Learning Unit #12 Lecture

1. Learning Unit 12 Lecture
“Was Indian Removal a
Humanitarian Policy?”

2. Part One:
Acculturation/Assimilation OR
Removal? Federal Indian
Policy from Jefferson to
Jackson

3. The Louisiana Purchase
• In Europe, Napoleon, the Toussaint L’Ouverture
French emperor, defeated
Spain and took back the
Louisiana Territory for
France.
• Napoleon’s dream to rebuild
a French empire in N.
America was thwarted by
the Haitian Revolution, a
large slave rebellion led by
Toussaint L’Ouverture.
• U.S. diplomats in Paris were
offered the Louisiana
Territory for $15 million.

4. Jefferson Reversed Himself
• As a ‘strict
constructionist,’
Jefferson doubted
the constitutionality
of the LA purchase.
• BUT, he went ahead
and accepted a
‘loose construction’
of the President’s
constitutional
powers to make
treaties & took the
deal.

5. Louisiana Purchase & Lewis &
Clark Expedition, 1804-1806

6. Louisiana Purchase & Lewis &
Clark Expedition, 1804-1806

7. Impact of the Louisiana Purchase
on Native Americans
• Jefferson proposed shifting the eastern Indian populations to
the West so that their lands would be available for white
farmers.
• He favored “civilizing” Indians with white education &
agricultural methods, turning Native Americans into farmers &
homemakers.
• He believed Indians would eventually assimilate with white
America through intermarriage.
• Moreover, by engaging in trade with Native Americans &
extending them credit, Indians would become debtors & have to
sign away their lands to pay debts.
• Of course, the USA could forcibly take the lands of any Native
Americans who engaged in armed resistance.

8. Museum recreation of a government-run “Indian
factory,” or trading post, where the U.S. Govt.’s
aim was to entrap Native Americans with debt.

9. Creek Acculturation
Acculturation = changes in the culture of a group as a
result of contact w/ a different culture; milestone on
the road to full assimilation

10. Pigeon’s-Egg-Head,
an Assiniboine Chief,
‘before & after’ a trip
to Washington, D.C.,
to make a treaty. While
in the nation’s capital,
he adapted to
American society & it
corrupted him in the
eyes of his people.
They killed him upon
his return.

11. Part Two:
Cotton Agriculture, Indian
Removal & the Revitalization
of Slavery

12. The cotton gin was invented by Eli
Whitney, a northerner who solved
the problem of how to efficiently
The Cotton Gin
clean short-staple cotton, making its
large-scale cultivation profitable.
The southern United States had the
best cotton land, but much of it still
belonged to Native Americans. Cotton
wasn’t that important to the economy
of Colonial America, but in the Pre-
Civil War USA it would become the
country’s biggest export.

13. The spread of cotton agriculture spurred the growth of
slavery on lands taken from Native Americans.

16. Part Three:
The War of 1812 & the Rise of
Andrew Jackson

17. Tenskwatawa, the Shawnee Tecumseh
Prophet was based
in Indiana,
but his
mother was
a Creek.
Tecumseh
attempted
to put
together a
wide Pan-
Indian
alliance to
resist
whites’
expansion
& carve out a country
for Native Americans
between the USA &
Canada.
Some Native Americans resigned themselves to following the Govt.’s
removal policy while other Native Americans resisted these changes
in various ways. Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa led a
rebellion during the War of 1812 that attracted Indians willing to fight
the settlers; even the “Red Stick” Creeks of Alabama joined
Tecumseh’s alliance.

18. The End of Tecumseh’s Confederacy
Before Tecumseh
could launch his
uprising, Indians led
by Tenskwatawa
attacked U.S.
soldiers under
William Henry
Harrison at
Tippecanoe River &
were defeated;
Tecumseh joined the
British & was later
killed at the Battle of
the Thames (1813).

