Indian Removal Act Research Paper

The life of Native Americans before and after the government issued the Indian Removal Act created a lasting effect on our nation. Native Americans were forced by the US government to vacate their lands. Surprisingly, nearly 125,000 Native Americans lived on millions of acres of land in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida, which was all land that their ancestors had occupied and cultivated for generations (“Indian 1”). By the end of the 1890, very few Natives remained anywhere in the lands east of the Mississippi River (“Indian 1”). The Natives were forced to leave these land, because of the whites moving in who wanted the soft, fertile land, because of its farming capability. Why did the Americans want to force a migration

He gave in to the begging of these settlers and proposed the Indian Removal Act of 1830. This act granted the unsettled lands on the west side of the United States to the tribes on the east (Brandon). However, there was a catch. In exchange for the granting of new lands, the Indians on the east side of the Mississippi had to relocate immediately to these new locations. They would have to give up their home land to the white settlers who felt that they deserved it. This motion was supposed to be completely voluntary. Some tribes listened and went peacefully west, while the other tribes did not. The government had the idea of creating a trail to remove the stubborn Natives. This route was called the Trail of Tears and led to almost a complete genocide of all our Native people. The groups affected were the Choctaws, Cherokees, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Seminoles indians (Brandon). By 1840, tens of thousands of Natives were driven out. Whooping cough, typhus, dysentery, cholera and starvation killed a huge amount of these people. Out of the 15,000 Cherokees that were forced east, around 5,000 had died miserably on their way to new land. Many other groups suffered great losses as

Imagine the natives having to figure out that they were over using their soil and that was why their crops would not grow. Also, survival of the fittest would have taken place in the reservations. The animals would soon learn that they were being hunted and vacate that area. This caused the Native Americans to not have any animals to eat or make things out of. The being the way it was, sooner or later the natives would not have any choice but to break themselves from their heritage. Today, there are only around 2.6 million natives in our country. This includes mixed races and full blooded indians. There are only 600,000 full blooded Native Americans left (Brandon) . The population has nearly dropped by 100%. The culture of the natives became extremely hard to live out after Jackson’s policies were introduced. This caused many to learn to live as a white settler and forget about their