Cherokee Removal Essay

The Cherokee Removal is a brief history with documents by Theda Perdue and Michael Green. In 1838-1839 the US troops expelled the Cherokee Indians from their ancestral homeland in the Southeast and removed them to the Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma. The removal of the Cherokees was a product of the demand for land during the growth of cotton agriculture in the Southeast, the discovery of gold on the Cherokees land, and the racial prejudice that many white southerners had toward the Indians.

They were declared a dependent sovereign state and only the federal government had any say so in their affairs. Treaties were signed and land was sacrificed in order to retain some semblance of independence but the states got greedy and wanted it all. It was the Indians who followed the treaties and never went after their lost land or left their borders but the Americans continued to encroach on them. The Memorial Of the Cherokee Nation explained how Indians were tricked into selling land that belonged to the Nation so that Indian territory became American territory despite the people having no right to sell land given to the Cherokee Nation. The Cherokee government fought the breaks in the treaties but the judicial decision was overruled and the Cherokees were still forced to move. Besides the breaches in the treaties, the Cherokee tribe was one of the five assimilated tribes meaning they adopted European customs and religions. The Cherokee had become civilized as was the European’s goal and they fought their battle through the legal system not in a war. In this sense, the Indian Removal was unjust and

They did not know how to survive in their new conditions and the toll of the trip from Georgia to their new home still affected them. Illness was running high and the grief of missing family had many frightened. The older Indians helped those who were orphaned because of the ordeal, trying to get them through the days that continued. By 1841, laws were established by the Cherokee government to supply the orphans with education and welfare (Cooper).

The American Indian History of the United States is always associated with the Cherokee Indian nation. The Cherokee's were by far the largest and most advanced of the tribes. This man was Hernando de Soto was the first European explorer to come into contact with the Cherokees, when he arrived in their territory in 1540. Then he went and came in contact with Native Americans Cherokee's since many of their ways and customs is my family that the Cherokees occupied a large expanse of territory in the Southeast. Their homeland included mountains and valleys in the southern part of the Appalachian Mountain chain. Their territory stretched from North Carolina to

The Cherokee removal process dates back as early as the times of the first European encounters. When the explorers arrived in the New World, lack of immunity from disease played a role in decimating the native population. Smallpox, measles, and typhus spread everywhere and eventually, only around sixteen thousand natives remained by the 1700's. Even with the overwhelming victory of the British during the French and Indian war, the Cherokee were able to preserve many aspects of their society such as their own local governments and maintaining their crops. Nevertheless, the monarchy still ruled the region and even by the end of the Revolutionary War when the Americans had won, Constitutional policies were implemented to contain and control the native peoples. Peaceful relations existed in the beginning, but it was not until powerful resistance from the Cherokee that forced change among the settlers who kept pushing for westward expansion.

“Cherokee culture thrived many hundreds of years before initial European contact in the southeastern area of what is now the United States” ( Our History Par 1).   The Cherokee people suffered through the trail of tears all because the Americans wanted more land. Therefore, the Cherokee shouldn’t have been kicked out of their land because that’s all they knew and many were treated unfair.     To start off , the Cherokee nation has suffered many losses in the removal of their people that could have been prevented by not having them be removed.

This overwhelming feeling of superiority by the white settlers brought them to see the Native Americans as an obstacle they needed to overcome. Some of the things that they wanted to change about the Indians were their work habits, views on sexuality, family organization, and women’s power. All of these things directly contrasted to the puritan beliefs of a male dominated authoritarian modest culture. Early education of the Native Americans was completely unsuccessful with many of the teachings being simply laughed at by the Natives and forgotten.

