Indian Removal Act

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 Native Americans of the
Southeast
• Andrew Jackson was President
• More than 100,000 Native Americans still lived
east of the Mississippi River
• Cherokees were one of the nations
– Adopted white customs
– Farming successful businesses, their own schools,
many converted to Christianity
– There own language written by a leader named
Sequoyah
– The established a government based on a written
constitution
 Conflict
• Whites wanted the fertile land that the Native
Americans had.
• During Jefferson’s Presidency he hoped the
Native Americans would move voluntarily
• Many Native Americans from the north signed
treaties and moved west of the Mississippi
after the War of 1812
• Native Americans of the Southeast would not
move
 Georgia
• 1828 Georgia passed a law and tried to force
Cherokees to move off their land.
• Two Supreme Court Cases
– Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831)
• The Court refused to stop Georgia from enforcing its law.
-Worcester v. Georgia(1832)
1. Chief Justice John Marshall declared that Georgia’s laws
“can have no force” within Cherokee territory. The
Cherokees had the right to keep their land.
2. The US had signed guaranteeing certain land to the Native
Americans. Under the Constitution treaties are the supreme law
of the land.
 Andrew Jackson
• The Native-American lands in the south
were desired by the Untied States citizens.
• President Jackson wanted to remove the
Native Americans for this land.
• Created the Indian Removal Act of 1830
• Even though the Supreme Court ruled that it
was unconstitutional to remove the
Cherokees from their land.
 Indian Removal Act
It gave the president power to negotiate removal treaties with
Indian tribes living east of the Mississippi.
• Under these treaties, the Indians were to give up their lands
east of the Mississippi in exchange for lands to the west.
• Those wishing to remain in the east would become citizens of
their home state.
• The removal was supposed to be voluntary and peaceful, and it
was that way for the tribes that agreed to the conditions.
• But the southeastern nations resisted, and Jackson forced
them to leave.
 Trail of Tears
• Believing they had no choice most Native American
leaders signed new treaties giving up their land.
• They agreed to move west to an area now know as
Oklahoma.
• American soldiers guard the Native Americans as they
move west.
• With the Cherokee they refused to go so 7,000 solders
came and forced them to leave in 1838.
• They were forced to march hundreds of miles.
• They had little food or shelter
• 4,000 out of 15,00 Cherokees died along the way.
 Social Impact
• White Americans gaining land
• Economic benefits from the land
 Political Impact

• President Jackson defied the Supreme

Court Ruling on the Indian Removal
Act(Cherokee)
 Cultural Impact
• New sense of confidence grew
• Examples of great strides on the
domestic front