HIST101 I001 Fall 2022 week 4

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Apr 30, 2024

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HIST101 I001 Fall 2022 Week 4: Readings Discussion December 1, 2022 Ryan M Madden Why did President Jackson support Indian Removal? Did removal help to preserve or destroy Native American cultures? Explain your answer. Andrew Jackson had long been an advocate of what he called “Indian Removal”.1 There were many reasons Jackson supported moving the Indians west, further from the colonial people, but “t he primary argument in favor of Indian removal claimed that European Christian farmers could make more efficient use of the land than the Indian heathen hunters. This argument conveniently ignored the fact that Indians were efficient farmers and had been farming their land for many centuries.”2 The Indian Removal Act was passed by Congress, and signed by President Jackson, on May 28, 1830. In a subsequent speech about the passage of the Indian Removal Act, on December 6, 1830, President Jackson said “ It gives me pleasure to announce to Congress that the benevolent policy of the Government, steadily pursued for nearly thirty years, in relation to the removal of the Indians beyond the white settlements is approaching to a happy consummation."3 President Jackson went on to say that the removal of the Indians from their current lands would allow the states to progress and grow while allowing the Indian people to exist in their own way free from the power of the states. Following the passage of the Indian Removal Act, thousands of Indians were forcibly relocated west to lands set aside by the federal government for relocation. While President Jackson had stated this was in their best interest and would allow them to live free from the rule of the states in which they originally resided, this was far from the truth. “ The federal government promised that their new land would remain unmolested forever, but as the line of white settlement pushed westward, “Indian Country” shrank and shrank. In 1907, Oklahoma became a state and Indian Territory was considered lost.”4 Between the continuous loss of the land they lived on, and the push for conversion to Christianity, the culture of the American Indians began to disappear. This trend continued for many years, and there are historians today that still portray the American Indians as hunters and hinderances to the development of land, in an attempt to justify their removal.5 1 The Indian Removal Act | Native American Netroots . http://nativeamericannetroots.net/diary/1440 . Accessed 1 Dec. 2022. 2 https://www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/trail-of-tears. Accessed 1 Dec. 2022 . 3“President Andrew Jackson’s Message to Congress ‘On Indian Removal’ (1830).” National Archives , 25 June 2021, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/jacksons-message-to-congress-on-indian- removal . 4 Editors, History com. “Trail of Tears.” HISTORY , https://www.history.com/topics/native-american- history/trail-of-tears . Accessed 1 Dec. 2022.
5 The Indian Removal Act | Native American Netroots . http://nativeamericannetroots.net/diary/1440 . Accessed 1 Dec. 2022.
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