Indian Removal, 1813-1903

The Indian removal was the United States government's policy of ethnic cleansing through the forced displacement of self-governing tribes of American Indians from their ancestral homelands in the eastern United States to lands west of the Mississippi River—specifically, to a designated Indian Territory (roughly, present-day Oklahoma), which many scholars have labeled a genocide. The Indian Removal Act of 1830, the key law which authorized the removal of Native tribes, was signed into law by United States president Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830. Although Jackson took a hard line on Indian removal, the law was primarily enforced during the Martin Van Buren administration, 1837 to 1841. After the enactment of the Act, approximately 60,000 members of the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations (including thousands of their black slaves) were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands, with thousands dying during the Trail of Tears. Indian removal, a popular policy among incoming settlers, was a consequence of actions first by the European colonists and then later on by the American settlers in the nation during the thirteen colonies and then after the revolution, in the United States of America also until the mid-20th century. The origins of the policy date back to the administration of James Monroe, but it addressed conflicts which had occurred between the American settlers and Indigenous tribes since the 17th century and were escalating into the early 19th century (as settlers pushed westward in accordance with the cultural belief of manifest destiny). Historical views of Indian removal have been reevaluated since that time. Widespread contemporary acceptance of the policy, due in part to the popular embrace of the concept of manifest destiny, has given way to a more somber perspective. Historians have often described the removal of American Indians as paternalism, ethnic cleansing, or genocide.