Jackson's Second Annual Speech Before Congress, 1830

Andrew Jackson explains the Indian Removal Policy

It gives me pleasure to announce to Congress that the
benevolent policy of the government, steadily pursued for nearly
thirty years, in relation to the removal of the Indians beyond the
white settlements is approaching to a happy consummation. Two
important tribes have accepted the provision made for their
removal at the last session of Congress, and it is believed that
their example will induce the remaining tribes also to seek the
same obvious advantages.

The consequences of a speedy removal will be important to the
United States, to individual states, and to the Indians themselves.
The pecuniary advantages which it promises to the government
are the least of its recommendations. It puts an end to all
possible danger of collision between the authorities of the
general and state governments on account of the Indians. It will
place a dense and civilized population in large tracts of country
now occupied by a few savage hunters. By opening the whole
territory between Tennessee on the north and Louisiana on the
south to the settlement of the whites it will incalculably strengthen
the southwestern frontier and render the adjacent states strong
enough to repel future invasions without remote aid. It will relieve
the whole state of Mississippi and the western part of Alabama of
Indian occupancy, and enable those states to advance rapidly in
population, wealth, and power.

It will separate the Indians from immediate contact with
settlements of whites; free them from the power of the states;
enable them to pursue happiness in their own way and under
their own rude institutions; will retard the progress of decay,
which is lessening their numbers, and perhaps cause them
gradually, under the protection of the government and through the
influence of good counsels, to cast off their savage habits and
become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community. These
consequences, some of them so certain and the rest so
probable, make the complete execution of the plan sanctioned by
Congress at their last session an object of much solicitude.

Toward the aborigines of the country no one can indulge a more
friendly feeling than myself, or would go further in attempting to
reclaim them from their wandering habits and make them a
happy, prosperous people. I have endeavored to impress upon
them my own solemn convictions of the duties and powers of the
general government in relation to the state authorities. For the
justice of the laws passed by the states within the scope of their
reserved powers they are not responsible to this government. As
individuals we may entertain and express our opinions of their
acts, but as a government we have as little right to control them
as we have to prescribe laws for other nations.

With a full understanding of the subject, the Choctaw and the
Chickasaw tribes have with great unanimity determined to avail
themselves of the liberal offers presented by the act of Congress,
and have agreed to remove beyond the Mississippi River.
Treaties have been made with them, which in due season will be
submitted for consideration. In negotiating these treaties, they
were made to understand their true condition, and they have
preferred maintaining their independence in the Western forests
to submitting to the laws of the states in which they now reside.
These treaties, being probably the last which will ever be made
with them, are characterized by great liberality on the part of the
government. They give the Indians a liberal sum in consideration
of their removal, and comfortable subsistence on their arrival at
their new homes. If it be their real interest to maintain a separate
existence, they will there be at liberty to do so without the
inconveniences and vexations to which they would unavoidably
have been subject in Alabama and Mississippi.

Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this
country, and philanthropy has been long busily employed in
devising means to avert it, but its progress has never for a
moment been arrested, and one by one have many powerful
tribes disappeared from the earth. To follow to the tomb the last
of his race and to tread on the graves of extinct nations excite
melancholy reflections. But true philanthropy reconciles the mind
to these vicissitudes as it does to the extinction of one generation
to make room for another. In the monuments and fortresses of an
unknown people, spread over the extensive regions of the West,
we behold the memorials of a once powerful race, which was
exterminated or has disappeared to make room for the existing
savage tribes. Nor is there anything in this which, upon a
comprehensive view of the general interests of the human race,
is to be regretted. Philanthropy could not wish to see this
continent restored to the condition in which it was found by our
forefathers. What good man would prefer a country covered with
forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive
republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms,
embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or
industry execute, occupied by more than 12 million happy people,
and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and religion?

The present policy of the government is but a continuation of the
same progressive change by a milder process. The tribes which
occupied the countries now constituting the Eastern states were
annihilated or have melted away to make room for the whites.
The waves of population and civilization are rolling to the
westward, and we now propose to acquire the countries
occupied by the red men of the South and West by a fair
exchange, and, at the expense of the United States, to send them
to a land where their existence may be prolonged and perhaps
made perpetual.

