Trail Of Tears Thesis

The Trail of Tears In the beginning years of 1830s, close to 130,000 Native Americans occupied a couple million acres of land across the southern states. Their ancestors had cultivated this land for generations. By the end of the 1830s, Native Americans were forced by the government, to uproot their lives and transfer to a specific area set aside as “Indian territory”, now known as Oklahoma. White settlers has stumbled upon the Indians’ land and wanted to grow cotton on their plantations, forcing the Native Americans out, where they had to walk thousands of miles to their new “homes”, across the Mississippi River. Their journey became known as the Trail of Tears. White Americans were apprehensive of the Native Americans …show more content…
Just life the white American farmers, he believed that land was rightfully theirs. “As an Army general, he had spent years leading brutal campaigns against the Creeks in Georgia and Alabama and the Seminoles in Florida–campaigns that resulted in the transfer of hundreds of thousands of acres of land from Indian nations to white farmers” (History.com). As the president of the United States, Andrew Jackson signed the “Indian Removal Act” in 1830. This allowed the government to move the Indians occupying land, in what they called the cotton kingdom, west to the land the United States gained from the Louisiana Purchase. (Present day Oklahoma.) In the terms of the Indian Removal Act, the government was supposed to negotiate with the Native Americans without forcefully making them leave their land. President Andrew Jackson and his government conveniently ignored the proposition of the Indian Removal Act, and continued to force the Native Americans off their land that they had occupied for many, many years. In the end of 1831, the Choctaw community was the first Indian Tribe to be expelled from their own land or face consequences from the U.S. Army. “They made the journey to Indian territory on foot (some “bound in chains and marched double file,” one historian writes) and without any food, supplies or other help from the government. Thousands of people died along …show more content…
Many Cherokee people felt that it was necessary for them to stay and fight for what was rightfully theirs. Others believed it was save many lives if they just did as they were told, and give up their land. “In 1835, a few self-appointed representatives of the Cherokee nation negotiated the Treaty of New Echota, which traded all Cherokee land east of the Mississippi for $5 million, relocation assistance and compensation for lost property. To the federal government, the treaty was a done deal, but many of the Cherokee felt betrayed: After all, the negotiators did not represent the tribal government or anyone else” (History.com). Chief John Ross wrote a letter to the United State Senate protesting the new formed treaty. Though sixteen thousand people signed his treaty, Congress approved it