THE Trails of Tears:
AN American Ethnic cleansing
phillip gnemmi
In 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The Act provided for the acquisition of Native American territory within US borders, while designating new lands west of the Mississippi as destinations for the soon-to-be evicted Native Americans. The Act came as part of the ongoing expansionist campaign by the US to claim these territories for their own settlers who were inciting conflict by constantly trespassing and settling in Native territory. This act was an extension of US expansionist policy, wherein Native populations would be relocated and reduced to remove competition for land and resources effectively committing genocide. This time period was also one of heavy conflict, with the US constantly at war with one Native nation or another in the ongoing Indian Wars as it expanded west. Despite the land exchange being supported by treaties, this expulsion was marked by violence and death. The Nations affected were forced to march en masse across large tracts of land during an uncommonly cold winter. Many died in transit, leading to the Cherokee naming the event the Trail of Tears. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the resulting Trail of Tears was a major act of ethnic cleansing in the United States’ attempts to minimize and eliminate Native American populations by forcibly relocating several tribes such as the Cherokee from their ancestral homelands in order to expand American sovereignty and reduce the influence of the Native nations.
By 1830 the Cherokee were one of the most well-established Native American groups in America with their own system of education, an independent government, and a growing economy. Despite being a staunch ally of the United States, having aided in negotiations with other native groups and even having provided soldiers to the United States military , the Cherokee had a rocky relationship with their settler neighbours. With cotton increasing in value as a cash crop, more and more settlers wanted to acquire land in the south to establish plantations. The Cherokee were sitting on excellent plantation soil, soil which white Americans felt was wasted and unexploited. Cherokee territory was also an attractive haven for escaped slaves, as a practically independent nation within the borders of the United States. Most importantly, however, was the fact that gold had been discovered in Dahlonega, in the heart of the Cherokee nation. This attracted a mass of prospectors and furthered Georgia’s desire to seize the Cherokee lands.
Previous policies to ‘civilize’ and assimilate the Cherokee had failed as the Cherokee used elements of white American culture to strengthen their nation, creating a system of writing (using it in a national newspaper printed both in English and Cherokee), a constitution, and a legislature very similar to the United States’. As the Cherokee grew more unified, they became far less willing to sell their land to white settlers, especially as the said land was held in common by the Cherokee and therefore not for individual sale. Of course, there was also a racist element: as Watson says, “Indian Sovereignty represented an affront to the racist principle that none but white men were fully entitled to republican rights and privileges.” The existence of a fully-independent nation with its own government, laws, and culture inside the borders of America rankled those who believed in European dominance as the natural order.
All of these influences together meant that white settlers began to repeatedly violate a large number of treaties controlling Cherokee land. Settlers began to enter the Cherokee nation’s borders and seize land for themselves, despite the fact that the land was owned by the Cherokee and that ownership was recognized by the Supreme Court. George M. Troup, Governor of Georgia, was particularly militant about denying the Supreme Court’s ruling, pursuing the distribution of Cherokee and Creek land long before the land was even legally able to be sold.
Andrew Jackson, the President of the time, supported claiming these lands. Jackson had previously served as a General in the United States Army fighting against Native Americans in Tecumseh’s War and many other of the Indian Wars. Jackson believed that Native Americans should be treated as American subjects, not as sovereign nations. This ideology led to Jackson’s apparent disdain for the many treaties established with the Cherokee nation, treaties which Jackson blatantly ignored when the Removal Act took hold. It was partly Jackson’s new economic policies that created the increased demand for land and an almost moral obligation to tap into unexploited natural resources, leading to some of the conflict between the Cherokee and the State of Georgia. Furthermore, Jackson was of a mind that Native Americans were incapable of coexisting with ‘more civilized’ races. He believed that it was in the Cherokee’s best interests to move West across the Mississippi than to stay within Georgia’s borders for both pragmatic and moral reasons: by staying within Georgia’s borders there was bound to be more conflict between Georgia and the Cherokee, so displacing them would both increase Jackson’s support in Georgia and prevent further conflict. Andrew Jackson had little regard for the Cherokee as an independent nation, instead being intent on furthering Manifest Destiny and a vision of a white-controlled America.
