People's History: Indians 1800-1840 (Chap 7)
Music: Twilight in Your Eyes
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Summary Behold the Christian spirit of the pioneers: the Indians evicted on a "Trail of Tears." Chapter The "right of soil" was promised Indians, to keep their land as first Americans. Instead they underwent a culture shock, beginning at the shores of Plymouth Rock and spreading west with unrelenting speed. The Indians were pressured to concede their land to 'legal' owners of a deed - as if a group of people could succeed in buying air! In 1812 we fought another war with England, as we sought expansion to the land they claimed. The war produced a hero, Andy Jackson; more renowned was he for fighting Cherokees and Creeks and Choctaws. Nothing could appease his lust for cleansing states from Florida to Tennessee, to make America a "Christian" land. Some voices, barely heard, opposed the fate the Indians endured, like Henry Clay's. But treaties of deceit would relocate the Shawnee and defeat the Seminole, "Great Father" promising and taking back, and even coveting the arid desert land once signed away as worthless. Marching on a passageway to unfamiliar lands, the Cherokee, once-mighty nation, beaten refugee, exposed and hungry, numbed by cold and fears, succumb in thousands on a "Trail of Tears" as President Van Buren testifies to their retreat: his "pleasure to apprise." |