Indian Removal Act
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The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was a law passed by the Twenty-first United States Congress in order to facilitate the relocation of Native American tribes living east of the Mississippi River in the United States to lands further west. The Removal Act, part of a U.S. government policy known as Indian Removal, was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830.[1]
The Removal Act was strongly supported in the South, where states were eager to gain access to lands inhabited by the "Five Civilized Tribes". In particular, Georgia, the largest state at that time, was involved in a contentious jurisdictional dispute with the Cherokee nation. President Jackson, who supported Indian removal primarily for reasons of national security,[citation needed] hoped removal would resolve the Georgia crisis. While Indian removal was, in theory, supposed to be voluntary, in practice great pressure was put on American Indian leaders to sign removal treaties. Most observers, whether they were in favor of the Indian removal policy or not, realized that the passage of the act meant the inevitable removal of most Indians from the states. Some American Indian leaders who had previously resisted removal now began to reconsider their positions, especially after Jackson's landslide reelection in 1832.
Most white Americans favored the passage of the Indian Removal Act, though there was significant opposition. Many Christian missionaries, most notably missionary organizer Jeremiah Evarts, agitated against passage of the Act. In Congress, U.S. Senator Theodore Frelinghuysen and Congressman David Crockett of Tennessee spoke out against the legislation. The Removal Act was passed after bitter debate in Congress.
The treaties enacted under the provisions of the Removal Act paved the way for the reluctant—and often forcible—emigration of tens of thousands of American Indians to the West. The first removal treaty signed after the Removal Act was the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek on September 27, 1830, in which Choctaws in Mississippi ceded land east of the river in exchange for payment and land in the West. The Treaty of New Echota (signed in 1835) resulted in the removal of the Cherokee on the Trail of Tears. For more details on the effects of the Removal Act, see Indian Removal.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ The U.S. Senate passed the bill on 24 April 1830 (28-19), the U.S. House passed it on 26 May 1830 (102-97); Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians, Volume I (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), p. 206.
[edit] External links
- Indian Removal Act and related resources, at the Library of Congress
| Trials: | Cherokee Nation v. Georgia • Colliflower v. Garland • Standing Bear v. Crook • Cobell v. Kempthorne • Talton v. Mayes |
| Acts: | Indian Civil Rights Act • Civilization Act • Pueblo Lands Act • Native American Technical Corrections Act • American Indian Religious Freedom Act • Burke Act • Dawes Act • Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act • Indian Child Welfare Act • Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 • Indian Gaming Regulatory Act • Indian Intercourse Act • Indian Removal Act • Indian Reorganization Act • Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act |
| Other: | Public Law 280 • National Indian Gaming Commission • Dawes Rolls • Eagle feather law |
Categories: Articles with unsourced statements since February 2007 | All articles with unsourced statements | 1830 in law | United States federal legislation | Indian snow Territory | Native American history | Native American law | Forced migration | Andrew Jackson | History of the United States (1789–1849) | History of Oklahoma | 19th-century colonization of the Americas
