Doc of the Day: The Indian Removal Act

05/28/10

On May 28, 1830, U.S. President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law. This sweeping legislation gave Jackson broad powers to force all the American Indian tribes remaining in the South to relocate to newly created reservations west of the Mississippi River. The Choctaw, Seminole, Creek, and Chickasaw tribes were all removed from the South under the terms of this act. “It gives me pleasure to announce to Congress that the benevolent policy of the Government, steadily pursued for nearly thirty years, in relation to the removal of the Indians beyond the white settlements is approaching to a happy consummation,” Jackson declared in a December 1830 speech before Congress entitled On Indian Removal.

The Cherokee people made a valiant stand against removal under the leadership of Chief John Ross. The Cherokee considered themselves a sovereign nation—with their own roads, schools, written language, representative government, and constitution—and claimed jurisdiction over long-held territory in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the tribe’s sovereignty in Worcester v. Georgia (1832) and ruled that the Cherokee could only be removed if its leaders agreed in a formal treaty with the U.S. government.

In 1835 Jackson convinced a small minority faction among the Cherokee to sign the Treaty of New Echota, which provided for the removal of the entire Cherokee Nation to a reservation in Oklahoma Territory. Following a heated debate, the U.S. Senate ratified it by a single vote. Although Ross contested the treaty’s legitimacy in a letter to Martin Van Buren, Jackson’s successor sent federal troops to enforce the treaty in 1838. Around 13,000 Cherokee were rounded up and driven west, and an estimated 4,000 tribal members died of cold, starvation, or disease along the 1,000-mile forced march. This tragic episode in American history became known as the Trail of Tears.

Read the INDIAN REMOVAL ACT
Read ANDREW JACKSON’S ON INDIAN REMOVAL
Read the TREATY OF NEW ECHOTA
Read JOHN ROSS’S LETTER TO MARTIN VAN BUREN

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