Doubtless it will be painful to leave the graves of their fathers; but
what do they more than our ancestors did or than our children are
now doing? To better their condition in an unknown land our
forefathers left all that was dear in earthly objects. Our children by
thousands yearly leave the land of their birth to seek new homes
in distant regions. Does humanity weep at these painful
separations from everything, animate and inanimate, with which
the young heart has become entwined? Far from it. It is rather a
source of joy that our country affords scope where our young
population may range unconstrained in body or in mind,
developing the power and faculties of man in their highest
perfection. These remove hundreds and almost thousands of
miles at their own expense, purchase the lands they occupy, and
support themselves at their new homes from the moment of their
arrival. Can it be cruel in this government when, by events which it
cannot control, the Indian is made discontented in his ancient
home to purchase his lands, to give him a new and extensive
territory, to pay the expense of his removal, and support him a
year in his new abode? How many thousands of our own people
would gladly embrace the opportunity of removing to the West on
such conditions? If the offers made to the Indians were extended
to them, they would be hailed with gratitude and joy.

And is it supposed that the wandering savage has a stronger
attachment to his home than the settled, civilized Christian? Is it
more afflicting to him to leave the graves of his fathers than it is to
our brothers and children? Rightly considered, the policy of the
general government toward the red man is not only liberal but
generous. He is unwilling to submit to the laws of the states and
mingle with their population. To save him from this alternative, or
perhaps utter annihilation, the general government kindly offers
him a new home, and proposes to pay the whole expense of his
removal and settlement.

In the consummation of a policy originating at an early period,
and steadily pursued by every administration within the present
century--so just to the states and so generous to the Indians--the
executive feels it has a right to expect the cooperation of
Congress and of all good and disinterested men. The states,
moreover, have a right to demand it. It was substantially a part of
the compact which made them members of our Confederacy.
With Georgia there is an express contract; with the new states an
implied one of equal obligation. Why, in authorizing Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, Missouri, Mississippi, and Alabama to form constitutions
and become separate states, did Congress include within their
limits extensive tracts of Indian lands, and, in some instances,
powerful Indian tribes? Was it not understood by both parties that
the power of the states was to be coextensive with their limits,
and that, with all convenient dispatch, the general government
should extinguish the Indian title and remove every obstruction to
the complete jurisdiction of the state governments over the soil?
Probably not one of those states would have accepted a separate
existence--certainly it would never have been granted by
Congress--had it been understood that they were to be confined
forever to those small portions of their nominal territory the Indian
title to which had at the time been extinguished.

It is, therefore, a duty which this government owes to the new
states to extinguish as soon as possible the Indian title to all
lands which Congress themselves have included within their
limits. When this is done the duties of the general government in
relation to the states and the Indians within their limits are at an
end. The Indians may leave the state or not, as they choose. The
purchase of their lands does not alter in the least their personal
relations with the state government. No act of the general
government has ever been deemed necessary to give the states
jurisdiction over the persons of the Indians. That they possess by
virtue of their sovereign power within their own limits in as full a
manner before as after the purchase of the Indian lands; nor can
this government add to or diminish it.

May we not hope, therefore, that all good citizens, and none more
zealously than those who think the Indians oppressed by
subjection to the laws of the states, will unite in attempting to
open the eyes of those children of the forest to their true
condition, and by a speedy removal to relieve them from all the
evils, real or imaginary, present or prospective, with which they
may be supposed to be threatened.

Excerpted from http://www.britanica.com/elections/pri/Q00054.html
Know Your History!

Andrew Jackson was instrumental in creating the Trail of
Tears - believing in the white man's 'god-given right' to
attain land at whatever cost, his policies pushed the
Native Americans off their home territories. His policy ws
furthered by the Supreme Court, which denied nationhood
status to Native American, making them subject to
American laws without the privilige of being American
citizens. This 'manifest destiny' spurred westward
expansion, imperialism, and genocide - as well as helped
perpetuate the Southern slave system. Expansion was
wholly advocated by southern plantation owners, as they
wanted more land to grow more cotton crops.

The Jacksonian legacy was an extension of George
Washington and Thomas Jefferson's anti-Indian policies
as well.
Although Indian Territory was meant to be
an area of settlement set aside for Native
Americans, the Sooner rush negated that
promise.
When the eastern tribes entered into Indian Territory, the Plains
Indians resented the intrusion. Their culture was very different from
the agricultural easterners. Above is a burial typical of Plains Indians;
with the arrival of the 'foreign' tribes and the whites, the Plains
Indians saw their ways disappear.
Letter from Chief John Ross, "To the Senate and House of
Representatives"

Chief John Ross replies to the Trail of Tears

[Red Clay Council Ground, Cherokee Nation, September
28, 1836]

It is well known that for a number of years past we have
been harassed by a series of vexations, which it is deemed
unnecessary to recite in detail, but the evidence of which our
delegation will be prepared to furnish. With a view to
bringing our troubles to a close, a delegation was
appointed on the 23rd of October, 1835, by the General
Council of the nation, clothed with full powers to enter into
arrangements with the Government of the United States, for
the final adjustment of all our existing difficulties. The
delegation failing to effect an arrangement with the United
States commissioner, then in the nation, proceeded,
agreeably to their instructions in that case, to Washington
City, for the purpose of negotiating a treaty with the
authorities of the United States.

