The more important point, though, is that the vast majority of Indians removed had committed no moral or legal infractions yet were subjected to legalized kidnapping and murder for the “crime” of being of the wrong blood.
Since the Removal Act stipulated only voluntary relocations, these kidnappings and murders were not legalized, unless there is some other law that authorized them.
What problems? The only “problem” posed by the Cherokee is that he occupied land that politicians, speculators and developers wanted without having to acquire in a free market exchange.
The problem was the Indian position that since they had wandered around the state of Georgia (and elsewhere), they owned it and had the right to kill any white man that came on their land without permission.
It wasn’t voluntary. It was enforced at the points of guns and bayonets. From the journal of Private John G. Burnett: “I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven at bayonet point into stockades. And in the chill of a drizzling rain on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle or sheep into six hundred and forty-five wagons and started toward the west.” http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/learning_…val/burnett.cfm
I think this presents only one side of the story. How many of these “helpless Cherokees” had previously participated in the murder of whites? How many had given aid and comfort to those Indians that were effectively America’s first terrorists? How many had killed white hunters caught on Indian land?
When you judge the actions of others, you must judge them in context. For instance, Lincoln, the “great emancipator”, was in fact an avowed racist. He stated explicitly that blacks were inherently inferior and he favored deporting every black man, woman and child to Africa or to Central America. As president, he worked toward that goal. But to judge him, we must bear in mind what was known about blacks back then, not from the perspective of what we know today. Thus, I would not condemn Lincoln morally for his racism – I would say he was mistaken, not evil, whereas any such attitude today is evil.
(Slavery, however, was evil. Even if there were reason to believe, as Lincoln did, that blacks were intellectually inferior and incapable of existing with the white man, there was no reason to believe them to be rightless creatures.)
Similarly, we must judge the white man’s actions toward the Indian in the context of what was known then, not now.
When I came through the education system 35 years ago, I was taught that the Indian problem was a complex situation aggravated by atrocities commited by both sides – and that both sides broke numerous treaties and agreements. The Indians – including the Cherokees – had one non-negotiable demand: they wanted a large terroritory reserved exclusively for Indians with the white man forbidden. The settlers had a conflicting demand: the right to settle on otherwise vacant land.
The Removal Act was an attempt to reconcile those demands. Was it wrong? Yes. Was it evil? I don’t think so, not viewed in the context of what was known then.
The notion that “the only good Indian is a dead Indian” seems outrageous to us now, but like Lincoln’s plan for universal black deportation, it may not have been an unreasonable notion given what was known at the time.
Agreed, those claims may not have been entirely legitimate. But the Indian Removal Act essentially nullified all Cherokee property, including all lands that had been tilled, all livestock that had been raised, all homes and villages that had been built. You don’t respond to someone’s unjustified claim by legally canceling every property title that person holds!
I agree. However, as near as I can tell, the Removal Act itself did not nullify anyone’s property rights.
Sorry Styles I’m not trying to be rude or anything, I just think it’s funny as hell. And I could never explain this to anyone outside this forum either. Damn!