The Trail of Tears, a U.S. Army-guided forcible removal of the native Americans from the southeast to west of the Mississippi, began in 1838, and thousands of Cherokee were displaced; thousands died along the way.
The realities of these actions was a much different thing than the ideals of the United States. A nation that was built with tolerance and freedom as its precepts was not only forcibly expelling inhabitants from land they had settled, but was attempting to fundamentally change the culture of the Cherokee nation. Instead of protecting a vulnerable minority, as the original settlers of the U.S. had been in England, the government exploited the minority of Cherokee, taking their land, mining its gold, and removing the Cherokee culture from their landscape. This behavior was and is incompatible with the U.S. ideals of morality and justice; the manner in which the Cherokee were treated goes against the grain of United States values such as democracy, equality, and fair treatment.
White defenders of the Cherokee were vocal in their objections to these unjust acts which were counter to the values of the United States. One Senator decried the land-grabs, asking facetiously, "do the obligations of justice change with the color of the skin?" Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that the maltreatment of the Indian nations would cause "the name of this nation, hitherto the sweet omen of religion and liberty, [to] stink to the world." In a nation that claimed to value toleration and justice, the answer should have been an unequivocal no. But the push for industrialization, gold prospecting and "progress," as defined by the United States, rendered these concepts of justice and equality meaningless, even trite.
The Cherokee nation appealed to what the United States had heralded as its commitment to justice and morality; in an address regarding the Trail of Tears' forcible expulsion, Cherokee leaders entreated:
Do unto others as ye would that others do unto you. We pray them to remember that, for the sake of principle, their forefathers were compelled to leave...and that the winds of persecution wafted them over the great waters and landed them on the shores of the new...
The Congress eventually followed suit by enacting the Indian Removal Act which was greeted by the newly elected President Andrew Jackson. Americans should feel no regret for the disappearance of Indians from the face of the earth, Jackson argued. "Philanthropy could not wish to see this continent restored to the condition in which it was found by our forefathers," he said to Congress in his State of the Union
It was on May 4, 1730 that Cumming and the seven Cherokee began their trip to England, where they arrived on June 5. They were all headquartered in the house of James Crowe. Cuming's correspondence during this period is quite rich and we will mention some of it further below. The meeting with King George II occurred on July 18, 1730 and it is an excellent and somewhat amusing sample of
For examples, "In Oklahoma the Cherokee live both on and off the reservation scattered in urban centers and in isolated rural regions." (Cherokee) This also refers to the influence of contemporary industrial society, which has often been referred to as a central cause for the cultural breakdown of religious traditions in the culture. One also has to bear in mind political events and factors in the 1800s, such as the
The Injustice of the Indian Removal Act 1830 Introduction The Indian Removal Act signed by Andrew Jackson in 1830 was meant to establish peace in the nation and to give the Native Americans their own territory where they could practice their own activities, traditions and culture without interference from the American government. However, the Act resulted in the forced migration of thousands of Native Americans from their traditional homelands to a region
He was viewing them as little children who required guidance. He tended to believe that the policy of removal had great benefits to the Indians. Majority of the white Americans were thinking that United States was not capable of extending past Mississippi. The removal was capable of saving the Indian nationals from the white's depredations (Foreman 1932). The removal could make them to govern themselves peacefully It was assumed that the
Cherokee Nation can be described as the government of the Cherokee people that is recognized by the federal government in the United States. Throughout its history, the Cherokee Nation has remained committed to safeguarding its people's intrinsic sovereignty while promoting and preserving the language, culture, and values of the Cherokee people. Moreover, the Cherokee Nation is increasingly committed to enhancing the quality of life for subsequent generations of Cherokee people
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