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Manifest Destiny and Indian Removal
A convergence of several social, economic, and political factors helped urge the speed of westward expansion in the nineteenth century. Mass immigration from Europe had swelled the East Coast of the United States to record population numbers, pushing settlement westward. Expansion really boomed with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, driving both the population and economy to the west. As the boundaries of America grew, white settlers and proponents of expansion began to voice concerns over what they considered an obstacle to settlement and America’s economic and social development – the American Indian tribes living on lands east of the Mississippi River which bordered white settlement. The land was home to many tribal nations including the Cherokee, Creek and Seminole in the south and the Choctaw and Chickasaw in the west. That land held the promise of economic prosperity to raise cattle, wheat, and cotton, and harvest timber and minerals. Eager to take possession of the land, the settlers began to pressure the federal government to acquire the lands from the Indian tribes. To these white settlers, the Indian tribes were standing in the way of progress and of America’s manifest destiny.
The self-serving concept of manifest destiny, the belief that the expansion of the United States was divinely ordained, justifiable, and inevitable, was used to rationalize the removal of American Indians from their native homelands. In the minds of white Americans, the Indians were not using the land to its full potential as they reserved large tracts of unspoiled land for hunting, leaving the land uncultivated. If it was not being cultivated, then the land was being wasted. Americans declared that it was their duty, their manifest destiny, which compelled them to seize, settle, and cultivate the land. Not surprisingly, the most active supporters of manifest destiny and proponents of Indian removal were those who practiced land speculation. Land speculators bought large tracts of land with the expectation that the land would quickly increase in value as more people settled in the west and demand for that western land increased. As the western land was admitted into the Union, it would consequently increase in value.
The Speculator , 1852, Francis William Edmonds
The Origins of Indian Removal
Though it came to fruition under Andrew Jackson ’s administration in the nineteenth-century, the idea of Indian removal has its origins rooted earlier in the eighteenth-century. A form of Indian removal was first proposed by one of our Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson. Unlike African Americans, Jefferson believed that Indians were the equals of whites, “in body and mind.” Yet Jefferson found them culturally inferior due to their lifestyle and traditions. He believed that their semi- nomadic lifestyle, communal agricultural practices, and hunting traditions did not use the land efficiently. It was assumed that if the Indians adopted a European-style of agriculture and settled in European-style towns and villages only then would they progress from their natural “savage” state to “civilization.”
Jefferson’s beliefs on civilization were formed from the Enlightenment idea of environmentalism , which dictated that a human’s environment is shaped by their culture. But Jefferson’s intentions were not as socially motivated as they were economic – if Indians abandoned their hunting grounds that then freed up land for white settlement. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 provided a neat solution for Jefferson, one in which Indians would not have to choose between assimilation and extermination. The government could relocate Indians further westward, delaying the inevitable acculturation , while opening up the vacated lands to white settlement.
Later, President James Monroe expanded on Jefferson’s ideas and beliefs on Indian removal in an 1825 address to Congress. He abandoned the idea that the Indians could be assimilated into white culture, and he argued that, therefore, it would be to the benefit of the tribes to be removed from their lands for their well-being:
The removal of the tribes from the territory which they now inhabit... would not only shield them from impending ruin, but promote their welfare and happiness. Experience has clearly demonstrated that in their present state it is impossible to incorporate them in such masses, in any form whatever, into our system. It has also been demonstrated with equal certainty that without a timely anticipation of an provision against the dangers to which they are exposed, under causes which it will be difficult, if not impossible to control, their degradation and extermination will be inevitable.
Thomas Jefferson , 1805/1821, Gilbert Stuart, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Government and through the influence of good counsels, to cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community.
What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization and religion?... How many thousands of our own people would gladly embrace the opportunity of removing to the West on such conditions! If the offers made to the Indian were extended to them, they would be hailed with gratitude and joy.