After the departure of the Delegation, a contract was made
by the Rev. John F. Schermerhorn, and certain individual
Cherokees, purporting to be a "treaty, concluded at New
Echota, in the State of Georgia, on the 29th day of
December, 1835, by General William Carroll and John F.
Schermerhorn, commissioners on the part of the United
States, and the chiefs, headmen, and people of the
Cherokee tribes of Indians." A spurious Delegation, in
violation of a special injunction of the general council of the
nation, proceeded to Washington City with this pretended
treaty, and by false and fraudulent representations
supplanted in the favor of the Government the legal and
accredited Delegation of the Cherokee people, and
obtained for this instrument, after making important
alterations in its provisions, the recognition of the United
States Government. And now it is presented to us as a
treaty, ratified by the Senate, and approved by the President
[Andrew Jackson], and our acquiescence in its
requirements demanded, under the sanction of the
displeasure of the United States, and the threat of summary
compulsion, in case of refusal. It comes to us, not through
our legitimate authorities, the known and usual medium of
communication between the Government of the United
States and our nation, but through the agency of a
complication of powers, civil and military.

By the stipulations of this instrument, we are despoiled of
our private possessions, the indefeasible property of
individuals. We are stripped of every attribute of freedom
and eligibility for legal self-defence. Our property may be
plundered before our eyes; violence may be committed on
our persons; even our lives may be taken away, and there is
none to regard our complaints. We are denationalized; we
are disfranchised. We are deprived of membership in the
human family! We have neither land nor home, nor resting
place that can be called our own. And this is effected by the
provisions of a compact which assumes the venerated, the
sacred appellation of treaty.

We are overwhelmed! Our hearts are sickened, our
utterance is paralized, when we reflect on the condition in
which we are placed, by the audacious practices of
unprincipled men, who have managed their stratagems
with so much dexterity as to impose on the Government of
the United States, in the face of our earnest, solemn, and
reiterated protestations.

The instrument in question is not the act of our Nation; we
are not parties to its covenants; it has not received the
sanction of our people. The makers of it sustain no office
nor appointment in our Nation, under the designation of
Chiefs, Head men, or any other title, by which they hold, or
could acquire, authority to assume the reins of Government,
and to make bargain and sale of our rights, our
possessions, and our common country. And we are
constrained solemnly to declare, that we cannot but
contemplate the enforcement of the stipulations of this
instrument on us, against our consent, as an act of injustice
and oppression, which, we are well persuaded, can never
knowingly be countenanced by the Government and people
of the United States; nor can we believe it to be the design
of these honorable and highminded individuals, who stand
at the head of the Govt., to bind a whole Nation, by the acts
of a few unauthorized individuals. And, therefore, we, the
parties to be affected by the result, appeal with confidence
to the justice, the magnanimity, the compassion, of your
honorable bodies, against the enforcement, on us, of the
provisions of a compact, in the formation of which we have
had no agency.

From: The Papers of Chief John Ross, vol 1, 1807-1839, Norman OK
Gary E. Moulton, ed.
University of Oklahoma Press, 1985
Excerpted from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h3083t.html
Cherokee Nation v. State of Georgia, 1831: No Nationl

In this landmark case, Chief Justice John Marshall denied the Cherokee status as a separate nation, thereby allowing Georgia
to take their land holdings without punishment.

Mr. Chief Justice Marshall delivered the opinion of the Court:

This bill is brought by the Cherokee nation, praying an injunction to restrain the state of Georgia from the execution of certain laws of
that state, which, as is alleged, go directly to annihilate the Cherokees as a political society, and to seize, for the use of Georgia, the
lands of the nation which have been assured to them by the United States in solemn treaties repeatedly made and still in force.

