After demanding both political and military action on removing Native American Indians from the southern states of America in 1829, President Andrew Jackson signed this into law on May 28, 1830. Although it only gave the right to negotiate for their withdrawal from areas to the east of the Mississippi river and that relocation was supposed to be voluntary, all of the pressure was there to make this all but inevitable. All the tribal leaders agreed after Jackson’s landslide election victory in 1832.
It is generally acknowledged that this act spelled the end of Indian Rights to live in those states under their own traditional laws. They were forced to assimilate and concede to US law or leave their homelands. The Indian Nations themselves were force to move and ended up in Oklahoma.
The five major tribes affected were the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole. These were called The Civilised Tribes that had already taken on a degree of integration into a more modern westernised culture, such as developing written language and learning to read and write.
It overturned the more concessionary attitude of ex-President George Washington that aimed for ‘acculturation’ after debate with the Indian Nations. Even in those distant times, there was heated debate in congress with such famous names as the future president Abraham Lincoln and Davy Crockett speaking out against it. Now it is considered with serious negativity by all involved.
Articles Featuring Indian Removal Act From History Net Magazines
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Andrew Jackson and the Indian Removal Act
By Robert V. Remini
The great Cherokee Nation that had fought the young Andrew Jackson back in 1788 now faced an even more powerful and determined man who was intent on taking their land. But where in the past they had resorted to guns, tomahawks, and scalping knives, now they chose to challenge him in a court of law. They were not called a ‘civilized nation’ for nothing. Many of their leaders were well educated; many more could read and write; they had their own written language, thanks to Sequoyah, a constitution, schools, and their own newspaper. And they had adopted many skills of the white man to improve their living conditions. Why should they be expelled from their lands when they no longer threatened white settlements and could compete with them on many levels? They intended to fight their ouster, and they figured they had many ways to do it. As a last resort they planned to bring suit before the Supreme Court.
Prior to that action, they sent a delegation to Washington to plead their cause. They petitioned Congress to protect them against the unjust laws of Georgia that had decreed that they were subject to its sovereignty and under its complete jurisdiction. They even approached the President, but he curtly informed them that there was nothing he could do in their quarrel with the state, a statement that shocked and amazed them.
So the Cherokees hired William Wirt to take their case to the Supreme Court. In the celebrated Cherokee Nation v. Georgia he instituted suit for an injunction that would permit the Cherokees to remain in Georgia without interference by the state. He argued that they constituted an independent nation and had been so regarded by the United States in its many treaties with them.

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Speaking for the majority of the court, Chief Justice John Marshall handed down his decision on March 18, 1831. Not surprisingly, as a great American nationalist, he rejected Wirt’s argument that the Cherokees were a sovereign nation, but he also rejected Jackson’s claim that they were subject to state law. The Indians were ‘domestic dependent nations,’ he ruled, subject to the United States as a ward to a guardian. Indian territory was part of the United States but not subject to action by individual states.
When the Cherokees read Marshall’s decision they honestly believed that the Nation had won the case, that Georgia lacked authority to control their lives and property, and that the courts would protect them. The Supreme Court, the Principal Chief told his people, decided ‘in our favor.’ So they stayed right where they were, and missionaries encouraged them to stand fast.
But they figured without Andrew Jackson — the man the Cherokees called Sharp Knife — and the authorities of Georgia. In late
