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On May 28, 1830 the Indian removal act was signed by President Andrew Jackson. Although many opposed this act and felt that it robbed the Native Americans of the land that the government gave to them President Jackson still passed the act. Daniel Webster and Henry Clay opposed the Indian Removal Bill, but its most bitterly outspoken opponent was Davy Crockett. This act moved Native American Tribes from Georgia and other southern states to west of the Missippi River. President Jackson passed the law because he felt that that was the safest and most productive way to preserve peace between the Native Americans and the white Americans, but there could have been more thought put into the plan or there could have been a support system put into place to help the Natives succeed.

No one who helped to pass this act paid attention to the fact that the Natives from the south were not used to dealing with land like in the Great Plains and the fact that the act would put all of the tribes close together and that some tribes were not to found of each other. With all of these problems most of the Natives still choses to comply and to move to the new territory. The Choctaws of Mississippi started the journey in 1831 and ended in 1833, and the Creeks of Alabama in 1836. These migrations often turned into forced marches during which many died. The Choctaws lost one-fourth of their people before arriving in Oklahoma, while the Creeks lost 3,500 of the 15,000 who began the journey.

Not all of the Native Americans complied as well as the others the Cherokees were not happy with the relocation plan and resisted being forced to move. In 1831, the Cherokees turned to the courts for defense against the Indian Removal Act and against the Georgia Legislature’s nullification of Cherokee laws. The cases wen to the Supreme Court three times. In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the Cherokee had “an unquestionable right” to their lands, but that they were "not a foreign state, in the sense of the Constitution" but rather a “domestic, dependent nation” and so the Cherokee could not sue in a United States court. Although this was a blow to the Cherokee case against Georgia, it made people wonder about the fairness of the Indian Removal Act. However, the following year the Supreme Court reversed itself and ruled that Indian tribes were indeed sovereign and immune from Georgia laws.

President Jackson refused to accept the Court’s decision. He obtained the signature of a Cherokee chief agreeing to relocation in the Treaty of New Echota, which Congress ratified against the protests of Daniel Webster and Henry Clay in 1835. The Cherokee signing party represented only a fraction of the Cherokee, and the majority followed Principal Chief John Ross in a desperate attempt to hold onto their land. This attempt faltered in 1838, when, under the guns of federal troops and Georgia state militia, the Cherokee tribe were forced to the dry plains across the Mississippi. The best evidence indicates that between three and four thousand out of the fifteen to sixteen thousand Cherokees died from the brutal conditions of the “Trail of Tears.”

With the exception of a small number of Seminoles still resisting removal in Florida, by the 1840s, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, no Indian tribes resided in the American South. In general terms, Jackson’s government succeeded. By the end of his presidency, he had signed into law almost seventy removal treaties, the result of which was to move nearly 50,000 eastern Indians to Indian Territory—defined as the region belonging to the United States west of the Mississippi River but excluding the states of Missouri and Iowa as well as the Territory of Arkansas—and open millions of acres of rich land east of the Mississippi to white settlers. Despite the vastness of the Indian Territory, the government intended that the Indians’ destination would be a more confined area—what later became eastern Oklahoma.

President Jackson’s plan was effective in opening up America to western expansion but his plan also caused many Native Americans to loses their lives while trying to relocate and they also were not put in a position to succeed when they reached the Great Plains the Native Americans had no prior knowledge of the land there therefore it was very difficult to grow food. President Jackson should have sent some supplies and more resources when he sent the natives to the Great Plains but I believe that his decision to send the Native Americans to the Great Plains was the best decision for them.

President Jackson could have also given the Native Americans more land because not all of the Native American Tribes got along with each other which led to conflict between the tribes and also led to more lives being taken.