The Indian Removal Act was passed by Congress on May 28th, 1830. When the Indian Removal Act was signed into law, it gave the President power to exchange Native-held territory for territories in the West, and that “it shall… be lawful for the President to have the same superintendence and care over any tribe or nation in the country to which they may remove… that he is now authorized to have over them at their present places of residence.” The Act established a number of districts in what would become modern-day Oklahoma as designated Indian Territory, a destination for Native groups ousted from their homelands. It provided funds for the compensation for these lands and the improvements upon it, as well as protections for travelling groups. The protective language of the Act disguises its true nature: this is a document facilitating the ethnic cleansing of the Cherokee people from Georgia, along with a number of other Native American tribes within the United States’ borders.
The legal basis for the Removal Act was mainly shaped by two separate instances: The Treaty of New Echota and the Supreme Court decision of Cherokee Nation v. Georgia. As the Cherokee were historically treated as a foreign nation by the United States, the President had no jurisdiction of any kind to enforce this act. The Georgian state legislature’s attempts to enforce the Act and remove the Cherokee were challenged in a court decision that went up to the Supreme Court. The Court’s ultimate decision was that the Cherokee were a foreign nation by the meaning of the Constitution. Therefore, Georgia’s attempts to pass legislation controlling Cherokee territory were unlawful, but by that same token the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction over the Cherokee. This left the Cherokee open to exploitation through treaties, which the Supreme Court declared as binding as any other treaty with a foreign nation.
The Cherokee resisted giving up their lands for a long time after the Indian Removal Act was signed. Despite pressure from Andrew Jackson and the Georgian legislature urging the Cherokee to leave their homeland and join their fellow Native Americans, the Cherokee continued to remain. When a treaty of removal was presented to the Cherokee National Council, it was quickly rejected. In 1835, a small committee of twenty Cherokee was gathered by a group of American delegates under the guise of calling for a council of all Cherokee. The same treaty, now referred to as The Treaty of New Echota was brought before this small group, and they were convinced to accept it. Somehow, this treaty overseen by a group that could not possibly represent the Cherokee was accepted as a legally binding treaty. As Remini says, this treaty was nothing more than “chicanery, pure and simple.” Both the Cherokee leadership and the vast majority of the people rejected this treaty, yet the decision of these twenty Cherokee created a valid removal treaty for the U. S. Government to enforce the Removal Act. The President and Senate signed off on it shortly afterward, and the forced Removal began.
So, in 1838 with the unwanted treaty now providing justification, the United States began arranged for the exchange of territory and the removal of the Cherokee population. The Cherokee themselves were one of the last groups to move, as many of the other Native American nations had agreed to the removal long before. The Native Americans were told to vacate the land by May 25th, or else the army would come and forcibly remove them. A few hundred left, but many stayed to protest the treaty forced upon them. The United States Government responded by sending in armed militiamen to round up the Cherokee, concentrate them in prison camps, and force them to travel west at the point of a bayonet. Many died in the camps. Many more died while making the long trek. Diseases such as dysentery became common, the wagons did not have room for the elderly who could not endure travel on foot, the provided food could not sustain the people, and there was little to no shelter from the uncommonly cold winter. Of the 18,000 Cherokee removed from their homeland, it is estimated that 4,000 died as a result of the horrific conditions. It is this death rate that gave this removal its name: The Trail of Tears. What started as the ethnic cleansing of Georgia became deadly, endangering the very existence of the Cherokee people. President Jackson believed that moving west would preserve the Cherokee, instead, roughly one in five Cherokee who made the trek died.
After the Trail of Tears, the Cherokee population in the eastern United States was significantly reduced from 16,000 Cherokee to 1,900, a drastic drop in population. The Cherokee population in total took a massive hit, with Russel Thornton calculating a potential loss of 10,000 Cherokee, both from deaths and from nonbirths (that is, the total includes the population growth that was prevented by the Trail of Tears). The decimation of the eastern Cherokee population meant that there was little-to-no opposition to the expansion into this territory. What once was one of the greatest Native American civilizations was destroyed, its homeland swallowed up by the United States. What few Cherokee remained in the East were scattered families and individuals, no longer a unified nation. The Cherokee population was drastically diminished by the ethnic cleansing of the Trail of Tears, the total population by a great amount but especially the population in the east.