The conditions and offers, as Jackson proposed them, were as follows: each tribe would receive a territory exceeding the size that they had relinquished to the U.S government. They would be moved to that new territory at the expense of the U.S., and provided supplies such as clothing, arms, and ammunition. They would continue to be provided these supplies for a period of one year after their arrival to their new homeland. Arrangements would be made for the support of schools and for the maintenance of the poor. As Jackson wrote, “Such are the arrangements for the physical comfort and for the moral improvement of the Indians.”
As the years went by and resistance and opposition to removal from certain nations, especially the Seminoles, became increasingly apparent, Jackson’s tone on Indian removal became less hospitable and less conciliatory. In 1835, he wrote “All preceding experiments for the improvement of the Indians have failed. It seems now to be an established fact that they can not live in contact with a civilized community and prosper.”
The Trail of Tears
However, removal was not met with gratitude or joy by the majority of American Indians forced to leave their homelands. American Indian participation in removal was meant to be voluntary, and the act required the U.S. government to negotiate fairly with the tribes, but this was not often the result. Many tribes were forcibly removed from their lands, in particular the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, and Seminole. This series of forced migrations became known as the Trail of Tears.
Not all were in favor of removal. The most vocal and prominent among those opposed was Tennessee congressman and American frontiersman of lore Davy Crockett. In 1834 Crockett stated his opposition, that if the next president, Martin Van Buren , continued Jackson’s Indian policies, Crockett would move to “the wildes of Texas.”
I have almost given up the Ship as lost. I have gone So far as to declare that if he martin vanburen is elected that I will leave the united States for I never will live under his kingdom. before I will Submit to his Government I will go to the wildes of Texas. I will consider that government a Paridice [sic] to what this will be. In fact at this time our Republican Government has dwindled almost into insignificancy our [boasted] land of liberty have almost Bowed to the yoke of Bondage. Our happy days of Republican principles are near at an end when a few is to transfer the many.
In 1831 the Choctaw nation became the first tribe to be forcibly ousted from their lands in Mississippi. After a treaty was signed and agreed upon, approximately 17,000 Choctaw made the move, while 5,000 elected to stay. The Seminoles, located in modern-day Florida, put up a military resistance to removal but after two wars, they were removed in 1832. The Creek removal followed in 1834, the Chickasaw in 1837, and finally the Cherokee in
In almost every case, the Indians were not provided with the adequate supplies they were promised, and as a result many perished on the forced migration due to disease and starvation. Of the 15,000 Creek who marched to their new home in Oklahoma, only 3,500 survived the journey. Similarly, of the 16,000 Cherokee who were forced to move from several south-eastern states to present-day Oklahoma, 4,000 died due to disease, starvation, and adverse weather conditions. In all, tens of thousands of American Indians, some estimates are close to 100,000, lost their lives and their homelands in the series of forced migrations which lasted through the 1840s.
Glossary
acculturation : the cultural modification of an individual, group, or people by adapting to or borrowing traits from another culture.
Map showing the Cherokee Trail of Tears and other forced relocation marches. Courtesy of the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health.
Louisiana Purchase : (1803) purchased from France during President Thomas Jefferson’s administration, the region of the United States encompassing land between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains.
manifest destiny : the nineteenth-century doctrine or belief that the expansion of the U.S. throughout the American continents was both justified and inevitable.
Martin Van Buren : (1782-1862) 8 th^ President of the United States. He served as Vice President to Andrew Jackson, who he succeeded in the presidency, and for a time was Secretary of State under Jackson. Van Buren was the first president born a U.S. citizen.
Thomas Jefferson : (1743-1826) 3rd President of the United States, Founding Father, author of the Declaration of Independence, and American lawyer. Jefferson oversaw the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France and arranged for the exploration of that territory by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.
Trail of Tears : a series of forced relocations of several Indian nations by the U.S. government in the 1830s and 1840s, following the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The tribes forcibly removed during this time were the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, and Seminole. The phrase “Trail of Tears” originated from an 1838 description of the Choctaw nation removal, in which one Choctaw chief told a newspaper that the forced migration was a “trail of tears and death.”
