May 28th, 1830 - the passage of the Removal Act. Do you know what it is?

[shance]

I didn't, until recently.

"In 1830 the Indian Removal Act was passed by the administration of President Andrew Jackson. It just passed through Congress by a single vote.

President Andrew Jackson was convinced that the only solution to the Indian ‘problem’ was the complete removal of all natives beyond the Mississippi and now he had the law with which to accomplish it.

No people would be more affected by this than the Cherokees.

(snip)

The Cherokees endeavoured to live in peace with their white neighbours. But that was not to be. The whites looked enviously at their lands and attempted to take it for themselves. The Cherokees resisted in a novel way –they took their case to the United States Supreme Court.

That Court declared that the Cherokee were a people of a ‘domestic, dependant nation’ and that the state of Georgia had no right to extend it’s laws over them. The Indians had won their case. Enforcing the decision was another story entirely.

In 1835, 500 Cherokees were pressured into signing a treaty that sold all of their lands for just five million dollars plus an entitlement of seven million acres out west. The 500 who had signed were not chiefs and had no authority to sign for the people. Quickly a petition was organised repudiating the treaty which gained 16,000 signatures. But President Jackson ignored the petition. He set a deadline for the complete removal of the Cherokee – May 23rd, 1838.

More at link:

http://la.essortment.com/whatisindianr_rhin.htm

EDIT: COPYRIGHT. PLEASE POST ONLY 4 OR 5 PARAGRAPHS
FROM THE COPYRIGHTED NEWS SOURCE PER DU RULES.

[Kajsa]

1. Thanks for the information.

I didn't know of this, either.

Genocide is the only word I can think of when
I look at the treatment of Native Americans at the
hands of land hungry white men.

I'm familiar with the Trail of Tears.
It's a very fitting name.:(

[shance]

3. You bet. Amazing how much Jackson reminds me of a

current president, along with the Iraqis being treated like the Native Americans in this century.

[Kajsa]

33. Right you are, Shance.

GW forgets that he's president not
King!

[Selatius]

2. It's not something you read in elementary textbooks

Students get the rosy, white-washed version of history. Maybe if the truth were in textbooks, then maybe so many wouldn't be so unwilling to criticize their own government.

[shance]

4. I was thinking the same thing. Don't remember this in my Houghton Mifflin

books*

[CountAllVotes]

9. yep and the policy before that was

extermination. Uh huh, that is right.

From relocation came the next great "law" - that of assimilation.

Today we are in the "self-determination" mode.

And yet there are those people that condemn the Indian people that have managed to get a few casinos running.

For the "survivors" of this great onslaught it is nothing but a menagerie of lies and tears for all. No one remembers or knows anything. They are all dead and long gone; forever "assimilated".

[otherlander]

22. we learned about it...

Well, not all the details, I'll admit, but we did get the fact that Jackson overrode the Supreme Court and violated treaties, and that many Cherokies died as a result. I think that the educational system is no longer whitewashing history as much as it once did.

[Baconfoot]

35. I learned about it in public school too...15 years ago.

But like in your case, I don't think the textbook itself provided anything more than a few paragraphs of facts.

I'm not sure this has been whitewashed so much as to a large extent ignored.
I'm also not sure which is worse.

[ismnotwasm]

5. Even the title of the act

Is disgusting. Thank you for posting this.
My son is half Cowachin (Canadian)I ended up with a lot of first hand experience of the aftermath of our policies towards the first people. Some of the things I've seen and heard I've never been able to talk about. Mostly because many people in America don't relate to such experiences.
Aside from stealing the election, the first thing bush did to piss me off was to deny status to certain bands, especially the Duwamish here in the Northwest. (Clinton had given them some sort of last minute status, and I guess there is a time factor where the next president could recind it. Well that asshole bush did)

[Redstone]

6. Yes, I do. Andrew Jackson was the Devil on Earth, and should be

removed from the $20 bill.

Redstone

[nicknameless]

12. I wish his DU avatar would disappear.

He was a genocidal bastard.

[BringEmOn]

13. Hell, yeah! I wish those disgraceful and racist sports team mascot

avatars would disappear, too. It's hard to believe...here in 2006, and on a supposed Democratic site, that you will find these symbols of hatred and ignorance.

