The Trail of Tears- 1838

Native American Removal

• Various tribes are forced to sell or trade their lands in the southeast for lands west of the Mississippi River in present-day Oklahoma and Kansas

• Many of these tribes (including the Cherokee) attempt to stay on their land by adopting “white ways” and assimilating into American Society through trade and sedentary farming.

• Some tribes attempt to use the courts to stay on their lands.

“The Five Civilized Tribes” of the Southeast

Forced Removal

• President Andrew Jackson signs the Indian Removal bill into law in 1830, ushering in an era of government sponsored removal.

• The treaty of New Echota (1835)- A small group of Cherokees who do not represent the tribe, sign the removal treaty and move west. The U.S. Government expects the rest of the tribe to move and after legal battles- they force them to in 1838.

Trail of Tears, Robert Lindneux 1942

The Trail of Tears

“Our Indian Policy”

• 1. Who is the man in the middle? What does he represent?

• 2. Who looks upset in this cartoon? Why are they upset?• 3. Describe the white men standing behind the Native

Americans. What are they doing?• 4. Why is the United States’ Indian Policy being

represented by a house of cards? Why might the other men keep blowing the house down?

• 5. What message is the author trying to convey? Which group does he seem to side with?

Summary:

• Print shows Uncle Sam sitting at a table outside an "Indian Store" with Natives and government agents gathered around; he was constructing a house of cards labeled "Indian Policy" until the government agents and a man standing on a box labeled "Boston Sentimentalist" leaned over and blew on it, knocking it down.

• Our Indian policy - a house of cards / J. Keppler. Puck, v. 10, no. 236, (1881 September 14),