Ch. 10, Les. 2 - Guided Reading

LESSON 2 Conflicts Over Land

Chief John Ross helped form the Cherokee Nation into its own constitutional republic. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of that nation. Yet President Jackson upheld the state of Georgia’s right to force the Cherokee people to move. Ross responded in a letter to Congress:

“By the stipulations of this instrument, we are despoiled of our private possessions, the indefeasible property of individuals. We are stripped of every attribute of freedom and eligibility for legal self-defence. Our property may be plundered before our eyes; violence may be committed on our persons; even our lives may be taken away, and there is none to regard our complaints. We are denationalized; we are disfranchised. We are deprived of membership in the human family! We have neither land nor home, nor resting place that can be called our own. And this is effected by the provisions of a compact which assumes the venerated, the sacred appellation of treaty.

We are overwhelmed! Our hearts are sickened, our utterance is paralyzed, when we reflect on the condition in which we are placed, by the audacious practices of unprincipled men, who have managed their stratagems with so much dexterity as to impose on the Government of the United States, in the face of our earnest, solemn, and reiterated protestations.”

REMOVING NATIVE AMERICANS

As the nation expanded westward, many Native Americans still remained in the East. The Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw peoples lived in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida. These groups had created successful farming communities that were much like many other American communities. As a result, most Americans considered them “civilized” and referred to them as the “Five Civilized Tribes.”

Although Americans recognized the success of the Five Civilized Tribes, they did not respect their rights. In fact, some white people wanted the Native Americans’ lands for themselves. To make this possible, they wanted the federal government to force eastern Native Americans to relocate to lands west of the Mississippi River.

Andrew Jackson supported the white settlers’ demand for Native American land. He had once fought the Creek and Seminole in Georgia and Florida to give the settlers more land. When he became president in 1829, he stated that he wanted to move all Native Americans to the Great Plains. Many people believed this region to be a wasteland where American settlers would never want to live. These people thought that if all Native Americans moved there, conflict with them would be ended.

Where did the Seminole live?

Which Native American tribes were called the

“Five Civilized Tribes”?

Why were these Native Americans thought of

as “civilized”?

Why did the white settlers want Native Americans to be relocated?

THE CHEROKEE VERSUS GEORGIA

In 1830 President Jackson pushed the Indian Removal Act through Congress. This law allowed the federal government to pay Native Americans to move west. Jackson then sent officials to make treaties with the Native Americans in the Southeast. In 1834 Congress established the Indian Territory. Most of the region was located in what is now the state of Oklahoma. This area was to be the new home for the Native Americans of the Southeast.

Most eastern Native American peoples felt forced to sell their land and move west. Choctaw leader George Hawkins shared his feelings about the move:

“We were hedged in by two evils, and we chose that which we thought the least. Yet we could not recognize the right that the state of Mississippi had assumed, to legislate for us. Although the legislature of the state were qualified to make laws for their own citizens, that did not qualify them to become law makers to a people that were so dissimilar in manners and customs as the Choctaws are to the Mississippians. Admitting that they understood the people, could they remove that mountain of prejudice that has ever obstructed the streams of justice, and prevent their salutary influence from reaching my devoted countrymen. We as Choctaws rather chose to suffer and be free, than live under the degrading influence of laws, which our voice could not be heard in their formation.”

The Cherokee refused to move.

In treaties of the 1790s, the federal government had recognized the Cherokee as a separate nation. However, the state of Georgia, in which many Cherokee lived, refused to accept the Cherokee’s status. In 1830 Georgia made Cherokee land part of the state. It also began to enforce state laws in the Cherokee Nation.

As pressure for relocation mounted, the Cherokee appealed to the American people:

“We are aware, that some persons suppose it will be for our advantage to remove beyond the Mississippi… Our people have solemnly think otherwise. … We wish to remain on the land of our fathers.”

—Appeal of the Cherokee Nation, 1830

Still, Georgia pressured the Cherokee. In response, the Cherokee turned to the U.S. Supreme Court. In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the state of Georgia had no right to interfere with the Cherokee.

President Jackson, who supported Georgia’s efforts to remove the Cherokee, declared that he would ignore the Supreme Court’s ruling. “John Marshall has made his decision,” Jackson is said to have declared, “now let him enforce it.” No one was willing or able to challenge the president’s failure to enforce the Court’s ruling.

How did the Indian Removal Act of 1830 affect Native Americans in the Southeast?

What legal rights did the Cherokee have?

How did Jackson react to the Supreme Court’s

Worcester v. Georgia decision?

THE TRAIL OF TEARS

By 1835, the Cherokee were divided about what to do. That year the federal government convinced a small number of Cherokee—about 500 of them—to sign the Treaty of New Echota. In this treaty, the group agreed to give up all Cherokee land by 1838.

