The history of the Indians of the United States

Thèmes abordés

History of the Indians, united states, American Indians, USA, Choctaws, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creeks, Seminoles, Tribe

Résumé du document

There are different "types" of Indians ; here we speak about the Choctaws and the Cherokee. The later are the "leaders". Jackson, the American president, is trying to force them to leave their heartland. They are not willing to, therefore, they are starting to be civilized and ask for schools. They start to write in Indian (didn't exist before) which mean that they became literate and to communicate around the country.

They published a newspaper and also translated the Bible into Indian language. It all escalated and the Cherokees decided to put a responsible government in place, as well as formuling a legal code. It was financed by the USA. Soon, the Choctaws asked for the same treatment and so did Chickasaws. For the Creeks it was a little bit more difficult because they weren't very united. However, the Cherokee did manage to put in place schools and to make them adopt a solemn declaration.

Extraits

[...] A new Era for the Indians had begun. The Cherokee now had their own government, and homes. But it didn't last very long. Jackson still wanted the Indians to leave, he advised Georgia to continue its persecution against them. Later on, during a land lottery, many Cherokee lost their property and had to leave the state. Emigration to the West began to be seen as being inevitable. Soon the Indian press was confiscated by Georgia. The state of Georgia did everything they could to withdraw the Indians. [...]

[...] Most of the Indians decided to join the Cherokee, one of few tribes left. In Oklahoma, there were some problems such as acts of hostility against the settlers and the secretary of war decided to remove the tribe to insure security. Since then, the Indians has been seen as enemies. The military was hunting doing Creeks and Cherokees and leaving them in the middle of nowhere, or slavering them. The Creeks have lost almost half of their population in these acts. [...]

[...] The state refused, saying that the price he was offering was too high. Ross didn't agree, and the council let him go to Washington to negotiate the price. However, while he was going there, some of the Georgian Guards arrested him and put him in jail, even though no charges were brought against him. Finally, the lands were sold for 5 million dollars and the Cherokee agreed to leave the state of Georgia within the next 3 years. About 100 years later, Georgia expressed sadness and restituted the land to the Indians. [...]

[...] Jackson wanted to remove the Indians from the East and force them to move to the West. Some states where they lived decided to establish a law making it illegal for an Indian to press charges against a white man. The US government was supposedly “incapable” to revise state laws. Most of the Choctaws had to leave Mississippi and move to the West. In Mississippi a treaty has been made since then stating that the Indians had “individual farms” only for them. [...]

[...] The Major of Arkansas said that it would be a good idea if white people could go into the land of the Indians to give them knowledge of civilization. The commissioner of Indian affairs accepted the offer. He knew that if he wanted the Indians to have a land they couldn't stay as aliens, they had to participate and join the “country”. They started to integrate the society, for example, when an indian student had good grades, he would go to a US school for further education that the Indians couldn't provide. [...]