Amerikan Hero Andrew Jackson

"All I ask in this creation
Is a pretty little wife and a big plantation
Way up yonder in the Cherokee Nation."

Long before the United States government was set up by the Constitution in 1787, individual states claimed lands west of their original borders. In 1802 the U.S. (federal) government established federal ownership of the lands west of the State of Georgia, by signing an agreement with Georgia: Georgia gave up her western lands to the U.S. in return for a U.S. promise to do away with Indian titles to lands within Georgia.

By the Treaty of Hopewell in 1785, which had defined the boundaries of their territory, the Cherokees had placed themselves under the protection of the U.S. They believed that the treaty gave them permanent ownership of their territory. However, many (white) citizens of Georgia believed the treaty meant that the Cherokees had the right to occupy the land, not to own it.
After the War of 1812, the trickle of white settlers into the South and Midwest became a flood. Indian tribes were steadily pushed back. Land-hungry settlers now surrounded and demanded Indian lands, and treaty after treaty with the tribes was renegotiated by the U.S. In 1803 Thomas Jefferson had first suggested voluntary removal of the Indian tribes from their native homelands in the east in exchange for lands further west.

marchand.ucdavis.edu/lessons/HS/CherokeeHS.htm

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The inherent conflict between tribal and state authority came to a head just as Jackson assumed office. The Cherokee nation had well-established boundaries and had adopted a constitutional form of government and the National Council had made it clear that it would not agree to further cessions of territory. Under its treaties with the federal government, the tribe claimed sovereign authority over its territory, which Georgia and adjoining states also claimed as within their borders. Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi countered by asserting state jurisdiction over Indian domains within their boundaries.
Jackson backed the states. He maintained that the federal government had no right to defend the Cherokees against Georgia's encroachments. If the Indians wished to maintain their tribal government and landownership, they must remove beyond the existing states.

To facilitate the removal, Jackson induced Congress in 1830 to pass a bill empowering him to lay off new Indian homelands west of the Mississippi, exchange them for current tribal holdings, purchase the Indians' capital improvements, and pay the costs of their westward transportation. This Indian Removal Act was the only major piece of legislation passed at Jackson's behest in his eight years as president.
Indian removal was so important to Jackson that he returned to Tennessee to conduct the first negotiations in person. He gave the Indians a simple alternative: submit to state authority or emigrate beyond the Mississippi. Under the threat of subjugation, the Chickasaws and Choctaws were the first to agree to sell their land and move across the Mississippi. The Creeks, under duress, negotiated a treaty that allowed heads of families to obtain individual holdings, but fraud and the refusal of the federal government soon resulted in trouble and in 1836, when a small number of Creeks took up arms, the government used the occasion to forcibly remove the Creeks from Alabama. The Cherokees resisted the efforts of the Jackson administration through the courts.

Tentatively in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia in 1831 and more forcefully in Worcester v. Georgia the next year, the Supreme Court upheld the tribes' independence from state authority. But these legal victories pointed out no practical course of resistance for the tribe to take. Tacitly encouraged by Jackson, Georgia ignored the rulings. Jackson cultivated a minority faction within the tribe, and signed a removal treaty with them in 1835. Though the vast majority of Cherokees rejected the treaty, those who refused to remove under its terms were finally rounded up and transplanted westward by military force in 1838, under Jackson's successor Martin Van Buren. The Cherokees' sufferings in this forced exodus became notorious as the "Trail of Tears."

Meanwhile, dozens of removal treaties closed out pockets of Indian settlement in other states and territories east of the Mississippi. A short military campaign on the upper Mississippi quelled resistance by Black Hawk's band of Sacs and Foxes in 1832, and in 1835 another long and bloody war to force the Seminoles out of Florida began. Most of the tribes went without force, although in many cases, conditions were so bad due to harrassment by whites that Indians actually had little choice but to emigrate.

Generally the treaties promised payment for the Indians' land and goods, safe transportation to the West and subsistence rations upon arrival, and protection for the property of those who chose to remain behind under state jurisdiction. These safeguards collapsed under pressure from corrupt contractors, unscrupulous traders, and white trespassers backed by state authority. Moreover, Jackson had little desire to assist Indians against his supporters in the South. Jackson's desire to economize and avoid trouble with the state governments further undercut federal efforts to protect the tribes. For this record he must bear ultimate responsibility. Jackson, ignored the abuses and thus, tacitly supported them. Though usually a stickler for the precise letter of formal obligations, he made promises to the Indians that his government did not and perhaps never intended to fulfill.

www.pbs.org/kcet/andrewjackson/edu/domesticpolicy.html

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eee.uci.edu/clients/tcthorne/Hist15/indremchron.html

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