On May 28, 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act. The bill allowed the federal government to negotiate with Southeastern Native American tribes for their ancestral lands in states such as Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. As a result, some 60,000 Native Americans were forced west into “Indian Territory” (now Oklahoma). Mass migration claimed more than 4,000 lives and became known as the Trail of Tears.
At the time, Jackson said the withdrawal would “immeasurably strengthen the southwest border” and allow new states like Alabama and Mississippi to “advance rapidly in terms of population, wealth and power.” At the end of his presidency in 1837, his administration negotiated nearly 70 return treaties that led to the resettlement of 50,000 East Indians to Indian territory. Twenty-five million acres of land were now released for white settlement in the east and therefore used for the expansion of slavery.
Some tribes, including the Cherokees, refused to leave their homes and were driven out by the US military between 1838 and 1839. Thousands of Native Americans died traveling thousands of miles in bad weather to unknown territory they had to call their home.
By 1940, almost all Native American tribes were driven west, and the Indian Removal Act had achieved its goal.
READ MORE: How Native Americans struggled to survive on the trail of tears
