History concepts and applications

¶ … Andrew Jackson [...] how the exaltation of the common man, the sense of America as a redeemer nation destined for expansion across the North American continent, and white Americans' racial attitudes toward Native Americans east of the Mississippi River combined to produce a federal policy of Indian removal. Jackson was a popular president who helped perpetuate prejudice and racial inequality with his practices regarding the Native Americans. His Indian Removal Act of 1830 was one of the darkest legislations in American history, and it created lasting animosity between Native Americans and white settlers.

Many Americans viewed Andrew Jackson as a "common man" who had risen through the ranks in the Army, won fame during the epic Battle of New Orleans in 1815, and attained success as a merchant and farmer. One man said of him when he died, "Born a simple citizen, of poor but respectable parents, he became great by no other means than the energy of his own character, and being, as he seems to have been, the favourite of nature and Heaven! Had he been born to wealth and influence, he might probably have lived and died, an obscure and ordinary man!" (Ward 166). Because of this, Jackson was a popular president, who became even more popular as he helped expand the westward frontier by removing the local Native Americans, leaving more area open to settlement by white Americans.

During this time in America's history, Americans were used to feeling victorious, especially over European foes. They had beaten the British during the Revolutionary War and again during the War of 1812, they had purchased a vast amount of land from the French, and they were successfully now moving westward just as the country's boundaries were moving westward. They continually saw their victories as conquests over "savage tyranny and decadence" (Ward 40). Thus, they felt there were "the advancing frontier of civilization, the carriers of government, religion, and social order" (Ward 40). Therefore, the "savage" Native Americans were simply in the way of modern advancement and destiny, and they had little room in the American's quest for more and better lands. In addition, Jackson's idea of Indian removal was not new, even Jefferson had thought about removing the Indians, but Jackson's idea played on the American ideals of civilization and settlement. Jackson's removal of the Indians was seen as redeeming for the Indians, because it would not only open up more land for American settlement, it would remove the Indians from civilization, where they "did not fit in," anyway. In his farewell address to the nation as President, Jackson stated the Indians were, "the original dwellers in our land are now placed in a situation where we may well hope that they will share in the blessings of civilization and be saved from the degradation and destruction to which they were rapidly hastening while they remained in the States (Ward 41). Jackson's policy was straightforward, but it perpetuated attitudes of prejudice and racism against the Native Americans as it pushed them away from the encroaching Americans.

Americans were convinced their ideas for government and expansion were not only right; they were their "inalienable" right. The Native Americans who lived on the continent long before the Pilgrims ever set foot on the East Coast were now simply inconvenient and in the way of expansion and "civilized" growth. Because most Americans held the view that Indians were "savages" and the only good Indians were those that had been Christianized and "civilized," it did not occur to them that their ideas were racist and prejudiced. They simply felt they were right, and their many victories over oppressors indicated that God was smiling on America and her actions. The removal of the Indians was inevitable in a country that saw itself as a shining light for the world.

This idea of American superiority and right to expand became known as "Manifest Destiny," and it fueled the war in Texas with Mexico, and the removal of the Indians from east of the Mississippi River to locations further west and out of the way of expansion and growth. These tribes were continually pushed farther west as American farmers and frontiersmen moved farther west. Jackson's policy became the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which allowed the government to transplant any Native American tribe living east of the Mississippi River. Many people thought the relocation was voluntary, but that was not a provision of the Act. Most removals occurred under duress, and they continued long after Jackson's presidency, most notably in 1838 when the Cherokee removal became known as the "Trail of Tears," because so many Cherokees died on the long journey to their new home in Oklahoma. Other tribes lost many members as they were pushed westward, and they lost their culture because their living conditions were totally different than they had been in the East.