Cherokee Chief John Ross sent a protest to the U.S. Senate. Ross explained that the few Cherokee who signed the treaty did not speak for all the 17,000 Cherokee in the region. Many white Americans, including senators Daniel Webster and Henry Clay, also opposed the treaty as unfair. However, their pleas did not change the minds of President Jackson or the white settlers. In 1836 the Senate approved the treaty by a single vote.

When the treaty’s 1838 deadline arrived, only about 2,000 Cherokee had moved west. Jackson’s successor, President Martin Van Buren, ordered the army to move the rest of them. In May 1838, General Winfield Scott arrived in the Cherokee Nation with 7,000 troops to remove the remaining Cherokee by force. He told them that resistance and escape were hopeless.

“My troops already occupy many positions in the country that you are to abandon, and thousands and thousands are approaching from every quarter. . . . Obey them when they tell you that you can remain no longer in this country. . . . Chiefs, headmen and warriors—Will you then, by resistance, compel us to resort to arms?”

—General Winfield Scott, Proclamation, 1838

The Cherokee knew that fighting would lead to their destruction. Filled with sadness and anger, Cherokee leaders gave in.

Between June and December 1838, soldiers rounded up Cherokee in North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee. Under guard, the Cherokee began their march to Indian Territory in the West.

The forced relocation of some 15,000 Cherokee was a terrible ordeal. Most people were not prepared for the journey. Trouble started even before they set out. As the Cherokee crowded in camps and awaited the command to begin their march, illness broke out. As many as 2,000 Cherokee died. Once on the trail, they suffered from hunger and from exposure to the weather. These conditions led to the deaths of another 2,000 people.

When the relocation was over, about one quarter of the Cherokee population was dead. The Cherokee came to call their forced journey west the Trail Where They Cried. Historians call it the Trail of Tears.

Why was it a hardship for the Native Americans

to move?

Why was the journey of the Native Americans

called the Trail of Tears?

RESISTANCE AND REMOVAL

Many Native American peoples did not want to give up their lands. However, the Seminole in Florida were the only group to successfully resist removal. They faced pressure in the early 1830s to sign treaties giving up their land, but the Seminole leader Osceola (ah-see-OH-luh) and his followers refused to leave. They decided to fight instead. Osceola was born a Creek but lived among the Seminole of Florida. “I will make the white man red with blood, and then blacken him in the sun and rain,” Osceola vowed.

THE SEMINOLE WARS

In 1835 the U.S. Army arrived in Florida to force the removal of the Seminole. Instead, in December 1835, a group of Seminole attacked troops led by Major Francis Dade as they marched across central Florida. Only a few soldiers survived. The Dade Massacre prompted a call for additional troops to fight the Seminole.

Between 1835 and 1842, about 3,000 Seminole and African Americans known as Black Seminoles fought some 30,000 U.S. soldiers. The Black Seminoles had escaped from Georgia and South Carolina slaveholders. Some lived among the Seminole people. Others had built their own settlements. Like the Seminole, they did not want to move. One reason is that they feared the American soldiers would force them back into slavery. Together, the Seminole and Black Seminoles attacked white settlements along the Florida coast. They made surprise attacks and then retreated back into the forests and swamps.

The war cost the U.S. government over $20 million and the lives of more than 1,500 soldiers. Many Seminole also died. Others were captured and forced to move west. In 1842, with most of the surviving Seminole now in Indian Territory, the fighting stopped.

War broke out again in 1855 over what little land in Florida the Seminole had left. By 1858, the few remaining Seminole had escaped into the Everglades, where their descendants still live today.

LIFE IN THE WEST

By 1842, only a few scattered groups of Native Americans remained east of the Mississippi River. Most of them now lived in the West. They had given up more than 100 million acres of land. In return, they received about $68 million and 32 million acres west of the Mississippi. There they lived, organized by tribes, on reservations. Eventually, white settlement would extend into these areas as well.

The Five Civilized Tribes relocated in the eastern half of Indian Territory on lands already claimed by several Plains peoples, including the Osage, Comanche, and Kiowa. The U.S. Army built a number of forts in the area and promised to protect the Five Civilized Tribes and keep peace in the area. The Choctaw police force, known as the Lighthorsemen, also helped maintain order and public safety.

Settled in their new homes, the Five Civilized Tribes developed their own constitutions and governments. They built farms and schools. However, the disputes over removal that arose within each tribal group during the 1830s continued to divide the groups for years to come.

Why did the Seminole, led by Osceola, choose to fight instead of move west?

What happened during the Seminole Wars, and what were the results for the Seminole people?

What challenges and changes did Native Americans face after moving to reservations in the West?

After they were forced from their homelands, where did most of the Native American peoples of the Southeast United States go?

How did the U.S. government justify the forced relocation of Native Americans?

Why were the Cherokee forced to move in spite of the Supreme Court's ruling in Worcester v. Georgia?

How did the Seminole resist removal?