THE REMOVAL OF THE SOUTHERN INDIANS
It was not by chance that the Jacksonian period made large contribution to the working out of the ultimate relations of the red man with his white rival and conqueror. Jackson was himself an old frontier soldier, who never doubted that it was part of the natural order of things that conflict between the two peoples should go on until the weaker was dispossessed or exterminated. The era was one in which the West guided public policy; and it was the West that was chiefly interested in further circumscribing Indian lands, trade, and influence. In Jackson’s day, too, the people ruled; and it was the adventurous, pushing, land-hungry common folk who decreed that the red man had lingered long enough in the Middle West and must now move on.
The pressure of the white population upon the Indian lands was felt both in the Northwest and in the Southwest; but the pressure was unevenly applied in the two sections. North of the Ohio there was simply one great glacier-like advance of the white settlers, driving westward before it practically all of the natives who did not perish in the successive attempts to roll back the wave of conquest upon the Alleghanies. The redskins were pushed from Ohio into Indiana, from Indiana into Illinois, from Illinois and Wisconsin into Iowa and Minnesota; the few tribal fragments which by treaty arrangement remained behind formed only insignificant “islands” in the midst of the fast-growing flood of white population.
In the South the great streams of migration were those that flowed down the Ohio, filling the back lands on each side, and thence down the Mississippi to its mouth. Hence, instead of pressing the natives steadily backward from a single direction, as in the North, the whites hemmed them in on east, west, and north; while to the southward the Gulf presented a relentless barrier. Powerful and populous tribes were left high and dry in Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama—peoples who in their day of necessity could hope to find new homes only by long migrations past the settled river districts that lay upon their western frontiers.
Of these encircled tribes, four were of chief importance: the Creeks, the Cherokees, the Choctaws, and the Chickasaws. In 1825 the Creeks numbered twenty thousand, and held between five and six million acres of land in western Georgia and eastern Alabama. The Cherokees numbered about nine thousand and had even greater areas, mainly in northwestern Georgia, but to some extent also in northeastern Alabama and southeastern Tennessee. The Choctaws, numbering twenty-one thousand, and the Chickasaws, numbering thirty-six hundred, together held upwards of sixteen million acres in Mississippi—approximately the northern half of the State—and a million and a quarter acres in western Alabama. The four peoples thus numbered fifty-three thousand souls, and held ancestral lands aggregating over thirty-three million acres, or nearly the combined area of Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Furthermore, they were no longer savages. The Creeks were the lowest in civilization; but even they had become more settled and less warlike since their chastisement by Jackson in 1814. The Choctaws and Chickasaws lived in frame houses, cultivated large stretches of land, operated workshops and mills, maintained crude but orderly governments, and were gradually accepting Christianity. Most advanced of all were the Cherokees. As one writer has described them, they “had horses and cattle, goats, sheep, and swine. They raised maize, cotton, tobacco, wheat, oats, and potatoes, and traded with their products to New Orleans. They had gardens, and apple and peach orchards. They had built roads, and they kept inns for travelers. They manufactured cotton and wool. … One of their number had invented an alphabet for their language. They had a civil government, imitated from that of the United States.” Under these improved conditions all of the tribes were growing in numbers and acquiring vested rights which it would be increasingly difficult to deny or to disregard.
A good while before Jackson entered the White House the future of these large, settled, and prosperous groups of red men began to trouble the people of Georgia, Alabama, and other Southern States. The Indians made but little use of the major part of their land; vast tracts lay untrodden save by hunters. Naturally, as the white population grew and the lands open for settlement became scarcer and poorer, the rich tribal holdings were looked upon with covetous eyes. In the decade following the War of 1812, when cotton cultivation was spreading rapidly over the southern interior, the demand that they be thrown open for occupation to white settlers became almost irresistible.
Three things, obviously, could happen. The tribes could be allowed to retain permanently their great domains, while the white population flowed in around them; or the lands could be opened to the whites under terms looking to a peaceful intermingling of the two peoples; or the tribes could be induced or compelled to move en masse to new homes beyond the Mississippi. The third plan was the only one ever considered by most people to be feasible, although it offered great difficulties and was carried out only after many delays.
The State which felt the situation most keenly was Georgia, partly because there an older and denser population pressed more eagerly for new lands, partly—it must be admitted—because lands obtained by cession were, under the practice of that State, distributed among the people by lottery. The first move in this direction was to dispossess the Creeks. As far back as 1802, when Georgia made her final cession of western lands to United States, the latter agreed to extinguish the Indian title to lands within the State whenever it could be done “peaceably and on reasonable terms.” This pledge the Georgians never allowed the federal authorities to forget. After 1815 several large tracts were liberated. But by that date the State wanted unbroken jurisdiction over all of the territory within her limits, and her complaints of laxness on the part of the Federal Government in bringing this about became no less frequent than vigorous.
Near the close of his Administration President Monroe sent two commissioners to procure a general cession; and at Indian Spring a treaty was concluded in which the Creeks ceded practically all of their lands between the Flint and the Chattahoochee rivers. The Senate ratified the treaty, and the Georgians were elated. But investigation showed that the Creeks who stood behind the agreement represented only an insignificant fraction of the nation, and President Adams refused to allow Troup, the irate Georgian Governor, to proceed with the intended occupation until further negotiations should have taken place. Stormy exchanges of views followed, in the course of which the Governor more than once reminded Adams that Georgia was “sovereign on her own soil.” But in 1826 and 1827 treaties were obtained finally extinguishing Creek titles in the State. Land west of the Mississippi was promised to all Creeks who would go there.