Indian Removal Act

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The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was a law passed by the Twenty-first United States Congress in order to facilitate the relocation of Native American tribes living east of the Mississippi River in the United States to lands further west. The Removal Act, part of a U.S. government policy known as Indian Removal, was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830.^[1]

President Andrew Jackson called for an Indian Removal Act in his 1829 "State of the Union" message.

The Removal Act did not actually order the removal of any Native Americans. Rather, it authorized the President to negotiate land-exchange treaties with tribes living within the boundaries of existing U.S. states. In the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the U.S. had acquired a claim to a vast amount of land west of the Mississippi River. Before the passage of the Removal Act, treaties had been conducted to encourage Indian tribes to settle on this land—which would eventually become known as the "Indian Territory"—in exchange for their tribal lands in the East. The passage of the Removal Act greatly accelerated this land-exchange process.

The Removal Act was strongly supported in the South, where states were eager to gain access to lands inhabited by the "Five Civilized Tribes". In particular, Georgia, the largest state at that time, was involved in a contentious jurisdictional dispute with the Cherokee nation. President Jackson, who supported Indian removal primarily for reasons of national security, hoped removal would resolve the Georgia crisis. While Indian removal was, in theory, supposed to be voluntary, in practice great pressure was put on American Indian leaders to sign removal treaties. Most observers, whether they were in favor of the Indian removal policy or not, realized that the passage of the act meant the inevitable removal of most Indians from the states. Some American Indian leaders who had previously resisted removal now began to reconsider their positions, especially after Jackson's landslide reelection in 1832.

Most white Americans favored the passage of the Indian Removal Act, though there was significant opposition. Many Christian missionaries, most notably missionary organizer Jeremiah Evarts, agitated against passage of the Act. In Congress, U.S. Senator Theodore Frelinghuysen and Congressman David Crockett of Tennessee spoke out against the legislation. The Removal Act was passed after bitter debate in Congress.

The treaties enacted under the provisions of the Removal Act paved the way for the reluctant—and often forcible—emigration of tens of thousands of American Indians to the West. The first removal treaty signed after the Removal Act was the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek on September 27, 1830, in which Choctaws in Mississippi ceded land east of the river in exchange for payment and land in the West. The Treaty of New Echota (signed in 1835) resulted in the removal of the Cherokee on the Trail of Tears. For more details on the effects of the Removal Act, see Indian Removal.

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↑ The U.S. Senate passed the bill on 24 April 1830 (28-19), the U.S. House passed it on 26 May 1830 (102-97); Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians, Volume I (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), p. 206.