I
was reading the Indian Removal Act, 1830 administered by President Andrew
Jackson. The Indian Remove Act authorized the President to grand unsettled
lands west of the Mississippi in exchange for Indian land within existing state
borders. Many tribes had clear opposition to this
new law; nearly 125,000 Indians occupied thousands of acres of land in Georgia,
Alabama, Tennessee and North Carolina. According to the Library of
Congress website, during the fall and winter of 1838 and 1839, the Cherokees
were forcibly moved west by the United States government. Approximately 4,000
Cherokees died on this forced march, which became known as the "Trail of
Tears."
I looked up more information on the Trail of Tears and this is
what I found; bands of Cherokee Natives were forced to walk thousands of miles
to a designed territory across the Mississippi. Many of the Natives died during
this walk, hence the name. The White man wanted this land to grow cotton; they
despised the Natives for occupying the land. They used bullying tactics like
stealing livestock and burned their villages until they were forced to leave.
The White man believed that they should be civilized and by civilized they
meant to see the real value of the land and how much profit and wealth could be
had by all.
According to History.com, by 1840, tens of thousands of Native
Americans had been driven off of their land in the southeastern states and
forced to move across the Mississippi to Indian Territory. The federal
government promised that their new land would remain unmolested forever, but as
the line of white settlement pushed westward, “Indian country” shrank and
shrank. In 1907, Oklahoma became a state and Indian Territory was gone for
good.
Every time I read this information I am horrified at what we humans are capable of doing to each other. I can't imagine what it must have been like for these people to have to experience these horrors. After the readings I see that many tribes were moved multiple times. So, not only did they suffer the horrors once but likely 2 or 3 times.
ReplyDeletePopulation decreases were so dramatic during the post-contact period, even more so during the relocation of native tribes. Under the harsh conditions, many people (probably intended) did not survive.
ReplyDeleteI may be alone in my opinion, but I believe that the Trail of Tears can be considered genocide and can be compared to Hitler's Holocaust with the extermination of the Jewish population in Europe. I don't believe that President Jackson intended to kill that many Indians, but I DO believe that he wasn't upset with it and considered it as a hinderence that was no longer a problem for him
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned how the cotton industry was responsible for taking Indian land... what a vicious cycle that created. The more land the white man took over, the more slaves they needed to work the land, the more cotton ($) they produced, the more land they needed....
ReplyDeleteAll the reading we have done about Native Americans I found that the Europeans promised so much to these Native Americans and never really came through with much of it. You're absolutely correct. The Native American population as decreased little by little throughout the years that there are barely any left. I wish this was not true because I look up to the natives and their way of life.
ReplyDelete