[Redstone]

14. People use him as a fucking AVATAR? They need to read a bit

of history, they do. He was the fucking Devil. That bears repeating.

Redstone

[nicknameless]

16. Sadly, it isn't a personalized avatar that they've imported,

it's an available avatar on DU.

[Redstone]

17. That makes it even worse.

Redstone

[SemiCharmedQuark]

26. History is written by the victors I guess.

So says our currency. I wonder if the way he is taught in schools is partly to blame. I didn't learn who he truly was until I was in high school and I had a very liberal teacher.

[Nevernose]

27. History's not so black-and-white.

It's not fair to judge him by early 19th century standards. That was the accepted cultural paradigm of the time.

To me, the real tragedy is in not educating our kids about the Trail of Tears NOW, when we should know better. And which many Conservatives would gladly start all over again, if it served their business interests or a Republican told them to.

The reason he's a DU avatar, btw, is for the many good things he did, including his early groundbreaking anti-corporatist stance.

Churchill was an anti-Semite; Roosevelt locked Asians up in internment camps; Gandhi (allegedly) beat his wife. Should we discount all the good they did because they were the products of their times?

History's not an all-or-nothing prospect, and neither are human beings.

[nicknameless]

29. And Mussolini made the trains run on time.

Where is his avatar?

Sorry, I can’t get past genocide.
Nothing you mentioned of the others can compare to Jackson’s level of crimes against humanity.

He is very undeserving of having any avatar on DU, other than those that scorn him.

[DELUSIONAL]

23. I agree

On one side of my family a few survived the trail of tears --

In one of my books about the American Holocaust -- there is a reference to Andrew Jackson using skin of Native Americans for his horse's reins. He was a nasty Democrat and for this reason it took me a very long time to even call myself a "democrat". I feel more comfortable calling myself a liberal.

[Little Star]

7. Breaks my heart every time I think of the

Trail of tears and the horrible injustice done to native americans then and now. It is personal to me also. My Great-grandmother and her brother were young adults who ended up in Oklahoma. Their stories were told to me through out my childhood. I have pictures of my GGrandmother holding me on her lap in a four generational picture. I treasure that picture and others of her with her children and grandchildren.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

8. You damn skippy I know. Anyone who has ever lived

near Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Seminole, or Creek indian people knows.

They do the best they can to ignore it in High School history books, but the facts are readily available for any who want to learn.

[depakid]

10. "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it."

In some ways, Americans really haven't changed all that much-

But they will- and not in ways that they will like.

Peak Oil along with climate change will be great levellers. I find no small irony in that.

[Blue_Tires]

11. k+r

[Gman]

15. Then I guess the second worst thing the US ever did

was the war in Iraq. Being built on such lies as it was/is.

[man4allcats]

18. 176 years later, this makes me cry.

Sometimes I wonder who Americans are. This is so sad.

[karlrschneider]

19. We learned it in Oklahoma History in grade school.

I wonder if they still teach it...I'll ask the neighbor kids.

[Gregorian]

20. And then there were bounty laws. Here are a few examples.

In the early 18th century, the states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey promoted a genocide of their local Natives by imposing a "scalp bounty" on dead Indians. "In 1703, Massachusetts paid 12 pounds for an Indian scalp. By 1723 the price had soared to 100 pounds." 10 Ward Churchill wrote: "Indeed, in many areas it became an outright business." 6 This practice of paying a bounty for Indian scalps continued into the 19th century before the public put an end to the practice. 10

In the 18th century, George Washington compared them to wolves, "beasts of prey" and called for their total destruction. 4 In 1814, Andrew Jackson "supervised the mutilation of 800 or more Creek Indian corpses" that his troops had killed.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/genocide5.htm







Sonora was the first state to enact a scalp bounty law; in 1835, offering 100 pesos for the scalps of braves (with a peso roughly equal to an American silver dollar). An American named James Johnson sparked the boom period in 1837 when he fired a concealed canon at close range on unarmed Apaches. The blast tore into Apache warriors as well as women and children, and Johnson and his troops swarmed into the mass of natives, killing and scalping. While this event occurred in Hidalgo County, New Mexico, the scalps were cashed in Sonora, and the entire incident proved how profitable scalp hunting could be.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/HNS/Scalpin/oldfolks.html

[sybylla]

21. It was also the impetus for the Blackhawk "War" and subsequent massacre

of between 1500 and 2500 men, women and children of the Blackhawk Band of Sauk and Fox.