The Cherokee had spent a number of years building themselves up as an independent, ‘civilized’ (by American standards) nation within the United States. Despite their attempt to appeal to American ideals, they were still forced to abandon their ancestral homelands by virtue of a treaty made on a clearly-illegal basis. The National Council established laws saying that those who sold land without approval of the National Council could be executed for treason. The Cherokee had desperately tried to hold on to their lands and their identity in the face of overwhelming American encroachment, yet they could not resist and the Cherokee nation was nearly swept away. The Cherokee leadership knew that “nationalism was integral to sustaining the fabric of Cherokee society and culture,” but reconciling the forcibly-removed eastern Cherokee with those who had left earlier would be a difficult prospect. The Cherokee people had suffered a massive blow to their unity and culture, and it would take a lot of work to restore their nation.
By 1830 the Cherokee were one of the most well-established Native American groups in America with their own system of education, an independent government, and a growing economy. Despite being a staunch ally of the United States, having aided in negotiations with other native groups and even having provided soldiers to the United States military , the Cherokee had a rocky relationship with their settler neighbours. With cotton increasing in value as a cash crop, more and more settlers wanted to acquire land in the south to establish plantations. The Cherokee were sitting on excellent plantation soil, soil which white Americans felt was wasted and unexploited. Cherokee territory was also an attractive haven for escaped slaves, as a practically independent nation within the borders of the United States. Most importantly, however, was the fact that gold had been discovered in Dahlonega, in the heart of the Cherokee nation. This attracted a mass of prospectors and furthered Georgia’s desire to seize the Cherokee lands.
Previous policies to ‘civilize’ and assimilate the Cherokee had failed as the Cherokee used elements of white American culture to strengthen their nation, creating a system of writing (using it in a national newspaper printed both in English and Cherokee), a constitution, and a legislature very similar to the United States’. As the Cherokee grew more unified, they became far less willing to sell their land to white settlers, especially as the said land was held in common by the Cherokee and therefore not for individual sale. Of course, there was also a racist element: as Watson says, “Indian Sovereignty represented an affront to the racist principle that none but white men were fully entitled to republican rights and privileges.” The existence of a fully-independent nation with its own government, laws, and culture inside the borders of America rankled those who believed in European dominance as the natural order.
All of these influences together meant that white settlers began to repeatedly violate a large number of treaties controlling Cherokee land. Settlers began to enter the Cherokee nation’s borders and seize land for themselves, despite the fact that the land was owned by the Cherokee and that ownership was recognized by the Supreme Court. George M. Troup, Governor of Georgia, was particularly militant about denying the Supreme Court’s ruling, pursuing the distribution of Cherokee and Creek land long before the land was even legally able to be sold.
Andrew Jackson, the President of the time, supported claiming these lands. Jackson had previously served as a General in the United States Army fighting against Native Americans in Tecumseh’s War and many other of the Indian Wars. Jackson believed that Native Americans should be treated as American subjects, not as sovereign nations. This ideology led to Jackson’s apparent disdain for the many treaties established with the Cherokee nation, treaties which Jackson blatantly ignored when the Removal Act took hold. It was partly Jackson’s new economic policies that created the increased demand for land and an almost moral obligation to tap into unexploited natural resources, leading to some of the conflict between the Cherokee and the State of Georgia. Furthermore, Jackson was of a mind that Native Americans were incapable of coexisting with ‘more civilized’ races. He believed that it was in the Cherokee’s best interests to move West across the Mississippi than to stay within Georgia’s borders for both pragmatic and moral reasons: by staying within Georgia’s borders there was bound to be more conflict between Georgia and the Cherokee, so displacing them would both increase Jackson’s support in Georgia and prevent further conflict. Andrew Jackson had little regard for the Cherokee as an independent nation, instead being intent on furthering Manifest Destiny and a vision of a white-controlled America.
The Indian Removal Act was passed by Congress on May 28th, 1830. When the Indian Removal Act was signed into law, it gave the President power to exchange Native-held territory for territories in the West, and that “it shall… be lawful for the President to have the same superintendence and care over any tribe or nation in the country to which they may remove… that he is now authorized to have over them at their present places of residence.” The Act established a number of districts in what would become modern-day Oklahoma as designated Indian Territory, a destination for Native groups ousted from their homelands. It provided funds for the compensation for these lands and the improvements upon it, as well as protections for travelling groups. The protective language of the Act disguises its true nature: this is a document facilitating the ethnic cleansing of the Cherokee people from Georgia, along with a number of other Native American tribes within the United States’ borders.