19. Horseshoe Bend Spells Disaster for “Red
Stick” Creeks
The “Red Stick” Creeks, Tecumseh’s southern allies, attacked white
settlers in Alabama, but were later defeated at Horseshoe Bend by forces
under Gen. Andrew Jackson, who then went on to defend New Orleans
against the British and won a victory that eventually propelled him to the
White House in 1828.

20. The Battle of New Orleans
Jackson
A multiethnic force under Gen. Jackson turned back the final attempt by the
British to reconquer the USA.

21. After losing the
controversial election of
1824 (decided in the
House of
Representatives),
Jackson--a Democrat
from TN--won his 1828
re-match with John
Quincy Adams. The
election was arguably
the nastiest in American
history in terms of
“mudslinging” & even
contributed to the death
of Jackson’s beloved
wife, Rachel.

22. Jackson always
styled himself as
the “Great Father”
to the Indians,
Jacksonian Democracy whose best
stood for three things, interests he claimed
to have at heart.
all of which appealed to
voters on the frontier of Paternalism --
In Jackson’s
settlement in the Old view, Native
Americans
Southwest (today’s were like
children or
southEASTern USA): wards of the
U.S. Govt.
1) White Supremacy
2) Territorial Expansion
3) Destroy the National
Bank!

23. Part Four:
Territorial Expansion in the
Age of Jackson

24. When people spoke of the ‘Old Southwest’
during the first half of the 1800s, they were
referring to the states we think of today as part
of the Southeast--KY, TN, GA, AL, MS, FL, LA, &
AR. The land we think of today as the Southwest
still belonged to Mexico until 1848.

25. “Indian Removal”
• Jackson’s Goal?
• Expansion into the Old Southwest for white southern planters
& farmers (many voted for him)
• 1830 Indian Removal Act
• 5 Civilized Tribes: (forced removal)
• Cherokee Creek Choctaw
• Chickasaw Seminole
• Cherokee Nation v. GA (1831)
• “domestic dependent nation”
• Worcester v. GA (1832)
• Cherokee law is sovereign and Georgia law does not apply in
the Cherokee nation.
• Supreme Court’s decision had no effect, however, on the
1830 Indian Removal Act.

26. “Indian Removal”

27. Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831)
• The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the state of Georgia could not
seize the lands of a “domestic, dependent nation” which
possessed some sovereignty. The Cherokees were NOT a foreign
nation as described in the Constitution.
• “The conditions of the Indians in relation to the United States is
perhaps unlike that of any two peoples in existence. Their
relation to the United States resembles that of a ward to his
guardian. [They are a] domestic dependent nation.”--John
Marshall, Chief Justice
• Established a “trust relationship” with tribes directly under
federal authority.

28. Worcester v. Georgia (1832)
• Samuel Worcester was a missionary who took Georgia to court
for requiring missionaries to the Cherokee Nation to be
licensed by the state.
• The case established the extent of tribal autonomy (i.e., a self-
governing state, community, or group with territorial
boundaries),
• The tribes were “distinct political communities, having
territorial boundaries within which their authority is
exclusive.”--John Marshall, Chief Justice
• The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the laws of Georgia had no
force within the territorial boundaries of the Cherokee Nation.
Only the U.S. Federal Government can make policy affecting
Native American tribes.
• The judicial ruling was a hollow victory for Cherokees, however,
because it did nothing to halt the Federal Indian Removal Act,
which was, in fact, already being implemented.

29. Trails of Tears: Many Tribes
Experienced Their Own “Trail of
Tears,” but the Plight of the
Cherokees is the Most Well-
Known.

30. “Indian Removal”
By 1837, almost all the Civilized Tribes had
been forced to move west of the MS River.

