1830-1920: Removal to the 1920 Nadir
Land Transfers 1820-1864
The Removal Bill
Became law in 1830
hotly contested in Congress
defined area in the Plains, esp. Oklahoma
allocated money for improvements, removal, and 1 year's subsistence
Divide and Conquer
- Removal negotiations created divisions among the southeastern groups
- treaties were negotiated separately with the groups
The "Five Civilized Tribes"
- Cherokee
- Choctaw
- Chickasaw
- Creek
- Seminole
Chickasaws and Creeks
- Chickasaws
- Signed treaty in 1832 for substantial amount, and were moved to a part of the Choctaw reserve in Oklahoma
- Creeks
- Signed treaty but delayed in moving. White encroachment led to the 1836 Creek War
Worcester v. State of Georgia
- supported U.S. claims to land, but not enforced by Jackson or Georgia
The Cherokee Struggle
- 1827 Adopted a constitution modeled on the U.S.'s
- Declared sovereignty over territory
- Filed for allotments of ancestral lands
- Supreme Court: Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia
- court ruled the Cherokees were "domestic dependent nations"
- Victories weren't enforced
The Cherokee Trail of Tears
- 1838 - left late and caught by early winter
Seminoles
- Less cohesive than the others, no single agreement could be reached
- Signed treaties in 1832 and 1833, but these were not accepted by other Seminoles
- War between Federal troops and the Seminoles raged from 1835 to 1842
Contact and changing ethnic identities
The Black Seminoles
- unity of the two groups was split in the intense battle
- Refugees from the southeast combined forces in Florida
- "This, you may be assured, is a Negro and not an Indian war" -Jesup
- 1,500 Federal troops killed; cost $40M
- In the Indian Territories, Seminoles were mistreated
- 1849 ruling that Black Seminoles were slaves -- escape to Mexico
Seminole Wars
After Removal
- Annexation of Texas - 1845
- Mexican War - 1848
- Increasing pressure by expanding Anglos
Texas
- Sam Houston's policies
- pacification and mutual defense
- Mirabeau B. Lamar
- expulsion and extermination
Texas Reservations
- When Texas entered the Union, it didn't cede public lands to the Federal Government
- compromise allowed for two reservations on the Brazos, Comanches and everyone else
Indians in the Civil War
- The Revolutionary War dilemma replayed -- whom to fight with?
- "5 Civilized Tribes" fought on both sides
- Confederate ties led to reduced rights in Indian Territories
1865-1900 War on the Plains
- Cheyenne vs. Seventh Cavalry in battle near Fort Wallace on June 26, 1867.
Major battles, 1855-1865
Land Transfers, 1865-1987
Squeezing the Indian Territories
- Land in Oklahoma purchased from the 5 C.T.
- Indians from northern plains and north were moved to Oklahoma
- Fox, Potawatami, Osage, Iowa, Nebraska Pawnee, S.D. Ponca
- 5 C.T. had to emancipate slaves
Congress's Position
Ulysses S. Grant's pension problem