But, eventually, in the year 1830, things got really bad, the US Gov’t passed the Indian Removal Act and in Georgia the white men held a lottery to give away the Indians’ land. John Ross tried to use diplomacy to have the Cherokee’s rights to the land recognized. He went to the Supreme Court and won against the US Gov’t. The Court agreed that the Cherokees had rights to the land, but the president would not back down. Then in 1835, a few renegade Cherokees wrote up a false treaty and gave it to Congress.
Georgia was first on the list to seize and to do so the president gave the Cherokees a “choice”. They either moved west to new lands, which were called Indian Territory, where their independence would be respected or they would have to live under Georgia laws, meaning many of their human rights such as voting would be taken away from them. This decision was completely unfair to the tribe since the region was home to them and the new lands were unfamiliar and not at all valuable to them. Jackson soon passed the bill, forcing the Cherokees to march from their homelands all the way west to a portion of the Louisiana Purchase. This march was known as the Trail of Tears where thousands of Cherokees passed away on the journey.
Since they were forced to leave and go on the Trail of Tears they died because Jackson removed them. The speech makes America seem very generous for offering the Americans new settlement and paying for their journey. So, because America paid for the journey and the settlement they were very helpful towards the Indians. The soldier’s account makes the Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears seem very sad because on the Trail of Tears the Indians suffered and died. So, the soldier’s perspective is that passing the Indian Removal act was not worth getting new land, since the Indians suffered.
In June 1830, Chief John Ross went to defend Cherokee rights before the U.S. Supreme Court after the state of Georgia passed legislation that John Ross claimed to "go directly to annihilate the Cherokees as a political society." Georgia retaliated, claiming that the Cherokee nation could not sue since they were not a foreign nation with a constitution, therefore the case should not be brought to court in the first place. This brought upon the Supreme court case Cherokee Nation v. Georgia in 1831. The conclusion of this case, decided upon by Judge John Marshall was that "the relationship of the tribes to the United States resembles that of a ‘ward to its guardian '." I disagree with this outcome.
Initially, the removal was intended for the purchase of the land of the willing tribes, but it turned into forcibly removing these people from their homes. The Cherokee tribe even took action against the government, taking the removal to the court systems. Cherokee tribe vs. Georgia, went all the way to the supreme court who ruled in favor of the Indians; however, the state of georgia ignored the court ruling and went forward with the removal. Another tribe, the seminoles, tried resisting through guerrilla warfare, but unfortunately failed. The removal lead to one of the most remembered events in American history, The Trail of Tears.
One being forced out of the only home they ever knew, only for the gain of their oppressors is extremely harsh. In 1830, president Andrew Jackson formulated a cruel plan to do this, announcing his goals to the nation. He believed that all natives were savages, and worth less than white men. Jackson’s speech on American Indian removal possesses several flaws, as he neglects the fact that the Indians were there first, fails to empathize with the native population as he plans to forcibly remove them, and is morally incorrect in his judgement of the Native Americans. Essentially, it is important to note that all white “civilized” people were immigrants into America, and the people who were truly here first were the American Indians.
This law only allowed the government to negotiate fairly for the exchange of this land but Jackson and the military forces consistently ignored this facet of the act and forced the natives out of their land. The next year the Choctaw were forced under threat of
Ranging from the south Alleghenies mountain range all the way down to the south of Georgia and far west of Alabama, lived the Cherokee Indians. They were a powerful detached tribe of the Iroquoian family and were commonly called Tsaragi which translates into "cave people." This tribe was very prominent in what is now called the U.S, but over time has been split up or run out of their land because of social or political encounters with the new settlers from Europe. Despite the dispersion or the split amongst this tribe, they still obtained their core religious beliefs, practices and ceremonies. Their detailed belief system, fundamental beliefs, significant meanings, and their connection to song and dance make up their religious system.
The Genocide: Trail of Tears/The Indian removal act During the 1830s the united states congress and president Andrew Jackson created and passed the “Indian removal act”. Which allowed Jackson to forcibly remove the Indians from their native lands in the southeastern states, such as Florida and Mississippi, and send them to specific “Indian reservations” across the Mississippi river, so the whites could take over their land. From 1830-1839 the five civilized tribes (The Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole, and Chickasaw) were forced, sometimes by gun point, to march about 1,000 miles to what is present day Oklahoma. While making this gruesome travel more than 4,000 Indians died from disease, starvation and treacherous conditions. This travel became known as the “trails of tears”.
The Indian Removal Act was signed in 1830 by President Andrew Jackson to remove the Cherokee Indians from their homes and force them to settle west of the Mississippi River. The act was passed in hopes to gain agrarian land that would replenish the cotton industry which had plummeted after the Panic of 1819. Andrew Jackson believed that effectively forcing the Cherokees to become more civilized and to christianize them would be beneficial to them. Therefore, he thought the journey westward was necessary. In late 1838, the Cherokees were removed from their homes and forced into a brutal journey westward in the bitter cold.