Choctaw and Cherokee Removal: Race and Rights in 19th-Century America
This paper examines the Indian Removal era in 19th-century American history through three lenses. First, it describes the traditional ways of life of the Choctaw and Cherokee peoples, the pressures they faced from U.S. expansion, and whether they might have prospered had removal not occurred. Second, it surveys the racial laws affecting Black Americans, Native Americans, and immigrant groups after the Civil War, comparing how discrimination operated differently across groups. Third, it presents two opposing editorials—one arguing for and one against Cherokee removal—drawing on constitutional principles, treaty obligations, and government policy to support each position.
- The Choctaw and Cherokee Before Removal: Traditional life and territorial pressures before 1830
- Westward Expansion and the Erosion of Indian Territory: Railroads, buffalo loss, and treaty violations erode Indian lands
- Racial Laws in 19th-Century America: Post-Civil War laws and Black Americans' suppressed rights
- Discrimination Across Groups: Black Americans, Indians, and Immigrants: Comparative discrimination against multiple ethnic groups
- Editorial in Favor of Indian Removal: Period argument invoking national progress and Manifest Destiny
- Editorial Against Indian Removal: Constitutional and treaty-based argument against removal
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What makes this paper effective
- The dual-editorial format in the final section is particularly strong: both arguments use period-appropriate reasoning—one invoking Manifest Destiny logic, the other invoking constitutional and treaty obligations—giving each editorial internal consistency and rhetorical authenticity.
- The paper draws a clear causal chain from the Indian Removal Act through railroad expansion, buffalo eradication, and treaty violations, showing how multiple forces compounded to undermine Native sovereignty even independently of direct military force.
- The comparative treatment of racial discrimination across Black Americans, Native Americans, and immigrant groups demonstrates breadth, showing how systemic exclusion operated through different legal mechanisms depending on the group targeted.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper uses counterfactual analysis effectively in the first section, asking whether the Choctaw and Cherokee would have prospered without removal. Rather than simply asserting an answer, it walks through the environmental and technological changes that would have reshaped Indian life regardless—a methodologically careful approach to a speculative historical question.
Structure breakdown
The paper is organized into three distinct parts corresponding to three prompts: (1) tribal life and the consequences of removal, (2) a comparative survey of 19th-century racial laws, and (3) two contrasting editorials on Cherokee removal. Each section builds on the historical context established before it, and the editorials serve as an applied synthesis of the legal and ethical arguments developed in the earlier sections.
The Choctaw and Cherokee Before Removal
Before the Indian Removal era, indigenous American Indian tribes lived on vast, wide-ranging territories, with most tribes respecting one another's boundaries. There were exceptions, such as the longstanding antagonism and outright violent conflict between the Pawnee and the Sioux (Takaki, 2008). Before the Indian Removal Act of 1830 was implemented, both the Choctaw and the Cherokee had traditionally relied on the natural resources of their respective territories. When U.S. authorities began pressuring Indian tribes to relinquish their ancestral lands east of the Mississippi, some tribes cooperated—though reluctantly—more than others. The Sioux, for example, engaged in fierce armed resistance throughout much of the remainder of the 19th century before being vanquished by superior firepower, numbers, and the technology of war refined since the Civil War era (Takaki, 2008).
Meanwhile, the Choctaw and Cherokee recognized the apparent futility of armed resistance against U.S. military force and negotiated treaties that compensated them in cash and in territorial rights to lands west of the Mississippi—lands not yet called the Great Plains, known instead simply as "Indian Country" (Takaki, 2008). Nevertheless, some Cherokee and Choctaw were eventually evicted by force, though the Cherokee Nation had managed to secure legal victories from the U.S. Supreme Court concerning white settlers who had illegally occupied Indian land. As a condition of resettlement, the Cherokee Nation received five million dollars, plus an additional third of a million dollars for land improvement expenses, and large tracts of land that U.S. authorities never imagined would prove useful to the American nation (Takaki, 2008).
References
The Authentic History Center. (2010). Noble and ignoble: The development of two savage stereotypes: 1665–1860. Retrieved October 1, 2010, from http://www.authentichistory.com/diversity/native/caricatures/
Gjerde, J. (Ed.). (1998). Major problems in American and ethnic history: Documents and essays. Houghton Mifflin Company.
Takaki, R. (2008). A different mirror: A history of multicultural America (Rev. ed.). Little, Brown and Company.
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