POSITION PAPER: US westward expansion pre 1877 - Essay Example

The resistance that met the move West was confronted by violence and the forceful movement of the Natives off of the territory they had inhabited for generations. In 1809 the Indian tribes in the Ohio valley surrendered 3 million acres in exchange for $7,000 through the agreement reached by the Fort Wayne Treaty. The Shawnee, the major inhabitant of these lands, distrusted the United States and failed to agree to the signing of the treaty that was reached with Governor William Henry Harrison, which would lead to the bloody Tecumseh War.

Tecumseh, the Shawnee tribe, and Natives across the country conducted themselves ethically in the face of bad faith agreements and the immoral use of violence used by William Henry Harrison, military militias, and the US government. Supporters of the Westward expansion by the Europeans in America prior to 1877 have relied on treaties that the Indians agreed to and maintain that the movement was done in accordance with traditional conventions and accepted rules of conflict. The zealous need to reach agreements with the Indians and motivate them to cede their land was driven by the policy of Manifest Destiny, which had laid a de facto European claim to America and the tribal lands.

Rejai contends that the White mans understanding of Manifest Destiny, a mission of God, made wars unavoidable and necessary and "conflict and war may be justified in the name of a higher goal: the realization of Manifest Destiny" (37). It has also been argued that the brutality that the American forces dealt to the Indians in an attempt to uproot them was met part and parcel by their Indian counterparts, and in many cases the settlers were acting in self-defense (Grenier 210). The argument in support of the Westward expansion relies on the acceptability of the belief that the ends justify the means.

However, this argument had been deemed as illegitimate by religious traditions at the time that stated good should