Jackson and the Trail of Tears
* What: The forced removal of the Five Civilized Tribes, the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole. Except for the Seminole and one faction of the Creek, all had long peaceful relations with the US. Many Cherokee and Creek were allies of the US against the British during the War of 1812.
* All Five Tribes adapted Anglo-American institutions and values in an attempt to avoid conflict with the US, including capitalism, Christianity, literacy, and even a small number of slave owners. (For all five tribes except the Cherokee, though legally “slaves,” Blacks were more de facto sharecroppers in a tribute relationship with their “masters” and also sometimes adopted into Native families.) None of the five tribes were a military threat, and all had or would later ally themselves with the US military in an attempt to avoid conflict. Some Creek tribal members even had earlier adopted Andrew Jackson. A Cherokee warrior, Junaluska, saved his life during battle.
* The Body Count: 12,500 to 16,500 American Indians of the Five Tribes dead, another 40,000 forcibly removed from their homelands. 4,000-8,000 Cherokee, 500 Chickasaws, 2,500 Choctaw, at least 3,000 Creeks, and about 2,400 Seminole dead of starvation, disease, cold weather, and warfare.
* The number of Black slaves dying during forced removal is unknown. Estimates are there were 10,000 to 15,000 Black slaves owned by a perhaps 5% minority of the Five Tribes who were slave owners. If these slaves died at the same rates as the Five Tribes, proportionately there would perhaps have been 3, 000 to 4,000 deaths. But it is quite likely their death rates would have been even higher.
As cases of ethnic cleansing, forced removal, and causing large numbers of almost entirely civilian deaths, the Trail of Tears was clearly genocide, and Jackson was directly responsible for it.
* Who Also Gets the Blame:
* President Martin Van Buren continued the ethnic cleansing set in motion by Jackson. Most Cherokee were forcibly removed under Van Buren using the methods and plans begun by Jackson. Van Buren also continued the Second Seminole War begun by Jackson, and forcibly removed many Seminole by boat from Florida to what became Oklahoma Territory.
* Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams had all previously called for the removal of American Indians to west of the Mississippi River. However, while Monroe had gone to war against the Seminole, neither Jefferson nor Adams called for using force, and none of the three used fraudulent treaties as Jackson did. Adams in fact tried to halt the forced removal of the Choctaw nation by the fraudulent Treaty of Dancing Rabbit, and likely would have been able to halt further removals of Native tribes. (See Section Nine.)
* The Democratic Party at that time was originally the party of white slave-owning plantation owners in the South. But for the first time, property restrictions had been lifted in most states and many poor white males could vote. The party sought a way to appeal to poor whites and this was the main reason they pushed for forced removal. Jackson had as his campaign slogan “Vote Yourself a Farm.” Democratic racists stood squarely behind Jackson’s ethnic cleansing, voting for it overwhelmingly in Congress. The rival Whig Party was the main opposition, along with the Baptist, Methodist, and Quaker Churches.
* Anglo-American colonists in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, and North Carolina were the main part of the American public pushing for forced removal. Perhaps half of all white Americans, especially in the north and in the Whig Party, opposed removal.
* In 1976 a Ku Klux Klan leader, speechwriter for George Wallace, and suspect in several bombings and other murders by the name of Asa Carter reinvented himself as “Forrest” Carter and wrote Education of Little Tree. Carter claimed to be Cherokee and that his book of fiction was about his life as a Cherokee boy learning about the Trail of Tears. Carter spread the false claim that Natives refused to cry on the Trail of Tears, and that their white neighbors were the only ones to cry. The image of the Stoic Indian is racist and without basis in truth. There are many accounts of Cherokee and other Natives crying from losing their loved ones on the Trail.
* Again, it was largely white colonists in southern states pushing for forced removal so they could steal Native lands. Carter's intent in writing Little Tree was to shift blame for the Trail away from southern white racists exclusively onto the federal government. Many readers of Little Tree mistakenly think it is accurate, ignoring its obvious falsehoods and stereotypes. Oprah Winfrey, for one, foolishly included it on her book club until public objections got it pulled. Even after her embarrassing episode, Winfrey issued a statement defending Little Tree.
* Elias Boudinot and Stand Watie's treasonous faction of Cherokees. Two plantation slave owners who had assimilated southern Anglo-American values, Boudinot and Watie signed the Treaty of New Echota, giving up all Cherokee rights to their homeland though neither man had any authority to do so. This became the legal basis for the theft of Cherokee lands and the forced removal from their homelands. For their treason, both were condemned to death by the Cherokee Nation. Boudinot was captured and executed. Watie escaped.
* During the Civil War, Watie led a pro-Confederate faction of Cherokee. Watie and his guerillas targeted other Cherokee, and almost always civilian noncombatants, killing many, burning Cherokee homes and crops. As many as 7,000 Cherokee died during the Civil War, possibly more than on the Trail itself. Most Cherokee deaths in the Civil War are rightly blamed on Watie's terror tactics.
* Amazingly, after the Civil War the Cherokee Nation chose to forgive Watie and his guerillas in the name of tribal unity. Some of Watie's men refused the offer, preferring to live among and only marry whites, becoming even more highly assimilated and self-hating. In the early twenty first century, some of the descendants of Watie's faction tried to form a “tribe,” the Southern Cherokee, in an attempted riverboat gambling scheme. The three actual Cherokee tribes opposed the scheme, which quickly failed. The “tribe” is now divided among rival groups, each accusing the other of crimes.
* What is important to note about Jackson is the level of his fanatic hatred. Jackson built his entire career upon fighting Indians. In his determination to carry out ethnic cleansing, Jackson pushed for forced removal virtually his entire two terms. He even defied the Supreme Court, the only president to do so openly, when they ruled the Treaty of New Echota was fraudulent. The manner of the removal in each case was callous, done with no warning, thus leading to many deaths by exposure, starvation, and disease. Without Jackson, almost all of this ethnic cleansing would not have happened.
* The Choctaw were forced out first, given rations of a handful of corn and one turnip a day. The Creek Tribe was forced out by a fraudulent treaty, and managed to get the treaty annulled by US courts. The state of Georgia threw the tribe out anyway. The Seminole fought three wars against the US. They won the first two wars. The third war ended in a stalemate, thus most reluctantly agreed to go. Only the Chickasaw were given somewhat more time to prepare, thus their deaths were in the hundreds, not thousands. The Cherokee actually took their case all the way to the Supreme Court, twice, winning the second time. Congress's vote came very close to voting to block Jackson's ethnic cleansing.
* The Five Tribes all hold memorials to those lost in the forced removals. This shameful episode is often taught in many public schools as among the worst behavior the federal government and US citizens carried out against American Indians. Since the civil rights era, Jackson has been reassessed rather harshly by historians based largely on his actions against the Five Tribes..
* His standing has dropped sharply. Where once Jackson was regarded as a strong president and one who represented the common (white) man, now he is is judged as the first populist to channel the rage and racism of poorer whites against minorities. In recent years there are calls to remove Jackson from the twenty dollar bill for his genocide against American Indians and for being a slave trader.