Summary
Highlights
In 1803, the US 'bought' vast lands in the Louisiana Purchase for $15 million, but France only sold imperial rights, not actual ownership. The land belonged to numerous Native American tribes, who had inhabited it for thousands of years. The US initially vowed to acquire this land ethically, with George Washington advocating for 'justice and humanity' through formal treaties and fair payments, aiming to avoid the imperialistic practices they had just escaped.
As European settlers poured into the US, initial land acquisition through treaties was transactional. However, many tribes refused to give up ancestral lands for farming equipment, leading to a shift in US policy. The growing nation's need for land and impatient settlers led the government to resort to dirty tactics: wars, forced treaties, exploiting tribal divisions, tricking leaders into signing bogus agreements, and repeatedly violating treaties when valuable resources like gold were discovered.
In the Deep South, five large Native American nations—Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muskogee, and Seminole—were known as the 'Five Civilized Tribes' due to their adoption of some European customs. They had treaties acknowledging their land rights. However, the burgeoning cotton industry in the fertile Black Belt Prairie, locked up by these Native lands, fueled a desire for expansion. Georgia aggressively sought to remove the Cherokee, leading them to sue the state in the Supreme Court, which the Cherokee won, affirming their sovereign rights.
President Andrew Jackson, who believed negotiating with Native Americans was ridiculous, famously defied the Supreme Court's ruling. He instead pushed for the Indian Removal Act of 1830, a law that used taxpayer money to forcibly relocate tribes to uninhabitable 'Indian Territory' in the Great Plains, falsely promising they would never be disturbed again. This act, despite its facade of voluntary and fair negotiation, was a premeditated campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Between 1831 and 1838, nearly all members of the five tribes, around 100,000 people, were expelled from their lands. They were forced to march more than 1,000 miles through harsh conditions, a journey the Cherokee called 'The Trail Where We Cried' or 'The Trail of Tears.' Their lands were then occupied by cotton farmers and their slaves. This systematic, documented ethnic cleansing, enshrined in law, tragically served as a reference point for future atrocities, including Hitler's plans for Eastern Europe.