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Essential Liberties

Cherokee Women- Question Two

"It will separate the Indians from immediate contact with settlements of whites; enable them to pursue happiness in their own way and under their own rude institutions; will retard the progress of decay, which is lessening their numbers, and perhaps cause them gradually, under the protection of the government and through the influences of good counsels, to cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community." – Andrew Jackson

Throughout history, the Cherokee Nation changed culturally, economically, and in their ideologies. The one set back they may have had however was the Indian Removal Act. With this Act in 1830, 17,000 Cherokee’s were moved out of Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama. Almost 5,000 of them died while migrating to the west, and many of their belongings were looted from White- Americans. In this essay, I will examine what could have happened to the Cherokee Nation if they were not forcibly removed from the Indians Removal Act. However, it is insufficient to only examine what could have happened without showing what did happen, and also to show how the Cherokee’s nation was changing even before the Removal Act of 1830.
Early in the 19th century, while the rapidly growing United States expanded into the lower South, white settlers faced what they considered an obstacle. This area was home to the Choctaw, Cherokee and Seminole nations. These Indian nations, in the view of the settlers and many other white Americans, were standing in the way of progress. The settlers pressured the federal government to acquire Indian Territory, and in 1830, just a year after taking office, Jackson pushed a new piece of legislation called the "Indian Removal Act" through both houses of Congress. It gave the president power to negotiate removal treaties with Indian tribes living east of the Mississippi. Under these treaties, the Indians were to give up their lands east of the Mississippi...