Trail Of Tears Seminar Thesis

The proposed topic for my senior seminar thesis paper is the treatment of the Native Americans in the 1800’s. More specifically, I will be focussing on the Trail of Tears. Questions such as “Why did this happen?” and “What causes are there?” will be very prevalent in this paper. Themes of inherent racism and and manifest destiny will be woven throughout the paper. I have always been interested in native american history, yet never learned much about it in school. I have always learned about the cliche “manifest destiny” and reaching the west because God wanted us to (that was the thought) yet never learned about what we did to the indians. This is why it interests me; I know there is an abundance of history on this subject out there, and I

At the Culver-Stockton library, there are several primary sources available to me. There are a few books, and even more electronic resources. Firstly, there is a book that I did a review on for my Historian’s Craft class. The book is titled “The removal of the cherokee nation; manifest destiny or national dishonor?” The book includes many different letters, documents, speeches etc. which all have the subject of the trail of tears. One of the documents included is the legislation passed by Andrew Jackson. Another primary source I found in the library is an annotated version of the peace policy. It has an untouched version, and one that is marked up to help the reader better understand Grant’s created domestic policy. This book also includes several documents such as letters and speeches created by southerners, westerners, and people of the catholic faith in response to this policy. These are included so the author could show examples of people’s reactions to the new policy. The last book included in this section is titled “The way we lived”. This book is a collection of essays and documents from around this time, all discussing actions taken by the US government, people in different parts of the country, and policies put in place. Many of these documents are to show favor to the natives, so it seems pretty one sided. This may mean the documents and other items that were collected were only collected from one part of the nation. There are also many primary sources that are electronic resources. One of these sources is titled “Andrew Jackson and the age of American power”, which does not seem like it will include much about the treatment of native americans, however one section includes conversations, documents such as letters and essays all by the Jackson administration, with the removal of indians as their topic. Finally I found another electronic resource that discusses the forced relocations of the natives. Included in this book are more documents, such as