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President Jackson

President Jackson and the Removal of the Cherokee Indians

"The decision of the Jackson administration to remove the Cherokee
Indians to lands west of the Mississippi River in the 1830's was more a
reformulation of the national policy that had been in effect since the
1790's than a change in that policy." The dictum above is firm and can be
easily proved by examining the administration of Jackson and comparison to
the traditional course which was carried out for about 40 years. After 1825
the federal government attempted to remove all eastern Indians to the Great
Plains area of the Far West. The Cherokee Indians of northwestern Georgia,
to protect themselves from removal, made up a constitution which said that
the Cherokee Indians were sovereign and not subject to the laws of Georgia.
When the Cherokee sought help from the Congress that body only allotted
lands in the West and urged them to move. The Supreme Court, however, in
Worcester vs. Georgia, ruled that they constituted a "domestic dependent
nation" not subject to the laws of Georgia. Jackson, who sympathized with
the frontiersman, was so outraged that he refused to enforce the decision.
Instead he persuaded the tribe to give up it's Georgia lands for a
reservation west of the Mississippi.

According to Document A, the map shows eloquently, the relationship
between time and policies which effected the Indians. From the Colonial and
Confederation treaties, a significant amount of land had been acquired from
the Cherokee Indians. Successively, during Washington's, Monroe's, and
Jefferson's administration, more and more Indian land was being
commandeered. The administrations during the 1790's to the 1830's had
gradually acquired more and more land from the Cherokee Indians. Jackson
followed that precedent by the acquisition of more Cherokee lands.

According to Document B, "the first of which is by raising an army,
and [destroying the resisting] tribes entirely or...