Click on the audio below for a reading from a textbook excerpt regarding the indian Removal Act of 1830.
Identify the following:
1) What was the problem?
2) Who was involved in the problem?
3) Why was this a problem?
A graphic organizer is provided on the following page to help you analyze this textbook and the primary sources that follow.
Now that you have analyzed what your textbook says about the Indian Removal Act (1830), your task is to explore the and compare the arguments made for and against removing the Cherokee from New Echota. Finally, you will need to provide a concluding statement that explains why the Cherokee were removed from New Echota.
Use the graphic organizer below to help you complete this task.
The Constitution declares that “no new State shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other State,” without the consent of its legislature…
By persuasion and force, [the Indians] have been made to retire from river to river, and from mountain to mountain; until some of the tribes have become extinct, and others have left but remnants, to preserve, for a while, their once terrible names. Surrounded by whites…[who] destroy the resources of the savage, doom him to weakness and decay; the fate of the Mohegan, the Narragansett, and the Delaware, is fast overtaking the Choctaw, the Cherokee, and the Creek…
As a means of effecting this end, I suggest, for your consideration, the [decency] of setting apart an ample district West of the Mississippi, and without the limits of any State or Territory, now formed, to be guaranteed to the Indian tribes, as long as they shall occupy it: each tribe having a district control over the portion designated for its use…
This emigration should be voluntary: for it would be as cruel as unjust to compel the aborigines to abandon the graves of their fathers, and seek a home in a distant land. But they should be distinctly informed that, if they remain within the limits of the States, they must be subject to their laws.
From speech by Senator Theodore Frelinghuysen of NJ:
True, Sir, many tribes have melted away—they have sunk lower and lower…
[However, the Cherokee] flourish under this culture…They have shown themselves to be highly [capable] of improvement, and the ferocious feelings and habits of the savage are soothed and reformed by the mild charities of religion…
For is it not clear as the sunbeam, Sir, that a removal will [increase] their woes…
[The Cherokee] have established a regular constitution of civil government, republican in its principles…The people acknowledge their authority, and feel their obligation. A printing press, conducted by one of the nation circulates weekly newspapers, printed partly in English, and partly in the Cherokee language. Schools flourish in many of their settlements. Christian temples, to the God of the Bible, are frequented by respectful, devout, and many sincere worshipers…
Author: Jeremiah Evarts (pen name William Penn)
Title: “A Brief View on the Present Relations Between the Government and People of the United States and the Indians Within Our National Limits”
Source Type: Excerpt from Article
Date: November 1829
If the United States were examined to fine a place where Indians could have a residence assigned them, so that they might be as little as possible in the way of the whites, not a single tract, capable of sustaining inhabitants, could be found more secluded than the present country of the Cherokees. It is in the mountains, among the head waters of rivers diverging in all directions; and some parts of it are almost inaccessible. The Cherokee have ceded to the United States all their best land. Not a twentieth part of what remains is of a very good quality. More that half is utterly worthless. Perhaps three tenths may produce moderate crops. The people of the United States have free passage through the country, secured by treaty. What more do they want?
