Indian Removal Act or Trail of Tears

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Johan Arteaga Per.2 Why did the Americans wanted the Indian to the West? Indians have been here in the United States long before anyone. They had taught the first settlers how to survive on their own, until the aspect of expanding and claiming lands became an issue. For years after the first settlers came to America, Indians had been fighting for their land desperately. It is not until, 1830 when Andrew Jackson propose an act in removal of the Indians and push them to the west of the Mississippi Riverthe Indian removal act. At the turn of the nineteenth century, the Indian Removal was a US governmental policy with particular focus on the five civilized tribes of the South, to relocate the Native Americans which resided in their homelands east of the Mississippi to lands west not yet occupied by settlers. Today the state of Oklahoma is home to these numerous non-indigenous tribes and their lineages.Thomas Jefferson fathered the Indian Removal, by becoming the first presidential advocate to land hungry Americans. Settlers fueled by a deep seeded fear of Indians and consumed by greed believed that the Native American’s lands were prime agriculturally and further, that it was not fair that they were not allowed access to it. Continued expansion at the time was coined as the key to success, and that obtaining the Indian lands was in fact the only means to achieving this, settlers in turn viewed Indians as obstacles blocking the path of American progress. Then with greed, racism, and politics colonists pressured leaders and the government to acquire the lands.

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