If courts were permitted to indulge their sympathies, a case better calculated to excite them can scarcely be imagined. A people
once numerous, powerful, and truly independent, found by our ancestors in the quiet and uncontrolled possession of an ample
domain, gradually sinking beneath our superior policy, our arts and our arms, have yielded their lands by successive treaties, each
of which contains a solemn guarantee of the residue, until they retain no more of their formerly extensive territory than is deemed
necessary to their comfortable subsistence. To preserve this remnant, the present application is made.

Before we can look into the merits of the case, a preliminary inquiry presents itself. Has this court jurisdiction of the cause?

The third article of the constitution describes the extent of the judicial power. The second section closes an enumeration of the
cases to which it is extended, with "controversies" "between a state or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens, or subjects."
A subsequent clause of the same section gives the supreme court original jurisdiction in all cases in which a state shall be a party.
The party defendant may then unquestionably be sued in this court. May the plaintiff sue in it? Is the Cherokee nation a foreign state
in the sense in which that term is used in the constitution?

The counsel for the plaintiffs have maintained the affirmative of this proposition with great earnestness and ability. So much of the
argument as was intended to prove the character of the Cherokees as a state, as a distinct political society, separated from others,
capable of managing its own affairs and governing itself, has, in the opinion of a majority of the judges, been completely successful.
They have been uniformly treated as a state from the settlement of our country. The numerous treaties made with them by the
United States recognize them as a people capable of maintaining the relations of peace and war, of being responsible in their
political character for any violation of their engagements, or for any aggression committed on the citizens of the United States by any
individual of their community. Laws have been enacted in the spirit of these treaties. The acts of our government plainly recognize
the Cherokee nation as a state, and the courts are bound by those acts.

A question of much more difficulty remains. Do the Cherokee constitute a foreign state in the sense of the constitution?

The counsel have shown conclusively that they are not a state of the union, and have insisted that individually they are aliens, not
owing allegiance to the United States. An aggregate of aliens composing a state must, they say, be a foreign state. Each individual
being foreign, the whole must be foreign.

This argument is imposing, but we must examine it more closely before we yield to it. The condition of the Indians in relation to the
United States is perhaps unlike that of any other two people in existence. In the general, nations not owing a common allegiance
are foreign to each other. The term foreign nation is, with strict propriety, applicable by either to the other. But the relation of the
Indians to the United States is marked by peculiar and cardinal distinctions which exist no where else.

The Indian territory is admitted to compose a part of the United States. In all our maps, geographical treaties, histories, and laws, it
is so considered. In all our intercourse with foreign nations, in our commercial regulations, in any attempt at intercourse between
Indians and foreign nations, they are considered as within the jurisdictional limits of the United States, subject to many of those
restraints which are imposed upon our own citizens. They acknowledge themselves in their treaties to be under the protection of the
United States; they admit that the United States shall have the sole and exclusive right of regulating the trade with them, and
managing all their affairs as they think proper; and the Cherokees in particular were allowed by the treaty of Hopewell, which
preceded the constitution, "to send a deputy of their choice, whenever they think fit, to congress." Treaties were made with some
tribes by the state of New York, under a then unsettled construction of the confederation, by which they ceded all their lands to that
state, taking back a limited grant to themselves, in which they admit their dependence

Though the Indians are acknowledged to have an unquestionable, and, heretofore, unquestioned right to the lands they occupy,
until that right shall be extinguished by a voluntary cession to our government; yet it may well be doubted whether those tribes which
reside within the acknowledged boundaries of the United States can, with strict accuracy, be denominated foreign nations. They
may, more correctly be denominated domestic dependent nations. They occupy a territory to which we assert a title independent of
their will, which must take effect in point of possession when their right of possession ceases. Meanwhile, they are in a state of
pupilage. Their relation to the United States resembles that of a ward to his guardian.

They look to our government for protection; rely upon its kindness and its power; appeal to it for relief to their wants; and address the
president as their great father. They and their country are considered by foreign nations, as well as by ourselves, as being so
completely under the sovereignty and dominion of the United States, that any attempt to acquire their lands, or to form a political
connexion with them, would be considered by all as an invasion of our territory, and an act of hostility.

These considerations go far to support the opinion, that the framers of our constitution had not the Indian tribes in view, when they
opened the courts of the union to controversies between a state or the citizens thereof, and foreign states.

