Page 266 - American Stories, A History of the United States

asserted the primacy of states’ rights over Indian rights and called for the speedy and
thorough removal of all eastern Indians to designated areas beyond the Mississippi. 10.1
Chief John Ross warned his people that “the object of the President is . . . to create divi-
sions among ourselves.” President Jackson rejected Ross’s appeal against Georgia’s vio-
lation of federal treaty, and in 1830, the president’s congressional supporters introduced 10.2
a bill to implement the removal policy. Despite heated debate, the Indian Removal Act
passed with strong support from the South and western border states.
Jackson then concluded the necessary treaties, using the threat of unilateral state 10.3
action to bludgeon the tribes into submission. The treaty for Cherokee removal was nego-
tiated with 75 out of 17,000 Cherokees, and none of the tribal officers was present. By 1833,
most of the southeastern tribes except the Cherokee had agreed to evacuate their ancestral 10.4
homelands. Choctaw Chief David Folsom wrote, “We are exceedingly tired. We have just
heard of the ratification of the Choctaw Treaty. Our doom is sealed. There is no course
for us but to turn our faces to our new homes in the setting sun.” Alexis de Tocqueville,
the French author of Democracy in America, watched the troops driving the Choctaws
across the Mississippi River in the winter of 1831. He wrote that Americans had deprived
Indians of their rights “with singular felicity, tranquilly, legally, philanthropically…. It is
impossible to destroy men with more respect for the laws of humanity.”
Yet President Jackson was not always concerned with respect for the law. In 1832,
he condoned Georgia’s defiance of a Supreme Court decision (Worcester v. Georgia)
that denied a state’s right to jurisdiction over tribal lands. Georgia had arrested and
sentenced to four years’ hard labor a missionary who violated state law by going on
tribal land without Georgia’s permission. The Supreme Court declared the law uncon-
stitutional. Jackson’s legendary declaration that Chief Justice Marshall had “made his
decision, now let him enforce it” is almost certainly apocryphal, as there was noth-
ing for either Jackson or Marshall to “enforce”; the decision only required Georgia to

Arrest of osCeolA This drawing depicts the capture of Osceola, the mixed-ancestry Creek warrior who
led the Seminole resistance to removal. Osceola was arrested and imprisoned while trying to make peace at fort
Moultrie, Arkansas; this capture by deceit led to widespread indignation; Osceola died of illness in prison three
months later.
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