With overwhelming support in the South, war hero
and renowned Indian fighter Andrew Jackson was
elected to the presidency in 1828. He wasted little
time setting forth the Indian policy his administration
would follow. In his first address to Congress, Jackson
called for federal legislation to formalize Removal—
the relocation of eastern Indians to lands west of the
Mississippi River. After much discussion, Congress
responded with the Indian Removal Act of 1830,
which allowed Jackson to put his plan in motion.
During the decade that followed, many tribes
were compelled to abandon their homelands by
intimidation and sometimes by force. Victims of Re-
moval included the Sac and Fox, the Potawatomi, and
the large southeastern groups popularly known as the
Five Civilized Tribes (the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw,
Chickasaw, and Seminole). Many Indians resisted
their relocation. The Sac and Fox, led by Black Hawk,
for instance, launched a full-scale rebellion in the
summer of 1832. A more successful resistance effort
was staged by the Seminole of Florida. In a conflict
known as the Second Seminole War, a tribal faction
retreated to the Everglades and waged a guerrilla war
on U.S. troops for seven years. After spending $20
million on the campaign against the Seminole rene-
gades, the United States declared the war unwinnable
and allowed the rebels to remain in Florida.
The Cherokee took another tactic in the battle
against Removal. Believing their legal right to their
land was clear, they took their cause to court to force
the state of Georgia from imposing its laws on the
tribe. In the landmark case Worcester v. Georgia, the
Supreme Court determined that the Cherokee consti-
tuted a “domestic dependent nation” that was entitled
to federal protection from Georgia. The decision,
however, had little impact. Jackson flatly declared that
he would ignore the Court’s mandate and allowed
Georgia free reign in its efforts to expel the Cherokee
from the state.
Despite the Court’s finding, the Cherokee and
the other Five Civilized Tribes were all eventually
forced to relocate to Indian Territory, in what is now
Oklahoma. Many officials in charge of organizing
their removals were corrupt or incompetent. Their
mismanagement left the Indians without adequate
food and supplies. As a result, the journeys west were
difficult for all relocatees and fatal for some. On the
Cherokee’s removal, known today as the Trail of Tears,
as many as one in four tribe members did not survive.
Ill, starving, and stripped of their possessions, those