, Seminoles, and Cherokees (all tribes in the Southeast)  Jackson was known to sometimes resort to military threats and bribery.

 Got most of the tribes to give up 50million acres of tribal land

   After a controversial defeat in 1824, Jackson wins the presidency on a campaign that promised free land for white settlers.

Jackson began to promote the idea (first proposed by Thomas Jefferson) of moving Indians into unsettled prairie west of the Mississippi.

Noah Webster issues the first American Dictionary produced in the United States:   In it the word “Savage” is defined as: n, A human being in his native state of rudeness; one who is untaught, uncivilized, or without cultivation of mind or manners. The savages of America, when uncorrupted by the vices of civilized men, are remarkable for their hospitality to strangers, and for their truth, fidelity, and gratitude to their friends, but implacably cruel and revengeful toward their enemies Question: What does this definition say about how white Americans viewed the Native American people?

Carlisle Indian School, PA

The common schools are the stomachs of the country in which all people that come to us are assimilated within a generation.

When a lion eats an ox, the lion does not become an ox but the ox becomes a lion."

..Henry Ward Beecher

What do you think this quote means? Who is the lion? Who is the ox?

This is Tom Torlino. He attended the Carlisle School - a special boarding school for Native American students. The picture provides both a before and after spending time at the school. The before and after photo is but one illustration NPR uses to tell the story of Native American boarding schools in the US. In a report titled “Native American Boarding Schools Haunt Many,” correspondent Charla Bear digs deep into the practices and processes used to forcibly strip young Native Americans from their heritage.

 The federal government began sending Native Americans to off-reservation boarding schools in the 1870s, when the United States was still at war with Indians.

 An Army officer, Richard Pratt, founded the first of these schools. He based it on an education program he had developed in an Indian prison. He described his philosophy in a speech he gave in 1892.

 “A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one,” Pratt said. “In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”

"If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place.

He put in your heart certain wishes and plans; in my heart he put other and different desires.

Each man is good in the sight of the Great Spirit.

It is not necessary, that eagles should be crows."

..Sitting Bull (Teton Sioux)

What did Sitting Bull mean when he said “it is not necessary, that Eagles should be crows?”

 Indian Schools…

 In your comp book, respond to this photo. What is it saying, and how does it make you feel?

   Passed in May 1830 Sought to remove the “Five civilized tribes” from east of the Mississippi to west of the Mississippi Question: Why were these tribes called the “Five civilized tribes”?

 “ Rightly considered, the policy of the General Government toward the red man is not only liberal, but generous. He is unwilling to submit to the laws of the States and mingle with their population. To save him from this alternative, or perhaps utter annihilation, the General Government kingly offers him a new home…” - Andrew Jackson Message to Congress, December 8 1930

 Although removal was supposed to be “voluntary” Jackson cut of payments to the tribes for previously made land deals until they moved to the West.

 He also agreed with Georgia, and other southern states, that their laws controlled tribal land.

 Between 1827 and 1830, Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama dissolved the Indian governments and seized tribal land.

 In 1832 the “civilized” Cherokees chose not to fight in battle as their forefathers had, but used the U.S. courts to stake their claim on their land .

 The appeal reached the U.S. Supreme Court –

Georgia

- and won;

Worcester v.

The Cherokees retained the right to be independent and self governing.

 Why? The federal government had former treaty obligations to protect the Indians and the Court held that federal law was superior to state law.

 Afterward President Jackson is quoted as saying, “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it” John Marshall was the Chief Justice

 Although the Supreme Court had ruled in favor of the Cherokee, Jackson’s open refusal to enforce it gave way to Southern states ignoring it .

 Georgia settlers, gold minors, and land speculators swarmed onto Cherokee lands, often seizing and destroying homes and property .

 In 1832Georgia ran a lottery to distribute Cherokee land.

 In 1835 A small group of Cherokees led by longtime Cherokee political leader Major Ridge, who did not represent their nation signed a treaty with the government that granted the United States “all the lands owned, claimed, or possessed "by the Cherokees.

 The U.S. agreed to pay the tribe $5 million and to provide new and in the West that would never be included within any future state.

     Principle chief of the Cherokees who led the tribal government and opposed the removal.

The leader in Worcester v.

Georgia

Along with the Cherokee General Council, Ross rejected the Treaty of New Echota because it did not reflect the will of the Cherokee majority.

But, in 1836, the U.S. Senate ratified the treaty by ONE VOTE giving the Cherokees 2 years to leave.

More than 16,000 Cherokees defied the treaty and refused to abandon their homes including Chief John Ross and his wife.

"The Cherokee are probably the most tragic instance of what could have succeeded in American Indian policy and didn't. All these things that Americans would proudly see as the hallmarks of civilization are going to the West by Indian people. They do everything they were asked except one thing. What the Cherokees ultimately are, they may be Christian, they may be literate, they may have a government like ours, but ultimately they are Indian. And in the end, being Indian is what kills them." Richard White, Historian

     President Jackson completed his second term in office by the deadline for Cherokee removal in 1838.

When most Cherokees still refused to leave, the new president, Martin can Buren ordered General Winfield Scott to round up troops and force them to leave.

In the summer of 1838, Scott’s soldiers arrested about 15,000 Cherokees and marched them into primitive stockades.

Even before the long journey (on foot) poor food, limited water, filthy living conditions, and disease caused the death of an estimated 3,000 Cherokees.

In addition to the thousands who died in the stockades, another 1,000, including John Toss’ wife, died on the way west. Altogether about 25% of the tribe perished in what the Cherokees call “The Trail Where They Cried”.

 In December 1838, President Van Buren Spoke to Congress: “It affords sincere pleasure to apprise the Congress of the entire removal of the Cherokee Nation of Indians to their new homes west of the Mississippi. The measures authorized by Congress at its last session have had the happiest effects.”