5/1/2023 0 Comments Cherokee sacred fireNo longer did the government pretend to desire peaceful coexistence within its borders. The law set a new course for Native American/white relations. In mid-May 1830, Congress gave Jackson his wish by passing the Indian Removal Act. Jackson promoted the idea (first proposed by Thomas Jefferson) of moving Native Americans into unsettled prairie west of the Mississippi to make room for Whites. And, in Georgia in 1828, the discovery of gold made that land even more desirable.Īndrew Jackson, who had risen to fame by waging wars against the Creeks in Alabama and the Seminoles in Florida, won the presidency in 1828 on a campaign promise of free land for white settlers. This prejudice was heightened by greed: Whites craved Native American land for themselves. Despite the outward signs of equality, the majority of Whites still regarded Cherokees as ignorant and inferior. Still, when it came to changing the government’s attitude toward Native Americans, cultural transformation wasn’t enough. The Cherokees had transformed their culture in a single generation, in hopes of proving their humanity to their white neighbors and gaining the right to live undisturbed. In this case, it could be said that “savagery” was in the eye of the beholder. During a Washington dinner party, a visiting Cherokee leader made a point of asking the legislator to pass “those roots”- by which he meant the potatoes. Ironically, most of those who harassed the Indians couldn’t read the English section of the Cherokee newspaper.Ī Congressman from Georgia perpetuated the image of the Cherokee “savage” by publicly declaring that the Native Americans of his state lived on a crude diet of roots and reptiles. The Cherokees’ efforts to coexist didn’t prevent some frontier Whites from trying to steal their property. The following year, a bilingual newspaper called The Cherokee Phoenix became the first Native American voice in U.S. In 1827 the Cherokee Nation adopted a constitution based on that of the United States. Some wealthy Cherokee landowners even purchased black slaves. (The invention of an alphabet by a half-Cherokee, half-white man name Sequoyah brought the Cherokee language into written form.) Cherokee farmers tilled the rich earth of the valleys using foreign methods and equipment, just as Whites planted Native American crops. Schoolchildren practiced their arithmetic and learned to read in both English and Cherokee. Textile makers wove cotton and wool cloth to use at home or sell in general stores. They began to replace their small stick-and-wattle house with large structures made of logs, lumber or bricks. Now the Native Americans began to adopt the ways of white outsiders. The tribe already counted among its number many British traders and soldiers who over the years had married Cherokee women. Shrunken, subjected to constant harassment, the Cherokee Nation adopted a new strategy for survival in the early 1800s. Shortly after the war, their fears deepened as the new government claimed all of the remaining Cherokee portions of North and South Carolina and part of those in Tennessee. The Cherokees, like most Eastern tribes, sided with the British during the Revolutionary War because they feared that an independent American republic would take over their land. In treaty after treaty, they exchanged one more piece of land for one more promise of respect and coexistence. But there were, in fact, many such trails, as the Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles and other tribes were forced to abandon their homelands.įor more than a century, the Cherokees had watched first the colonies and then the United States chip away at their tribal territory. The removal of the Cherokees from Georgia in 1838 has become known as the Trail of Tears. Then, in 1830, the government began systematically removing all Native Americans from the Eastern U.S. For many years, Native Americans were simply driven back by armed violence or the threat of violence. The Native American tribes uprooted by white settlement and expansion are too numerous to name.
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