Slave women had the hardest role to play in Colonial American women. They started out having to do unskilled work, such as building a fence. Then later on, when slaves became more expensive, women were seen more equal to the slave men. They were then responsible to duties that men were. Women had to work long, hard hours, side by side with men, on plantations. Then, suddenly, the north started having them take care of domestic duties for the owner’s wife. Eventually Southern states caught on, once the wives of the

Since neither the United States nor Native Americans would give up their goals, the government of United States figured that to win Native Americans and get all they wanted, government needed to spend lots of money and time. The United States tried to figure out a peaceful way to communicate with Native Americans. The new workable system fell to President George Washington’s first Secretary of War Henry Knox (p. 10).Henry Knox brought a new relation between Americans and Native Americans. Knox and Washington believed that the “uncivilized” Indian life was based on them not knowing better. On the other hand, their inferiority was cultural not racial (p. 11). In 1791 they announced the Cherokees may be led to a greater civilized society instead of remaining hunters. So women started to weave cloth, these Cherokee planters became rich, and the first law established in 1808 was about preventing the theft horses, also Cherokees invented a system for writing the Cherokee language.

This was viewed as women’s work to the Indians. They were not used to this lifestyle, and would not want any part of it. The Indians saw their job to be out in the woods capturing their food, while the women would prepare it and attend the crops(Massacre). These two different lifestyles and uses of land was just another of the many problems and reasons for

The settlers worked to establish a society that would give them freedom from their homeland. However, the servants were viewed as crude, idle, and lazy. The extreme mortality rates of those that came to the new world forced settlers to become more and more dependent on the Indians

All things considered, Society wanted them to able to communicate and interact with different cultures and people. To begin with, Education was the key to becoming civilized. If the Indians wanted to become civilized, then they should become civilized. With this in mind, most Indians got separated from their siblings when they were put in schools or anywhere else they were put. For example, the kids would all be sent away, but they would be sent to different places and not be able to see them for a long while. To sum up, for a tribe to become dominant to an American Culture they must become civilized. Most Indians wanted to become civilized to the American Culture, so they would have to have an education to become one.

They cried, they wept, they grew stronger. It was a story of hope, courage, and survival. This was the Trail of Tears. Many events led up to the Cherokee’s removal. The Indian Removal caused the Cherokee indians to move west. A man named Major Ridge struck lots of bargains with the United States. This man, Major Ridge, was one of the native sons, born in 1771, that lived in the Cherokee territory. The Cherokee’s lived in the Christians Eden because they believe their ancestors once lived in the same area. Throughout Major Ridge’s youth years, the Shawnees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, the Creeks, and the United States endangered the Cherokees. Mr. Ridge and his family watched his town get burnt down by riflemen due to picking the wrong side during the American Revolution. The Cherokees watched their world change all around them. The Cherokee population dwindled to 12,000 in 1805, and lost over half their precious land. The United States wanted the Cherokees land, and for them to move west. The Americans offered a path for them to walk down. The Americans developed a policy called civilization which taught the Cherokees how to grow wheat; how to eat meals at regular set times instead of when ever they pleased, how to dress; how to speak English; how to pray in church at certain set times. The United States wanted all the tribes to be equivalent of their white neighbors. Thomas Jefferson states that they could be equal to the whites. John Ross was the future Cherokee chief; he grew

Native American Women and American women shared interests in home, family, children and domestic matters which led them to form empathetic relationships; American Indians were often hired as nurses for the children of women on the trail. Riley highlights that apparently American Indians were hired as house companions to aid with washing, childcare and drawing water. This enabled mutual trust and bonds between travellers and American Indians. Riley states that a woman who headed westward with trepidation and dread regarding Native American could, and often did, become sympathetic support of those very Indians. There is little primary evidence for these actions. White Americans viewed themselves as the “harbingers of civilisation and women were thus advise to view the American Indians as such potential subjects”. Furthermore Riley stated that “women were encouraged to perceived Indians as uncivilised, morally deficient and primitive”. Women did not follow this Indian stereotype blindly their growing independence and their own relationships with Native Americans influence perceptions. Riley furthers that Frederick Jackson Turner explains that the liberation of the west, was similarly the liberation of Anglo American women. Both of those stereotypes have been disproved, women worked alongside men and American Indians for the development of the future through settlement and through the raising of their children.

die. The Red Chief was also in charge of the lacrosse games which were called