On Indian Removal

Content Warning: This section discusses ethnic cleansing.

A number of factors resulted in the United States’s policy of forced removal of Indigenous peoples off their lands. Since its inception, the United States sought to expand its footprint in North America. Some of the region’s earliest European settlers (e.g., the Puritans) felt a divine calling to establish and grow a model society; others sought land for economic gain, and for new immigrants in particular, it was often easier to gain a foothold in the territories than in the more urbanized states. The US government had pragmatic reasons for supporting such expansion, as it feared the possibility of European powers claiming land adjacent to the US and threatening the new nation’s existence—a concern Jackson alludes to when he speaks of “strengthen[ing] the southwestern frontier and render[ing] the adjacent States strong enough to repel future invasions without remote aid” (2).

this expansionism led to many conflicts with Indigenous peoples. While many believed that the conversion of the Indigenous Americans to Christianity would help to alleviate the skirmishes, others believed that Indigenous Americans did not and could not share in the United States’s developing identity. Conflicts intensified in many southern states due to these regions’ agrarian lifestyles and economies, and United States citizens and landowners seeking to drive out Indigenous peoples reverted to vigilantism.