Indian Removal Act Research Paper

The Indian Removal Act was signed in 1830 by President Andrew Jackson to remove the Cherokee Indians from their homes and force them to settle west of the Mississippi River. The act was passed in hopes to gain agrarian land that would replenish the cotton industry which had plummeted after the Panic of 1819. Andrew Jackson believed that effectively forcing the Cherokees to become more civilized and to christianize them would be beneficial to them. Therefore, he thought the journey westward was necessary. In late 1838, the Cherokees were removed from their homes and forced into a brutal journey westward in the bitter cold. The hardships of the sufferable journey can be observed by three separate accounts form a Cherokee woman, a Cherokee slave,

Whitmire states that white settlers came to, “the Indian's homes, drove off their cattle, horses, and pigs, and they even rifled the graves for any jewelry, or other ornaments that might have been buried with the dead” (Whitmire). Whitmire shows how the Cherokees were oppressed by the fact that not only were the white settlers forcing them to leave their homes, but that they also destroyed their ancestors burial sites for their riches which was both disrespectful as well as mortifying for their family

She describes the journey as, “all who lived to make this trip, or had parents who made it, will long remember it, as a bitter memory” (Whitmire). The three accounts show that either if you lived through the dangerous trek or not, you still witnessed and felt the grief and misery the Cherokees went through. The effects that Andrew Jackson had on the Cherokees, were brutal, and unnecessary taking place in the bitter cold providing an abundance of death for the