Native Americans In The 1830's

Early in the 1830’s, there were about 125,000 Native Americans that inhabited the areas of the present Florida, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, and Tennessee which covers millions of acres. The Native Americans and their ancestors had cultivated and occupied these lands for generations. It had been a growing importance to expand the United States of America and to be able to use the resources that surrounded them to grow as a country; cotton for example. For this to occur, the lands that were thought of to be a new part of the United States, the southeast region of America today, were inhabited by these Native Americans. The only way for the United States to succeed in expanding, producing goods, and exploiting the surrounding resources,
Now that he was president he figured he could pass along an act, called the Removal Act, which gave federal government the power to exchange Native-held land in the so called “cotton kingdom” which was east of the Mississippi for land to the west, in the “Indian colonization zone”, this place being the land that the United States acquired in part of the Louisiana Purchase. The “Indian colonization zone” was located in present day Oklahoma. The law was supposed to be fair and peaceful, that would potentially propose treaties to the Native Americans in order for them to move. However President Jackson and his government did not pay much attention to those factors of the act and forced the Native Americans to vacate the lands that they have been living on for
Some wanted to fight but others thought it was better to agree to leave in exchange for the money and other concessions. It was in 1835 that a few self-appointed representatives for the Cherokee nation negotiated the Treaty of Echota. This treaty traded all Cherokee land east of the Mississippi for $5 million, relocated assistance and compensation for lost property. Many of the Cherokee people felt betrayed but to the United States government, it was a done deal; which is understandable because the negotiators did not represent the tribal government or anyone else. Because of this, the nation’s principal chief, John Ross, decided to petition the treaty and nearly 16,000 Cherokees signed this petition, but the treaty was approved by congress. There were only about 2,000 Cherokees who had left their homeland in Georgia to the Indian Territory in Oklahoma by 1838. This resulted in President Martin Van Buren sending General Winfield Scott and 7,000 soldiers to enforce the removal