The legal basis for the Removal Act was mainly shaped by two separate instances: The Treaty of New Echota and the Supreme Court decision of Cherokee Nation v. Georgia. As the Cherokee were historically treated as a foreign nation by the United States, the President had no jurisdiction of any kind to enforce this act. The Georgian state legislature’s attempts to enforce the Act and remove the Cherokee were challenged in a court decision that went up to the Supreme Court. The Court’s ultimate decision was that the Cherokee were a foreign nation by the meaning of the Constitution. Therefore, Georgia’s attempts to pass legislation controlling Cherokee territory were unlawful, but by that same token the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction over the Cherokee. This left the Cherokee open to exploitation through treaties, which the Supreme Court declared as binding as any other treaty with a foreign nation.
The Cherokee resisted giving up their lands for a long time after the Indian Removal Act was signed. Despite pressure from Andrew Jackson and the Georgian legislature urging the Cherokee to leave their homeland and join their fellow Native Americans, the Cherokee continued to remain. When a treaty of removal was presented to the Cherokee National Council, it was quickly rejected. In 1835, a small committee of twenty Cherokee was gathered by a group of American delegates under the guise of calling for a council of all Cherokee. The same treaty, now referred to as The Treaty of New Echota was brought before this small group, and they were convinced to accept it. Somehow, this treaty overseen by a group that could not possibly represent the Cherokee was accepted as a legally binding treaty. As Remini says, this treaty was nothing more than “chicanery, pure and simple.” Both the Cherokee leadership and the vast majority of the people rejected this treaty, yet the decision of these twenty Cherokee created a valid removal treaty for the U. S. Government to enforce the Removal Act. The President and Senate signed off on it shortly afterward, and the forced Removal began.
So, in 1838 with the unwanted treaty now providing justification, the United States began arranged for the exchange of territory and the removal of the Cherokee population. The Cherokee themselves were one of the last groups to move, as many of the other Native American nations had agreed to the removal long before. The Native Americans were told to vacate the land by May 25th, or else the army would come and forcibly remove them. A few hundred left, but many stayed to protest the treaty forced upon them. The United States Government responded by sending in armed militiamen to round up the Cherokee, concentrate them in prison camps, and force them to travel west at the point of a bayonet. Many died in the camps. Many more died while making the long trek. Diseases such as dysentery became common, the wagons did not have room for the elderly who could not endure travel on foot, the provided food could not sustain the people, and there was little to no shelter from the uncommonly cold winter. Of the 18,000 Cherokee removed from their homeland, it is estimated that 4,000 died as a result of the horrific conditions. It is this death rate that gave this removal its name: The Trail of Tears. What started as the ethnic cleansing of Georgia became deadly, endangering the very existence of the Cherokee people. President Jackson believed that moving west would preserve the Cherokee, instead, roughly one in five Cherokee who made the trek died.
After the Trail of Tears, the Cherokee population in the eastern United States was significantly reduced from 16,000 Cherokee to 1,900, a drastic drop in population. The Cherokee population in total took a massive hit, with Russel Thornton calculating a potential loss of 10,000 Cherokee, both from deaths and from nonbirths (that is, the total includes the population growth that was prevented by the Trail of Tears). The decimation of the eastern Cherokee population meant that there was little-to-no opposition to the expansion into this territory. What once was one of the greatest Native American civilizations was destroyed, its homeland swallowed up by the United States. What few Cherokee remained in the East were scattered families and individuals, no longer a unified nation. The Cherokee population was drastically diminished by the ethnic cleansing of the Trail of Tears, the total population by a great amount but especially the population in the east.
The Cherokee had spent a number of years building themselves up as an independent, ‘civilized’ (by American standards) nation within the United States. Despite their attempt to appeal to American ideals, they were still forced to abandon their ancestral homelands by virtue of a treaty made on a clearly-illegal basis. The National Council established laws saying that those who sold land without approval of the National Council could be executed for treason. The Cherokee had desperately tried to hold on to their lands and their identity in the face of overwhelming American encroachment, yet they could not resist and the Cherokee nation was nearly swept away. The Cherokee leadership knew that “nationalism was integral to sustaining the fabric of Cherokee society and culture,” but reconciling the forcibly-removed eastern Cherokee with those who had left earlier would be a difficult prospect. The Cherokee people had suffered a massive blow to their unity and culture, and it would take a lot of work to restore their nation.