Removed from home
October 9 is Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples Day.
Most Native American tribes rejected the idea of removal during the U.S. expansion westward, and they tried every strategy they could to avoid it. Some nations refused to leave, and some fought to keep their lands.
Removal from 1830–1862
The expansion of the U.S. settlement from the eastern Appalachian range to the west led to the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. It forced all eastern tribal nations to move to new homelands west of the Mississippi River.
Lawmakers were deeply divided over the Indian Removal Act. The U.S. Senate vote was 28 to 19 in favor. The vote in the House of Representatives was even closer, 102 to 97. President Andrew Jackson signed the measure into law May 28, 1830.
Legendary frontiersman and Tennessee Congressman Davy Crockett opposed the Indian Removal Act, declaring that his decision would “not make me ashamed in the Day of Judgment.”
The Indian Removal Act did not order the involuntary removal of any Native Americans, but the act allowed Jackson’s administration to freely persuade, bribe and threaten tribal leaders to sign removal treaties. The act granted Native Americans financial and material assistance to relocate to a new homeland and stated the tribes would live under U.S. protection.
The Five Tribes (Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Chickasaw and Choctaw) purchased new lands in present-day Oklahoma, but some relocated farther north. The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 led to renewed White settlement in these territories, and the immigrant nations located there were soon under pressure to move on. Texas forced out all remaining tribal nations in 1859. The Civil War ended the removals temporarily.
Mark Hirsh, a historian for the National Museum of the American Indian, had this to say about the Removal Act: “American Indians continued the fight to keep their lands. But from about 1830 to 1850, the U.S. government used treaties,…
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