Indian Removal Act Thesis

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The Removal Act
Since the first Europeans landed on “the new land” with a thirst to conquer and deplete everything on their path, Natives to this land fought to retain as much as they could. But in reality, by the time the new settlers where finished they had decimated the natives in numbers and with that sought to remove and relocate the few that remained. The Indian Removal Act was enacted to relocate Indians from the east to west of the Mississippi. One may wonder how such a heinous act came into play; this essay will focused on a brief history of the events that lead to its fruition and finalization. It will also provide a personal evaluation of the effects of such act on the people enacted on.
Pressed by its white citizens The United …show more content…

According to a Britannica publication, this act “was the first major legislative departure from the U.S. policy of officially respecting the legal and political rights of the American Indians.” (Kathleen Kuiper). By the time the removal was being applied, many treaties were already in place trying to rid the natives of their lands. Once Andrew Jackson took presidency his governance sought to displace Indians and completely assimilate or eradicate them. While many natives had already relocated peacefully, it was just some remaining tribes that fought in legal courts to retain their land, “the Five Civilized Tribes (Chickasaw, Choctaw, Seminole, Cherokee, and Creek) refused to trade their cultivated farms for the promise of strange land.” (Kathleen Kuiper). The native’s attempts to retain their lands, whether combative or peaceful made no difference in the end result of submission and tragically expulsion from their homes. President Jackson’s aimed all along was for the complete removal of Indians to clear way for the white citizens, therefore due to the act enforcement about 46,000 Native Americans were uprooted across the Mississippi River. Once The Indian Removal Act was passed and more treaties enforced the end results were palpable, “with the exception of a small number of Seminoles still resisting removal in Florida, by the 1840s, …show more content…

By the end of the Revolutionary war which took place in 1775 and ended by 1783, half of the Cherokees primary land was relinquished, and by 1791 this tribe had already been displaced to Georgia with the passing of another treaty. White settlers wanted to keep expanding and the land became more coveted do to the discovery of gold, and so by 1830 the same government that relocated the Cherokees now attempted to recover the Georgian territory they got moved to and was home to the tribe now. The Cherokees were considered a “civilized” tribe and had left behind their combative nature, by now they believed in the rule of law and having a counsel objected to the relocation. The tribe appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court a total of three times to fight this injustice, the resistance was useless and the government still pushed for the Natives to give up their territory. The wheel was turning at this point and sadly and the events the follow were atrocious: “1838, U.S. president Martin Van Buren ordered the U.S. Army into the Cherokee Nation. The soldiers rounded up as many Cherokees as they could […] and […] marched the captives, […] to the Indian Territory. Scholars estimate that 4,000-5,000 Cherokees,[…] died on this "trail where they cried," commonly known as the Trail of Tears” (Garrison, Tim). This act caused the removal of about fifteen thousand

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