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American Indian Views of Andrew Jackson and/or His Removal Policy
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Petition of Cherokee Women (1818) |
“ Beloved Children, We have called a meeting among ourselves
to consult on the different points now before the council,
relating to our national affairs. We have heard with painful
feelings that the bounds of the land we now possess are to
be drawn into very narrow limits. The land was given to us
by the Great Spirit above as our common right, to raise our
children upon, & to make support for our rising generations.
We therefore humbly petition our beloved children, the head
men & warriors, to hold out to the last in support of our
common rights, as the Cherokee nation have been the first settlers
of this land; we therefore claim the right of the soil. …” (Andrew
Jackson Presidential Papers microfilm, Washington, 1961, series
1, reel 22, cited in The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History
with Documents, ed. Theda Perdue and Michael Green, 1995, 125).
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Pushmataha (1820) |
 After Andrew Jackson asked the Choctaw to cede a “small
slip of your land here” (nearly half, over five million
fertile acres, of their remaining land in the Southeast) in
exchange for thirteen million acres west of the Mississippi,
Choctaw speaker Pushmataha replied that the “little slip
of land” “is a very considerable tract of country” whereas
the land in the west, which Jackson had described as full of “many
water courses, rich lands and high grass abounding in game
of all kinds … honey and fruits of many kinds” is
actually “poor and sterile, tractless, sandy deserts,
nude of vegetation of any kind. … the grass is very short … and
for the game it is not plenty, except buffalo and deer. … There
are but few beavers, and the honey and fruit are rare things. … The
rivers are … liable to inundation during the spring season,
and in summers the rivers and creeks dry up or become so salty
that the water is awful for use” (Robert Remini, Indian Wars, 201-202).
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Nancy Reece (1828) |
“… I do not think that all the people are friends
to the Cherokees. Miss. Ames has been reading a part of the
Presid. Message. Perhaps he does not like the laws of the Indian
tribes for he says ‘This state of things requires that
a remedy should be provided.’ Miss. Ames has been talking
to the scholars and she felt bad and told them that they must
get a good education soon as the can, so they can teach if
they should be removed where they could not attend school. … I
have been talking to the children about it and one says ‘if
the white people want more land let them go back to the country
they came from’ another says ‘they have got more
land than they use, what do they want to get ours for’ (John
Howard Payne/Daniel Butrick Papers, Newberry Library, Chicago,
III.; cited in Perdue and Green, eds., 48).
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Chickasaw Chiefs (1830) |
“ Father, we the Chickasaws have occupied the country
not only where we now live from time immemorial but a large
portion of the rich and fertile lands of Tennessee and Alabama. … We
have from time to time sold piece after piece of our country
to our white brothers … until we have but a small home
left that is barely sufficient to subsist upon while living
and to bury our bones when we are dead. … Father, you
call us your children, but … we cannot consent to exchange
the country where we now live for the one we have never seen” (Coberts et al. to Andrew Jackson, August 25, 1830, Record Group 75, Office of Indian Affairs; cited in Robert Remini, Indian Wars, 244).
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Petition of Cherokee Women (1831) |
“ We the females, residing in Salequoree and Pine Log … believe
the present plan of the General Government to effect our removal
West of the Mississippi, and thus obtain our lands for the
use of the State of Georgia, to be highly oppressive, cruel
and unjust. And we sincerely hope there is no consideration
which can induce our citizens to forsake the land of our fathers
of which they have been in possession from time immemorial,
and thus compel us, against our will, to undergo the toils
and difficulties of removing with our helpless families hundreds
of miles to unhealthy and unproductive country” (Cherokee
Phoenix, November 12, 1831; cited in Perdue and Green, 126).
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Levi Colbert (1832) |
“ As the head of my Nation, my heart tells me it is
right that I place truth before you and if you have looked
me in the face and dealt with my heart often and long enough,
to credit my words, you shall have truth in its nakedness.
I had not lived and cast my senses, as you know, along the
whitemans march, with my eyes shut, man proves the hand of
God can no more change principles fixed in him, than he can
change his skin, so it is, with the Indian, and his native
land, when he hears of a departure from it, his heart like
the stricken deer, reels and falls, but he may not die. I saw
the whitemans march was to take my country. I prepared my mind
and the mind of my Nation for it. … The Chickasaw feel
a native born attachment for their Country and it seems to
me true, that nature presents nothing in the west, which can
make the Chickasaws more happy there -- than here, their Native
and beloved land. It is true that my Nation become willing
to sell their Country, to put down that bitter question of
State Sovereignty, to keep peace in the white family, to preserve
the Union of the United States whose friendship and protection
we want, and our selves, to get away from the troubles which
our white brothers fixed upon us. It is the result of our weakness
and we surrender our Country to cure the evils we never created” (Letter
of Principal chief of the Chickasaw to Andrew Jackson, Nov.
