The Trail of Tears and How It S Like Racism Research Paper

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President Andrew Jackson built his political and military career on an aggressive approach to Native Americans. His exploits began well before 1838-9, when his Indian Removal Act signaled the deplorable state of affairs in North America. Around 4000 Cherokee died during the forcible removal program dubbed aptly the "Trail of Tears," as many more Indians were displaced and deprived of rights that had been previously been guaranteed by federal law. The Indian Removal Act violated several tacit and implicit agreements between tribal governments and their American counterparts. By the time of the passing of the Indian Removal Act, five tribes in the Southeastern United States including the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole (which were technically and historically a branch of Creek) had been assimilating into the colonial European society. Yet mastery English and avid participation in the colonial economy failed to enable the Southeastern tribes to stave off the sinister deceit that characterized Jackson's policy of Indian removal. The informal and formal agreements between Native Americans and the federal government systematically fell apart due to increasing demand for land within the plantation economy in the American South. Greed and a white supremacist ideology laid the groundwork for the Indian Removal Act of 1830, revealing stark connections between the Trail of Tears and the legacy of slavery in the United States.

Sheer greed prompted nearly all of the Indian removal policies, which followed from broken treaties, and ultimately resulted in forced exile of Indian communities. Burgeoning numbers of settlers into the lands now part of Georgia and Alabama pressured the federal government for support in their endeavor to expand cotton plantations. A European colonial mentality belied an ascription to the rights, freedoms, and liberties outlined in the American constitution. As military resistance proved futile for the Native Americans, several tribes opted for a policy based on appeasement ("United States Department of State Office of the Historian"). Several tribes tried to negotiate with the settlers, offering large swathes of land in exchange for living harmoniously alongside. Their efforts proved futile, as white land grabbers viewed Native Americans as obstacles to their business enterprises as well as to their sense of cultural superiority. The cultural assimilation of the Cherokees in particularly proved to be ironically disastrous to the tribe, because "the more literate, prosperous, and politically organized the Cherokees made themselves, the more resolved they became to keep what remained of their land and improve it for their own benefit," (Howe 345).

Moreover, several Native tribes and particularly the Seminole, advocated on behalf of runaway slaves and actively aided and abetted them, as well as traded with free blacks (Howe 342). Their strategic allegiances underscored the need to bind together with other tribes and disenfranchised groups in opposition to slavery, disempowerment, and discrimination. Whereas the Monroe administration acknowledged the legality of treaties and legal claims to native-held land, the Jackson administration flagrantly ignored the law and the underlying values of the Constitution. Most notably, in Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall had ruled if not strongly, at least tacitly, in favor of Cherokee sovereignty. The case featured the unusual alliance between some missionary Christian groups like those headed by Samuel Worcester working on behalf of the "civilized" tribes. When the government of the state of Georgia realized how politically powerful a Christian-Native alliance might become, the governor of the state ousted the missionaries. Worcester and several other missionaries were arrested for remaining on tribal land and eventually brought the matter to the Supreme Court in Worcester v. Georgia. The case was argued on the grounds that the state of Georgia could not have any legal jurisdiction over what transpires on Native land, even if those lands happen to fall within the geographic boundaries of the state of Georgia. Essentially the case highlighted the tension between states' rights advocates and federalists. Marshall ruled that the Cherokees were legally sovereign, and that the state of Georgia had no jurisdiction over natives.

Andrew Jackson blatantly "refused" the ruling and proceeded to effectively break the law, inciting anti-Indian sentiment throughout the South (Miles 519). Jackson arrogantly and famously stated, "Well, John Marshall has made his decision: now let him enforce it!" (cited by Miles 519). In this way, Jackson became a leading figurehead of pro-white sentiments in the South, an attitude that would foment the tensions that eventually led to the Civil War. Jackson and other anti-Indian activists paradoxically supported the right of the federal government to forcibly remove Indians, while denying the right of the federal government to intervene on behalf of the same. The very same hypocritical ideologies underwrote pro-slavery ideology, in which the federal government would continually revert to states' rights when it came to allowing slave economies to prosper, but then passed federal legislation like the Fugitive Slave Act.

A perceived sense of white cultural and moral superiority over all non-whites, coupled with self-righteousness, underwrote the Indian Removal Act and other deleterious legislation.

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Andrew Jackson viewed Native Americans as being "savages who threatened American settlers and republican virtues," (Manning and Wyatt 203). Racism was a deep-running stream in Southern white culture. For example, the Monroe administration heard, and acknowledged, arguments put forth by an 1824 Cherokee delegation to Washington. The delegation urged the Monroe administration to uphold land treaties and Cherokee sovereignty and Monroe agreed to his political demise; politically powerful "racists" in the South criticized Monroe and later celebrated the ascension of Jackson who was unabashedly racist in his policy and demeanor (Howe 345). Those very same racists that supported Jackson grew in number and political power in the South. Their clout skyrocketed after Jackson came to power and promoted the encroachment onto lands deemed part of the Cherokee nation.

Thus, white supremacist ideology permeated American law by the time the Indian Removal Act was passed. Racist policy makers gradually understood the political expediency of anti-federalism and started to work more strongly with state governments like that of Georgia. Just as "states' rights" became the calling card of pro-slavery advocates throughout the 19th century, so too did states' rights become the argument in favor of Indian removal. Although Chief Justice Marshall supported Cherokee sovereignty, it became increasingly difficult to determine whether the federal government indeed had jurisdiction over land use issues in Georgia. In his 1831 ruling on Cherokee Nation v. the State of Georgia, Chief Justice John Marshall declared that Indian Nations' "relation to the United States resembles that of a ward to his guardian." The discourse had clearly and irreversibly changed; no longer did the federal government engage the governments of aboriginal nations as if they were equal in stature and power -- as if the United States were engaging with England or France. With Cherokee Nation v. the State of Georgia, the Supreme Court ruled that Cherokee and hence, all other Native nations, were subordinate to the United States. Gone was any pretense of working in a climate of mutual respect and mutual benefit. The Native Americans had done all they could to create win-win scenarios but it was painfully clear where they really stood in the end: they and African-Americans were systematically denied legal or political status in the United States. Cherokee Nation v. the State of Georgia was the nail in the coffin for Natives, as the federal government determined that it would not support sovereignty and would cease protecting the rights and freedoms of native people.

The successive Marshall decisions paved the way for the Indian Removal Act. After the Supreme Court's decision in Cherokee Nation v. the State of Georgia, natives essentially had no rights whatsoever at the state or the federal level. The federal government was its last hope against an increasingly racist and greed-driven South, and now that the federal government divested itself of its legal, political, and ethical responsibility, native tribes like the Cherokee had no allies at either the state or federal level. The Marshall decisions were based on the principle of "right of discovery," the counterpart to Manifest Destiny. A "right of discovery" overrides a "right of occupancy," at least when the "right of discovery" is believed to belong to whites. Also hypocritical was the fact that the Marshall decision in Cherokee Nation v. the State of Georgia essentially claimed that the federal government had no jurisdiction over Indian affairs because the Indian nations were not "foreign," but at the same time led to the federal government having the real jurisdiction to enforce the Indian Removal Act.

After all legal recourse had been exhausted, the affected Native American tribes that had worked hard over several generations to maintain peace and mutual prosperity then turned to militaristic solutions, much as the European colonial governments decided to resort to military opposition to encroaching British tyranny. Some Native groups like the Creek fought as hard as possible via military and legalistic means, but all ultimately failed. The Creek and Seminole Wars represented some of the most formidable fighting on the part of Native Americans in the….....

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