Religion of Indians in 1830s America - Essay Example

Many Indians died while being forced to relocate, a sanitized way to refer to the ethnic cleansing of tribes that were formerly located in the area east of the Mississippi River.  The Indian Removal Act of 1830 mandated the relocation of many tribes, predominantly the Cherokee Nation which allowed for a ‘whites only’ America in what constituted the majority of what was the U.S. at that time.  

The Indian Removal Act was a priority of the President Andrew Jackson administration but was passed only following a contentious four-month congressional debate.  The Act gave Jackson the authority to negotiate treaties with eastern Indians who wished to retain their sovereignty and relocate west of the Mississippi.  However, the Act also allowed those Indians wanting to stay in their homeland in the east full U.S. citizenship rights.  At that time, most Americans could not conceive the country ever-extending west of the Mississippi.  According to the Act, relocation was meant to be on a voluntary basis, no individual or tribe was to be forced from their home.  The Indian Nations in the southeast did not want to be citizens or leave consequently Jackson used military force against these tribes.  Much of the general public assumed that removing Indians was beneficial to them.  “Removal would save Indian people from the depredations of whites and would resettle them in an area where they could govern themselves in peace” (“Indian Removal”, 2007).  However, some believed the removal policy was just another excuse for Jackson to exercise his long-standing sadistic and inhumane treatment of the native people and vocally objected against this policy.

Among those opposed to the Removal Act was Daniel Webster of dictionary fame, many ministers, and Davy Crockett whose passionate opposition to this government policy and his support of the Cherokee Nation cost him his Congressional seat.  According to Crockett in response to his position, “I would rather be honestly damned than hypocritically immortalized” (Abbott, 2003).  The Cherokee Nation brought a case before the Supreme Court in 1832 (Worcester v. Georgia) which ruled that the Cherokee was a sovereign nation and could not legally be forced to relocate.  Jackson defied this ruling saying that “Well, (Chief Justice) John Marshall has made his decision.  Now let him enforce it” (“Effective Resignation”, 1956).  The State of Georgia also chose to ignore the Court’s ruling.  The Cherokees fought removal through the legal system but the President, who is constitutionally bound to enforce the rule of law, instead defied it and in 1938 sent General Winfield Scott to occupy Cherokee lands and begin the forced evacuation to the west.  This illegal, immoral act initiated what became known as the Trail of Tears, a ‘death march’ which has been accurately described as “one of the saddest and most disturbing events in America’s so-called manifest destiny” (Berry, 2007).

The U.S. was formed on the basis of noble concepts of freedom and justice but this extended to white males only.  The former occupants of the country lived off the land they revered, a land now polluted and thought of only as a commodity to be bought and sold, have been allocated reservations in the most impoverished areas of the nation