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The Indian Removal Act

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Native American History In the early 1830’s, President Andrew Jackson, authorized the Indian Removal Act. The Cherokee Indians and many other Indian Tribes were forcefully removed from their homeland in a brutal and inhumane manner. During this hard journey, many Cherokee Indians died, this journey was called “The Trail of Tears” which was the forced relocation of the Native American, and these tragedies resulted from the enforcement of the Treaty of New Echota, an agreement signed under the requirements of the Indian Removal Act.
The Indian Removal Act, of 1830, provided funds for uprooting Five Civilized Tribes, the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole with a population around 60,000 living in North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi (Foner 393). Throughout the whole movement of the Indians, many of them died during the journey while others died as they were left behind to try and fight for their land. In a case involving Indians in 1823, “Johnson vs. M’Intosh, the court had claimed that Indians were not in fact owners of their land, but merely had a right to occupancy” (Foner 394). The chief justice John Marshall claimed that from the early colonial era, Indians had lived as nomads and hunters, not farmers. In Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia, 1831, Marshall described the Indians as “Wards” of the federal government. They deserved paternal regard and protection but they lacked the standing as citizens that would allow the Supreme Court to enforce their

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