31. “Indian Removal”
President Jackson--who speculated in land & personally profited from
his own Indian removal policy--reflected on the condition of the
Indians, and on Indian-white relations in his 1829 message to
Congress:
“Our conduct toward these people is deeply interesting to our
national character.... Our ancestors found them the uncontrolled
possessors of these vast regions.
“By persuasion and force they have been made to retire from river to
river and from mountain to mountain, unntil some of the tribes have
become extinct and others have left but remnants to preserve for
awhile their once terrible names.

32. “Indian Removal”
“Surrounded by the whites with their arts of civilization, which by
destroying the resources of the savage doom him to weakness and
decay, the fate of the Mohegan, Narragansett, and the Delaware is fast
overtaking the Choctaw, the Cherokee, and the Creek.
“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 such a calamity.”

33. Vast tracts of land in MS, AL, TN, and FL
were occupied by one or more of the Five
Civilized Tribes--Cherokees, Creeks,
Choctaws, Chickasaws, & Seminoles.
They were termed ‘civilized’ because
significant numbers had acculturated
themselves to the societal norms of
whites. They dressed as whites; many
practiced Christianity; lived in houses as
small farmers; some practiced slavery;
the Cherokees even had a constitution &
a tribal newspaper. But acculturation did
not stop Jackson from proceeding with
their forced removal to the Oklahoma
Territory. Some Choctaws in Mississippi
were allowed to remain as small,
independent farmers. A small band of
Cherokees also successfully hid out in
the Smoky Mountains, and their
descendants remain there to this day. The
Cherokees finally lost their land when the
U.S. Govt. signed a treaty w/ a minority
faction that sold the majority’s land.
John Ross, Paramount Chief of the Cherokee Nation,
By ancestry, Ross was 1/8 Cherokee.

34. Division in the Cherokee
Nation
• Cherokee Nation went from being a peaceful
nation to a community divided between the Ridge
Faction (minority) and the Ross Faction (majority).
• The Ridge Faction, in cooperation with the U.S.
Government, illegally signed the Treaty of New
Echota, believing the tribe had no other choice.
U.S. Govt. gave land and goods to Cherokees who
left their land peacefully.
• Georgia and the U.S. Govt. used the treaty as
justification to force almost all of the 17,000
Cherokees from their southeastern homeland.

35. John Ross
Major Ridge
• “full blood,” yet leader of ‘modernists’ • “mixed blood,” yet leader of ‘traditionalists’
• pro-Treaty • anti-Treaty
• minority support among Cherokees • majority support among Cherokees
• believed resistance was futile • believed Ridge Faction were traitors &
targeted them for death
• slaveholder
• slaveholder

36. Major Ridge’s House, located in Rome, Georgia, near New Echota

37. John Ross’ Second Home, near Chattanooga, TN

38. Typical Cherokee Homestead

39. • In 1838, General Winfield Scott arrived in Georgia with
approximately 7000 men to enforce the provisions of the Treaty
of New Echota, which prescribed the relocation of the Cherokees
in Georgia to what is now Oklahoma.
• About 4000 Cherokees died en route in what became known as
the ‘Trail of Tears.’

40. “We were eight days in making the journey (80 miles), & it “Long time we travel on way to new land. People feel bad
was pitiful to behold the women & children who suffered when they leave old nation. Women cry and make sad
exceedingly as they were all obliged to walk, with the wails. Children cry and many men cry, and all look sad
exception of the sick.... I had three regular ministers of like when friends die, but they say nothing and just put
the gospel in my party, and ... we have preaching or heads down and keep on go towards West. Many days
prayer meeting every night while on the march, and you pass and people die very much. We bury close by Trail.”--
may well imagine that under the peculiar circumstances Survivor of the Trail of Tears
of the case, among those sublime mountains and in the
deep forest with the thunder often roaring in the distance,
that nothing could be more solemn and impressive. And I
always looked on with ... awe, lest their prayers which I
felt... ascending to Heaven and calling for justice to Him
who alone can & will grant it... [might] fall upon my guilty
head as one of the instruments of oppression.”--
Lieutenant L.B. Webster