They hoped that if they gave up a good deal of their land, they could keep at least some a part of it.

The appetite of the settlers for land would not abate, so the Indians adopted a strategy of appeasement.

Under this kind of pressure, Native American tribes-specifically the Creek, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw-realized that they could not defeat the Americans in war. Over the next decade, Jackson led the way in the Indian removal campaign, helping to negotiate nine of the eleven major treaties to remove Indians. He then forced upon the Indians a treaty whereby they surrendered to the United States over twenty-million acres of their traditional land-about one-half of present day Alabama and one-fifth of Georgia. In 1814, Major General Andrew Jackson led an expedition against the Creek Indians climaxing in the Battle of Horse Shoe Bend (in present day Alabama near the Georgia border), where Jackson’s force soundly defeated the Creeks and destroyed their military power. Indeed, the first major transfer of land occurred only as the result of war. Although Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe argued that the Indian tribes in the Southeast should exchange their land for lands west of the Mississippi River, they did not take steps to make this happen. Since Indian tribes living there appeared to be the main obstacle to westward expansion, white settlers petitioned the federal government to remove them. In cases where this failed, the government sometimes violated both treaties and Supreme Court rulings to facilitate the spread of European Americans westward across the continent.Īs the 19th century began, land-hungry Americans poured into the backcountry of the coastal South and began moving toward and into what would later become the states of Alabama and Mississippi. Government used treaties as one means to displace Indians from their tribal lands, a mechanism that was strengthened with the Removal Act of 1830. Diplomatic History > 1830-1860 Indian Treaties and the Removal Act of 1830 You are in: Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs > Bureau of Public Affairs > Bureau of Public Affairs: Office of the Historian > Timeline of U.S.

John marshall indian removal act