hear
from the
historian:

Dr. Mark Hirsh National Museum of the
American Indian

American Indian Removal

President Thomas Jefferson was one of the first advocates for Indian removal. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 gave the United States the opportunity to explore and buy vast lands west of the Mississippi River from American Indian Nations that owned them. President Jefferson then hoped to persuade the eastern Indian Nations to sign treaties and exchange their lands for territory west of the Mississippi.

Land-hungry Americans saw economic opportunity in American Indian lands, and the pressure to remove Indians grew. Americans tried to justify their actions by saying that Indians were uncivilized people who made little use of their vast tribal lands. They believed that the United States somehow had a "manifest destiny" to occupy the entire continent from coast to coast. Most American Indian Nations flatly rejected the idea of removal, and they tried every strategy they could imagine to avoid it.

Indians were not alone in opposing removal. The country was deeply divided about the idea. Thousands of citizens signed petitions against it. Newspaper articles depicted removal as a threat to the American value of justice. Some lawmakers denounced removal as an immoral violation of the government's previous treaty promises to Indian Nations. Even Chief Justice John Marshall wrote an opinion in an 1832 legal case, Worcester v. Georgia, finding that the state of Georgia had violated the Cherokee Nation's rights to self-government.

Eventually, the pro-removal forces won, and in 1830 Congress passed the Indian Removal Act by a slim margin. The legislation granted the president authority to negotiate Indian removal treaties, and American Indian removal was now an official U.S. policy.

American Indians continued the fight to keep their lands. But from about 1830 to 1850, the U.S. government used treaties, fraud, intimidation, and violence to remove about 100,000 American Indians west of the Mississippi. Thousands of Native men, women, and children died on the difficult trek to a strange new land that became known as Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma).

The tragedy and darkness of American Indian removal should not hide the remarkable story that followed. After resettling in Indian Territory, Native Peoples rebuilt their lives and cultures, and continued their struggle for self-government under their own laws on their new lands in the West.

But that is another story. For now, we hope this lesson shines a spotlight on the ways Native Peoples faced the crisis of removal. Their thoughts and actions reveal much about human strength in the face of adversity—a universal issue that is as relevant today as it was in the 1800s.