Removal of the Cherokee

Removal of the Cherokee

The book, The Cherokee Removal, is about savagery and civilization. The Cherokee made poor use of their homelands. White Americans had a higher use for the region, bringing progress to the area. Although it was regrettable that the Cherokee had to give up their land, the primitive Indian was destined to the more civilized society. The migration of the Cherokee across the Mississippi was really in their best interests and had, in the words of President Van Buren, 'the happiest effect.'"

The forcible expulsion of an ethnic and cultural group from its homeland sounds like a modern-day conflict in a developing nation, perhaps one of the former Soviet republics, or a dispute in the Middle East. But this very event occurred in the United States not much longer than a century ago, when the Cherokee were purposely displaced within the borders of America. The above quote advocates that, despite the initial reluctance of the Cherokee to leave their homelands in the southeast U.S. And the coercive methods used to make them do so, that the end result was the most beneficial overall to all groups involved.

I will argue that this quote is decidedly untrue, based on several factors. First, I will examine the differences between late 19th century United States worldviews and those of the Cherokee; a grasp of the difference between these ideals is essential to understanding the differences in each group's priorities.

I will examine a few of the specific factors which the quote depends on, like the attitude of President Andrew Jackson, the potential uses of the Cherokee homelands, and objections raised by white defenders of the Indians. Finally, I will explore how these ideals affected the reality of each group-how one's notion of justice, for example, influenced one's actions. In discussing these subjects, I will demonstrate that President Van Buren's "happiest effect" was most definitely not what was achieved by the forcible removal of the Cherokees.

First, to understand the conflict more thoroughly, one must understand the worldviews of each group-their ideas about what progress was, how communities should be governed, and of concepts like justice, morality, and democracy. The United States considered itself a democracy with principles of equality-tolerance for all religions, and representation by elected citizens. The worldview of the United States, however, was very dependent of the ideal of the individual being sovereign over his own destiny; the "Protestant ethic" of hard work equaling happiness was prevalent. The Cherokees, by contrast, were a very communal people-holding their land as a group instead of with individual deeds, and by association, valuing the achievements of the community over those of an individual. These differing ideas about what constituted success-individual or community?-were an insurmountable obstacle to true cooperation and understanding of one another by the Cherokee and the United States.

These different concepts of success and, in turn, of progress stood at the heart of the Cherokee-U.S. debate. The Cherokee had long had a "traditional government...[with] no positive laws, but only long established habits and customs," which directly conflicted with the U.S. ideal of a structured system of law, order and governance as defined in the Constitution. The United States did not believe that a group of communally governed individuals like the Cherokee could benefit the nation economically-what would they contribute to the industrialization and "progress" of the U.S. Industrialization was rapidly taking place throughout the East; the U.S. did not see the Cherokee nation as contributing to this industrialization and, therefore, did not see them as contributing to American progress at all. The American ideal of manifest destiny-that the geographic boundaries of the nation would stretch from the eastern Atlantic to the Pacific in the west-also contributed to this pressure for the Indians to either change their culture of be removed. If a group was not going to become acculturated to the American way of life as defined by industrialization, expansion, individuality and civilization, then they did not deserve to inhabit American soil.

These differences in attitude are highly evident in the behavior of President Andrew Jackson; Jackson's actions toward the Cherokee nation blatantly demonstrate this pressure to conform to the American dream concept of life. This pressure became magnified exponentially when gold was discovered in Cherokee territory in Georgia in 1829. The desire of white settlers to mine for gold outweighed the desire for peace with the Cherokees and respect for their territory and sovereignty, and thousands of white prospectors took the gold-rich areas from the Cherokee by force. The Trail of Tears, a U.S. Army-guided forcible removal of the native Americans from the southeast to west of the Mississippi, began in 1838, and thousands of Cherokee were displaced; thousands died along the way.

The realities of these actions was a much different thing than the ideals of the United States. A nation that was built with tolerance and freedom as its precepts was not only forcibly expelling inhabitants from land they had settled, but was attempting to fundamentally change the culture of the Cherokee nation. Instead of protecting a vulnerable minority, as the original settlers of the U.S. had been in England, the government exploited the minority of Cherokee, taking their land, mining its gold, and removing the Cherokee culture from their landscape. This behavior was and is incompatible with the U.S. ideals of morality and justice; the manner in which the Cherokee were treated goes against the grain of United States values such as democracy, equality, and fair treatment.

White defenders of the Cherokee were vocal in their objections to these unjust acts which were counter to the values of the United States. One Senator decried the land-grabs, asking facetiously, "do the obligations of justice change with the color of the skin?" Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that the maltreatment of the Indian nations would cause "the name of this nation, hitherto the sweet omen of religion and liberty, [to] stink to the world." In a nation that claimed to value toleration and justice, the answer should have been an unequivocal no. But the push for industrialization, gold prospecting and "progress," as defined by the United States, rendered these concepts of justice and equality meaningless, even trite.

The Cherokee nation appealed to what the United States had heralded as its commitment to justice and morality; in an address regarding the Trail of Tears' forcible expulsion, Cherokee leaders entreated:

Do unto others as ye would that others do unto you. We pray them to remember that, for the sake of principle, their forefathers were compelled to leave...and that the winds of persecution wafted them over the great waters and landed them on the shores of the new world, when the Indian was the sole lord and proprietor of these extensive domains. Let them remember in what way they were received

Had the American government and citizens, prominently Andrew Jackson but all the way down to the individual gold prospectors who encouraged the forcible removal of the Cherokee from Georgia, abided by the precepts by which the United States was founded, perhaps a more fair and hospitable compromise could have been reached.