Because of the removal act, the Sauk and Fox were removed from ancestral lands in Illinois across the river to Iowa Territory in 1830 before they could harvest their corn and crops. They suffered starvation and malnutrition their first winter. In the spring, several bands of Sauk and Fox returned to their fields to plant corn. Settlers had the army chase them off and return them back to their new, virgin lands in Iowa, which by all accounts happened relatively peacefully thanks to Chief Keokuk.

Again, they were unable to grow enough food and starvation haunted them the winter of 1831. In the spring, Blackhawk led his people, estimated to be between 2,000 and 3,000, back across the river. Their intention was to spend time with their Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) friends in southern Wisconsin where their people would be fed and they could decide what to do. The settlers, seeing the band moving up the Rock River, panicked and a cry went up claiming Blackhawk was preparing to attack the settlers (thanks also to the aiding and abetting of the area newspapers). After the army attempted a mistake-plagued pursuit into Wisconsin, either misconstruing or wilfully ignoring three attempts at surrender, after Blackhawk made some amazing tactical maneuvers to save his people, the army trapped them as they tried to cross the Mississippi into what is now Minnesota and massacred all but about 500 of them three months later.

It's a very sad tale of American imperialism.

The Indian Removal Act is the one reason I am ashamed Andrew Jackson was a member of the Democratic Party. No matter what all the other president have done, I don't think any have done worse than Jackson with his maniacal, willful starvation and massacre of thousands of people.

[Nicole]

24. Yes, I knew it

I grew up hearing about it from family members. Andrew Jackson has always been a dirty word in my family.

It was also taught during Oklahoma History classes.

[eallen]

25. With the Seminoles were the black Seminoles.

These were slaves escaped from the rice plantations of Georgia and South Carolina, who made their way to Florida, formed alliances with the Seminoles, and fought ferociously with the Seminoles in the wars against the US. They relocated to Texas, Mexico, and Oklahoma, when these wars were lost. And some made their way to Andros, in the Bahamas.

[Odin2005]

28. Jackson = 1st class scumbag.

One of the worst presidents of the pre-Civil War presidents, IMO; and not just for blatently flouting SCOTUS by allowing the Removal Act to go into force. His fiscal policies sent the US into a depression and he started the spoils system (making the bureaucracy extremely corrupt).

[shance]

30. That is what I am gathering.

Thanks for the post.

[Odin2005]

38. The opposition to the Bank of the US among early Dems...

...was bad fiscal policy, it was mostly a result of irrational, populist hatred of bankers among frontier farmers, similar to the supidity of the intentional inflation the Populists wanted in the 1890s. Populism is bad for the economy.

[Hippo_Tron]

40. The spoils system is necessary

Part of winning an election means throwing the other guy's people out of power and putting your own in. You can't expect a President to keep high level people from the previous administration, especially if that administration is of a different party.

Of course, the way Jackson did it was that he only cared about loyalty and not about competence. Kind of reminds me of a certain incumbent president...

[Odin2005]

46. The spoils system means stuffing the WHOLE bureaucracy with cronies...

...it has nothing to do with the higher ups.

[Hippo_Tron]

48. But in Andrew Jackson's day there wasn't much of a bureaucracy

At least not compared to today.

[rosesaylavee]

31. There hasn't been **one** president that I know of

that has treated our indigenous people fairly or with overt compassion ... from George Washington on. Early on, they were considered non-human so it was easy for this odd attitude. Not sure what the justification is now. I am not aware of anything done to assist them in their poverty in the last few decades - and I would love to hear that I am wrong.

The casino profit has helped to turn the poverty around for those reservations able to 'cash' in on them. But if any of you have visited a reservation - Pine Ridge in South Dakota comes to mind - you would be appalled at the third world conditions. It has been over 10 years since I was there - so am hopeful that it has improved... but not holding my breath.