In considering this subject, the habits and usages of the Indians, in their intercourse with their white neighbours, ought not to be
entirely disregarded. At the time the constitution was framed, the idea of appealing to an American court of justice for an assertion of
right or a redress of wrong, had perhaps never entered the mind of an Indian or of his tribe. Their appeal was to the tomahawk, or to
the government. This was well understood by the statesmen who framed the constitution of the United States, and might furnish
some reason for omitting to enumerate them among the parties who might sue in the courts of the union. Be this as it may, the
peculiar relations between the United States and the Indians occupying our territory are such, that we should feel much difficulty in
considering them as designated by the term foreign state, were there no other part of the constitution which might shed light on the
meaning of these words. But we think that in construing them, considerable aid is furnished by that clause in the eighth section of
the third article; which empowers congress to "regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the
Indian tribes."

In this clause they are as clearly contradistinguished by a name appropriate to themselves, from foreign nations, as from the
several states composing the union. They are designated by a distinct appellation; and as this appellation can be applied to neither
of the others, neither can the appellation distinguishing either of the others be in fair construction applied to them. The objects, to
which the power of regulating commerce might be directed, are divided into three distinct classes-foreign nations, the several
states, and Indian tribes. When forming this article, the convention considered them as entirely distinct. We cannot assume that the
distinction was lost in framing a subsequent article, unless there be something in its language to authorize the assumption.

The counsel for the plaintiffs contend that the words "Indian tribes" were introduced into the article, empowering congress to
regulate commerce, for the purpose of removing those doubts in which the management of Indian affairs was involved by the
language of the ninth article of the confederation. Intending to give the whole power of managing those affairs to the government
about to be instituted, the convention conferred it explicitly; and omitted those qualifications which embarrassed the exercise of it as
granted in the confederation. This may be admitted without weakening the construction which has been intimated. Had the Indian
tribes been foreign nations, in the view of the convention; this exclusive power of regulating intercourse with them might have been,
and most probably would have been, specifically given, in language indicating that idea, not in language contradistinguishing them
from foreign nations. Congress might have been empowered "to regulate commerce with foreign nations, including the Indian
tribes, and among the several states." This language would have suggested itself to statesmen who considered the Indian tribes
as foreign nations, and were yet desirous of mentioning them particularly.

It has been also said, that the same words have not necessarily the same meaning attached to them when found in different parts
of the same instrument: their meaning is controlled by the context. This is undoubtedly true. In common language the same word
has various meanings, and the peculiar sense in which it is used in any sentence is to be determined by the context. This may not
be equally true with respect to proper names. Foreign nations is a general term, the application of which to Indian tribes, when used
in the American constitution, is at best extremely questionable. In one article in which a power is given to be exercised in regard to
foreign nations generally, and to the Indian tribes particularly, they are mentioned as separate in terms clearly contradistinguishing
from each other. We perceive plainly that the constitution in this article does not comprehend Indian tribes in the general term
"foreign nations," not we presume because a tribe may not be a nation, but because it is not foreign to the United States. When,
afterwards, the term "foreign state" is introduced, we cannot impute to the convention the intention to desert its former meaning, and
to comprehend Indian tribes within it, unless the context force that construction on us. We find nothing in the context, and nothing in
the subject of the article, which leads to it.

The court has bestowed its best attention on this question, and, after mature deliberation, the majority is of opinion that an Indian
tribe or nation within the United States is not a foreign state in the sense of the constitution, and cannot maintain an action in the
courts of the United States.

A serious additional objection exists to the jurisdiction of the court. Is the matter of the. bill the proper subject for judicial inquiry and
decision? It seeks to restrain a state from the forcible exercise of legislative power over a neighbouring people asserting their
independence; their fight to which the state denies. On several of the matters alleged in the bill, for example on the laws making it
criminal to exercise the usual powers of self-government in their own country by the Cherokee nation, this court cannot interpose; at
least in the form in which those matters are presented. That part of the bill which respects the land occupied by the Indians, and
prays the aid of the court to protect their possession, may be more doubtful. The mere question of right might perhaps be decided
by this court in a proper case with proper parties. But the court is asked to do more than decide on the title. The bill requires us to
control the legislature of Georgia, and to restrain the exertion of its physical force. The propriety of such an interposition by the court
may be well questioned. It savours too much of the exercise of political power to be within the proper province of the judicial
department. But the opinion on the point respecting parties makes it unnecessary to decide this question. If it be true that the
Cherokee nation have rights, this is not the tribunal in which those rights are to be asserted. If it be true that wrongs have been
inflicted, and that still greater are to be apprehended, this is not the tribunal which can redress the past or prevent the future.

The motion for an injunction is denied.

Excerpted from http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/cherokee.htm
Andrew Jackson
And the Trail of
Tears