Declining Freedom of the Plain Indians

Declining Freedom of the Plain Indians

Prior to The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, the North American Native American plain tribes enjoyed the freedom to establish their homes, as their animal herds and crops needed. The plain Indian was a pastoral society that moved throughout the western territory to search for better crazing fields for their animals, some plain Indians lived in arid environments and their nomadic movement was necessary due to the changing seasons in order to utilize the limited resources of the West. The basic freedoms that the plain Indian enjoyed abruptly changed when Andrew Jackson became president in 1829. As the United States transitioned from isolation to expansion, the plain Indian transitioned from freedom to isolation.

President Jackson felt that whites could not live peacefully with Native Americans, in this case the Cherokee. He began to move the tribe west and seize their ancestral and federally granted lands. So began the long process of reorganizing the tribes of North American Indians further west and eventually into reservations. The process of moving the plain Indians to the reservations began with this act and spanned 100 years to the enactment of the Dawes Act in 1934. This essay will explore the Native American as they experienced the transition from freedom to isolation, as the United Stated ended isolation and expanded west as part of its supposed Manifest Destiny.

The Indian Removal Act of 1830

The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was pushed through Congress by President Jackson, shortly after taking office. The removal act served to remove the Native American Indians from the east to the west. The act gave President Jackson to essentially negotiate removal treaties with tribes living east of the Mississippi, specifically the Cherokee (Brands, 2012). Prior to this treaty, though, the country was already asking for voluntary relocation to the west and in 1823 the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a judgment that Native Indians could occupy land in the United States, but they could not hold deeds or titles to that land, this decision essentially paved the way for forced relocation of the Cherokee to the west (Justice for All?, 2002).

The five Indians fought these injustices, initially with peaceful solutions. For instance, they attempted to westernize themselves by employing large scale farming, slave ownership, and even sought formal education. They essentially began to integrate themselves into white civilization in order to maintain what land they still had left, this approach only served to make whites angrier. Furthermore, the tribes also sought a legal remedy by going to The Supreme Court to fight the Removal Act and the court ruled in favor of the tribes, but neither the decision nor laws were recognized by President Jackson or the states (Justice for All?, 2002). Ultimately, the tribes outside of the south began to sign removal treaties and relocate to Mississippi and the southern tribes resisted and were removed by force. The early struggles of the tribes in early to mid 1800s would signal the beginning of the total loss of freedom for Native American tribes in North America.

Manifest Destiny and the Trail of Tears

The nineteenth century for the United States was a century of expansion, as the country ended its isolation west of the Mississippi and began to expand westward. As part of this expansion, it was generally accepted that Native American Indians would have to be removed and sent further west in order to fulfill the countries Manifest Destiny. The United States felt that it was their given right to expand from sea to shining sea and to fulfill that right they would have expand into the western territory where a majority of the Native American tribes resided and where they were relocated too, peacefully and forcefully. The problem with expansion was that most believed that they could not reside peacefully with the Indians and these tribes would have to be relocated further west from their ancestral homes (Bowles, 2011). As touched on earlier, the main approach to this relocation was through the signing of treaties and relocation to one large reservation and this approach work for a time, but America needed to expand further and that reservation was in the way of progress and one tribe would pay heavily during this period of relocation, the Cherokee.

The relocation of the Cherokee Indians in the 1830s was one of tragedy and death. The Cherokee once occupied vast territories, but as whites began to settle on their lands they were left with little left in North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama (Thornton, 1984, p. 289). Their eventual relocation westward eventually became necessary, as they were subject to harassment and invasion from the settlers. Beginning in 1828 the state of Georgia began to pressure the Cherokee to relocate by making all Cherokee laws null and void, basically eliminating all of their civil liberties and freedoms. As the pressure mounted, the Cherokee resisted, but in 1838 they were disarmed and forced to move west into Arkansas and Indian Territories. This removal to the Indian Territory was more like sending the tribe to prison, as hardship, starvation, and disease was prevalent.

This event in Cherokee history became known as The Trail of Tears and it is one where thousands of Cherokee died from execution, starvation, and disease. The travel from their territorial lands was hard and dangerous. A majority of the deaths occurred as a result of the months the Cherokee were forced to stay in the stockades as they awaited removal, but death also occurred on the journey and during the first year they were in the Indian Territory. Disease was rampant in the territory and most fell ill to diseases of the time (i.e, cold, flu, dysentery, etc.). The number of people the Cherokee lost during this period is unimaginable, with estimations over 13,000 (Thornton, 1984, p. 298). The atrocious acts toward the Indian tribes would not end in 1830s they would fight and die for their lands for decades as the U.S. pushed them further west as it expanded to fulfill its Manifest Destiny.

Dawes Act of 1887

As relocation of the tribe continued, the government looked for ways to civilize the Native American tribes and make them more productive in the country. The Dawes Act of 1887 served to allot, or more too, divide the Indian Reservations into large acreage allotments. Reformers of the time felt that allotting land to the tribes would force them to farm their own land, basically to acquire western habits and to de-savage them and make them more civilized. This allotment process was managed by the Office of Indian Affairs. This office allotted land only