Native American Political Policies Essay

Numerous policies were made between the Indians and Whites; however, the majority of these policies were broken. The decision from Jackson Administrations to remove the Cherokee Indians to unknown land west of the Mississippi River during the 1830’s was no shock. The decision was an extensive continuation of previous social and economic treaties the Americans made with the Indian Cherokees, but there was a distinct change involving the political policies made between the two groups.
Many political policies were made, a few were continued while others were broken, the Cherokees were forced out by Jackson. The ‘Peace Policy’ was one of various policies that were changed along the way. The policy was supposed to be an attempt to ‘civilize’ …show more content…
Even though the Dawes Act was “giving the Indians what they already owned, their land, it also took land away from them”(236 The ‘Indian Question’). Several years passed before Thomas Morgan, the Indian affairs commissioner, “calculated that Indian land reductions for the year 1891 alone totaled 17,400,000 acres, or one-seventh of all Indian lands”(236 The ‘Indian Question’). In the government’s defense, they claimed, “they (the Indians) did not need it...and the sooner the tribal relations are broken up and the reservation system done away with, the better it will be for all concerned”(236 The ‘Indian Question’). New laws began to pop up as the “congress accelerated the transfer of lands from Indians to whites”(237 The ‘Indian Question’). Many random laws were passed that gave the government permission to take away Native land until the government welcomed the Lone Wolf decision. It allowed the government to ‘dispose’ of Indian land without their consent in order to make ‘homes for white farmers’. This shows a clear change in how the policy started off as a peaceful and balanced policy to a greedful and forceful laws in which ended with the Indians still being savages and below white