22, 1832 http://www.flash.net/~kma/CHICL_32.htm).
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William Shorey Coodey (1840) |
“ The entire Cherokee population were captured by the
U.S. troops under General Scott in 1838 and marched [and] … encamped
in large bodies until the time for their final removal west. … At
length the word was given to ‘move on’ … At
this very moment a low sound of distant thunder fell on my
ear. In almost an exact western direction a dark spiral cloud
was rising above the horizon and sent forth a murmur. I almost
fancied a voice of Divine indignation for the wrongs of my
poor and unhappy countrymen, driven by brutal power from all
they loved and cherished in the land of their fathers, to gratify
the cravings of avarice. The sun was unclouded—no rain
fell—the thunder rolled away and sounds hushed in the
distance. …” (From a letter to John Howard
Payne, Payne/Butrick Mss. Vol. VI, Ayer collection, Newberry
Library,
Chicago, IL).
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Sarah Vowell (1998) [Sarah Vowell and her sister
Amy took a road trip retracing the Trail of Tears their ancestors
traveled] |
“… [In] Worcester v. Georgia … the [Supreme]
Court under Chief Justice John Marshall ruled the Cherokee
Nation was just that, a sovereign nation within the borders
of the U.S. and therefore beholding only to the federal government,
i.e., not under the jurisdiction of Georgia state laws. [President
Andrew Jackson who was pro-removal … decided he wasn’t
going to back the Supreme Court ruling.] On hearing of the
ruling, the President is said to have replied, ‘John
Marshall has made his ruling, now let him enforce it.’ Think
about that—what that means, a breakdown of the balance
of power in such boasting dictatorial terms. Jackson is violating
his own oath of office, to uphold the Constitution. In the
20th century when people bandy about the idea of impeachment
for presidents who fib about extramarital dalliances, it’s
worth remembering what a truly impeachable offence looks like.
Didn’t happen of course, I refer you to the face on the
$20 bill” (Sarah Vowell, “Trail of Tears, ” Episode
107, This American Life, July 3, 1998 http://www.thislife.org/pages/descriptions/98/107.html).
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More of Sarah Vowell’s views |
Most Americans have had this experience. Most of us can name
things our country has done that we find shameful, from the
travesties that everyone agrees were wrong, the Japanese internment
camps or the late date of slavery’s abolition, to murkier
partisan arguments … World history has been a bloody
business from the get go, but the nausea we’re suffering
standing on the broken promises [to the Cherokee] at Ross’ Landing
[in Chattanooga, TN] is peculiar to a democracy. Because in
a democracy, we’re all responsible for everything our
government does … Meanwhile there are little kids literally
walking over these words, playing on them, making noise, having
fun. I sort of hate them for a second. We ask a teacher who’s
with a group of fourth graders why she isn’t talking
to them about Cherokee history and she says normally she would
but it’s the end of the school year and this trip is
their reward for being good. Sounds reasonable. I ask Amy if
she thinks these kids should share our sadness. “Well,
I think it’s a sad story. It’s … sort of
like the Holocaust. You don’t have to be Jewish to think
that’s a sad part of history and I think the trail of
Tears is … America’s version of genocide … it
started right over there.” Still … I envy those
children … I want to join them. I’m an IMAX person … I
feel really haunted by this … I feel very weighed down
by the pain. … The more I learn [about the Trail of Tears/Cherokee
History] the worse I feel and the more hatred I feel toward
this country that I still love. Therefore the more conflicted. … In
the trail of Tears Saga, if there’s one person you’re
allowed to hate, it’s Andrew Jackson, the architect of
the Indian removal policy. … The person I most empathize
with in this history is John Ross, the principal chief during
the Trail of Tears, because he was caught between the two nations.
He believed in the possibilities of the American constitution
enough to make sure the Cherokee had one too. He believed in
the liberties the Declaration of Independence promises and
the civil rights the Constitution ensures. And when the U.S.
betrayed not only the Cherokee, but its own creed, I would
guess John Ross was not only angry, not only outraged, not
only confused, I would guess John Ross was a little broken
hearted. Cause that’s how I feel. I’ve been experiencing
the Trail of Tears not as a Cherokee but as an American (Sarah
Vowell, “Trail of Tears,” Episode 107, This American
Life, July 3, 1998 http://www.thislife.org/pages/descriptions/98/107.html).
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