Thousands of Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, Delawares, Hurons, Potawatomis, Sauks, Seminoles, and Senecas died in the process of removal. And the government gave banks and other lenders the power to force Native Americans into punitive sales and forfeitures, rendering tens of thousands of Native Americans homeless in their own lands. Squatters and opportunists moved onto Native American lands both before and after tribes officially relocated. State and federal militias hunted, killed, and often scalped Native Americans. administrators and politicians gradually turned the voluntary removal into compulsory expulsion using a mix of legal and extralegal measures. The statute set off waves of litigation, mineral prospecting, and land speculation-not to mention waves of violence committed by nonnative settlers against Native Americans.Īs the historian Claudio Saunt shows in his new book, Unworthy Republic, U.S. This measure gave the president the authority to negotiate with Native American tribes for their fertile lands. Six months later, in the spring of 1830, he signed the Indian Removal Act into law. President Andrew Jackson-a slave-owning real estate speculator already famous for burning down Creek settlements and hounding the survivors of the Creek War of 1813–14-called for the “voluntary” migration of Native Americans to lands west of the Mississippi River.
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