[CountAllVotes]

32. I visited Fort Hall in Idaho in 1992

It was the worst poverty I'd ever seen in my entire life. Maybe it has changed, I do not know.

Many of the people living there were alcoholics and drug addicts. They seemed to have no hope nor choices in life. It saddens me greatly.

People call them alcoholics correctly enough. However, I suspect I'd be one too if I had to live with the memories of death and destruction. Having your entire family murdered and to never be acknowledged nor received any retribution for it is indeed a crime of the highest nature against humanity.

Thomas Jefferson is likely rotting in hell is my only hope.

:kick:

[rosesaylavee]

43. There is a genetic disposition towards

alcoholism in most indigenous peoples... not that it makes it less sad, but just another hurdle to jump thru.

[shance]

44. That's a racist myth which has been developed to further

stigmatize and paint the real Native Americans of this country as inferior. It's an attempt to erase and disregard the heart break, abuse, exploitation and the humiliation of the Native American world and their lives.

There is no, absolutely no scientific basis other than what has been intentionally manufactured.

If you had your families, your land, your pride, your culture, your food, your future wiped out, you'd drink too. And a hell of a lot.

[rosesaylavee]

45. Sorry to disagree... but I know a bit about

alcoholism - It also affects those of Celtic origin in a similar way. I don't think of it as a social stimatization... but a physical response or lack of a body's ability to process a specialized sugar.

Peace.

[shance]

47. I do as well.

The "firewater" theory is a manufactured myth designed to essentially write off the reality and responsibility of what has been inflicted on the Indian nations and continues to this day.

It is an attempt to pass the blame of the assault on their culture, to separate and divide and exude a perception of inferiority, not to mention ignore the true core reasons behind the behavior of engaging in alcohol consumption, which is a totally rational response to dull pain and depression.

Just look at our culture and see how we use alcohol and drugs and we haven't gone through anything like the Native Americans have. The "firewater" myth is a rational response to a symptomatic depression caused by the destruction, disruption and overall rape of a culture and a way of life. It would drive anyone to drink.

The same to be said for the Irish/Celtic origin. Is it no coincidence that both groups have been oppressed, slaughtered and have had their land stolen and jeopardized for centuries.

[proud2BlibKansan]

34. Have we learned from this?

Or can it happen again today?

[1monster]

36. Don't forget the Choctaw Inidans who were farmers much in the

mode of the early American farmers. They too, despite treaties that supposedly allowed them to keep their individual farms, were cheated of those farms and also removed from the east side of the Missippi...

Andrew Jackson was not a president I can point to with pride. I'd like to see someone else on the twenty dollar bill.

edited to add: http://www.studyworld.com/indian_removal_act_of_1830.htm

[troubleinwinter]

37. If you study

all of the treaties with American tribes that have been BROKEN by the U.S. government, (in Hank Williams Sr.'s words: ) you'll stay busy all the time.

[Odin2005]

39. The sad thing is that those tribes were already quite Westernized.

They had developed thier own written language, had schools, newspapers, western farming methods, even Black slaves; given time they would of intergrated into American society. They were just expelled from thier homes because they were Native Americans and white planters wanted the land. It was outright theft, not just theft in a moral sense, like the takings of other native land, but legal as well since a lot of those people owned the land in the Western sense of property ownership.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

49. Actually, they were expelled because of a gold rush in the area

The first gold rush in the US started after gold was discovered in 1928, in northeast Georgia. Thousands of "twenty-niners" came to the area from all over the country, and then they discovered there was an abundance of gold in southwest North Carolina, too. Problem was, this area was "Indian" land...so they got rid of the "problem".

[misternormal]

41. "Trail of Tears"... 'nuff said.

[Hippo_Tron]

42. On the West Wing, Leo McGarry insists on "big block of cheese day"

Based on the idea that Andrew Jackson had a block of cheese in the white house lobby and anybody was allowed to come in and meet with the president, McGarry designates a certain day every year where white house staffers meet with people who normally have trouble getting their attention.

The white house staff all think it's a big joke because of the people that they meet with and it's surprising that they don't have one of the smart asses (like Josh) mention that Jackson also killed thousands of Native Americans while Leo is giving the cheese blocking speech.