History is the stories we choose to tell, propagated by winners and enforced by the

language used to tell these stories. We enshrine victories and losses in writing until there are

clear-cut winners and losers in history books. The language used to define the past is important;

it is how individuals reconcile information and the idea of an objective truth about the past.

There are issues that arise when individuals rely on language as their source of information.

Language, by definition, is subjective. It dictates the stance individuals take on an issue.

Economists have written about this idea as the notion of persuasion bias. When people use the

same language, the same types of word choice, to express an idea in a strongly connected social

network a consensus is reached among the people. This is most prevalent when a consensus is

reached regarding mutually confirming ideas; groups of people with similar beliefs reinforce

each other until the story being told becomes the dominant narrative (Forester, 2018).

With the growth of social media, social networks have grown more interconnected,

making persuasion bias more widespread. It thrives on the notions of repetition and the

predictability of behavior; when people’s beliefs exist on a left-right spectrum, they take

complicated notions and fit them into boxes that are either right and wrong. The use of society as

a tool for communication allows opinions to be shaped from all sides, however people tend to

isolate themselves in groups that share ideologies. Rather than surrounding themselves with

diverse ideological beliefs, individuals isolate themselves until their belief is the only belief that

they hear, thus an echo chamber reinforces ideas and beliefs. The things people read and hear tell

them opinions disguised as facts; as a result, the social networks people involve themselves in

dictate the opinions people are surrounded by (DeMarzo et. al, 2003). The concept of persuasion

bias has largely been used to explain political thought in the twenty-first century, but it can be
extrapolated to explain the political and social behavior surrounding the passage of the Indian

Removal Act in 1830.

A social network is not necessarily the modern social network we think of online. A

social network in the nineteenth century would have consisted of the people in the locality one is

actively involved in; cities, towns, religious groups, abolition groups, people of the same ethnic

background – all would have counted in the definition of the social networks that influenced

political thought in the period around the passage of the act. People in similar social circles

exhibited similar political positions; these positions acted on a left right spectrum, though not the

same left-right spectrum we exist on today as ideological positions have switched over time. I am

examining the way language determined the story that is told about Indian Removal. The

language on official government documents portrays a story that is vastly different from the

stories told in religious and Native American newspapers; these stories are combined to create

something new for history textbooks, creating a mishmash of a story about Indian Removal that

both glorifies the government for doing something necessary, and chastises the government for

displacing and wiping out an entire people. Despite the idea that the Jackson administration is

chastised for their actions in modern history books, there is no significant work regarding the

ways “the common man” or the man who opposed Indian Removal viewed the actions of the

government at the time.

In constructing this paper, I will outline how Indian Removal came to be in the nineteenth

century and what the reactions were to this political decision. In doing this, I will utilize

documents that came from the Jackson administration, treaties with Native American tribes,

newspaper articles, and secondary source writings to analyze the way language impacted how

people reacted to Indian Removal. In this case, I am using the work from the Jackson
administration to stand in for the beliefs of the “common man” in the nineteenth century. Since

Andrew Jackson was elected as the president for the common man, and represented the interests

of Midwestern America in the 1800s, his administration’s actions are being used to demonstrate

how the average American felt about Native Americans and Indian Removal; it was unlikely that

there was a majority dissent from the people regarding Indian Removal, as the act was enforced

despite complaints from the Supreme Court. At the same time, I am utilizing newspapers from

abolitionists, religious groups, and the translated English columns of Native American

newspapers to outline the opinions of the peoples who disagreed with the Jacksonian

administration on the topic of Indian Removal. While many people were in favor of the plans for

Indian Removal, others disagreed with it on a moral level, believing that forcing individuals from

their homes was morally abhorrent.

Starting with European arrival on the North American Continent, the relationship

between Native Americans and colonists has been turbulent. Native Americans, during the

colonial period were their own nations. These nations were the backbone for the democracy that

developed in the United States but the Native Americans that had helped develop this democracy

were less than human. Since the 1600s, they have been seen as barbarians and savages; less than

the White Man who was taking over with little regard for the needs or land holdings of the

peoples who had inhabited the areas. Wars and intentional persecution created hostile living

conditions. Despite the fact that Native Americans were their own civilizations with governing

structures to copied, they were subject to atrocities for centuries; systematically the United States

government worked to diminish the presence and subsequent role of Native Americans in North

America. The United States government went above and beyond to disregard the positions of

Native American Tribes as sovereign nations; historically the United States would make treaties
with these tribes because they functioned as independent nations, yet when it came time to ratify

and enforce these documents, they were ignored in favor of something the United States deemed

more important (Nation to Nation Exhibit, 2014). In this case, U.S desire for more land and land

free of Native Americans that White men could resettle for purposes they deemed better.

When treaties with Native Americans were not ignored, they were made in a way that

favored the holdings of the United States, and often harmed the Native Americans. The 1835

Treaty of New Echota is prime example of this practice. After the passage of the Indian Removal

Act, the U.S government was desperate to make headway in their plans to remove the Cherokee

from their lands. In 1832, the Cherokee had petitioned the Supreme Court to stop the cessation of

lands to White settlers who had been encroaching on their territory. The case, Worcester v.

Georgia, determined that in dealings with Native Americans, the Federal Government, not State

governments had the final say in matters. Thusly, the ruling made two points in quick

succession: Native American tribes are sovereign and cannot be controlled by the States in which

they reside, and that no one had the right to encroach on the territory of the Native Americans

nor control their lands without express Native American approval. In theory, the ruling

confirmed the role of the Native Americans as their own sovereign powers. Had the United

States government listened to the Supreme Court, or if the Supreme Court reflected the will of

the people, the ruling would have been enough to negate the power of the Indian Removal Act;

instead Andrew Jackson is famously misquoted as having said. “John Marshall has made his

decision, now let him enforce it.” In giving a voice to Native American issues and providing

them with the outlet to try and fight their misgrievances, Marshall went against the will of the

entire nation. Instead of furthering the nation’s agenda, Marshall argued that the Cherokee (and
thusly other Native American tribes) had a right to rule themselves; if they did not want to leave

their lands, they didn’t have to.

In 1835, the United States government resorted to signing a treaty with the Cherokee

people – The Treaty of New Echota. This treaty was ratified on false pretenses, making it

inherently unfair to the Native Americans involved. While the Treaty of New Echota was

negotiated by representatives of the Cherokee nation, the delegation that negotiated the treaty

were not official representatives of the Cherokee people. According to Chief John Ross in his

“Letter to the Senate and House of Representatives”, the delegation that negotiated the treaty

were false representatives, told not to go to Washington D.C. A small number of delegates sealed

the fate of an entire people; this treaty was negotiated with emphasis on a quick resolve between

the Cherokee people and the United States government. In the treaty, the United States

government agreed to an exchange: 5 million dollars and land in Oklahoma for the 7 million

acres of Cherokee land east of the Mississippi River (“Treaty of New Echota”, 1835). On the

surface, this appears to be a fair trade – and maybe it would have been had the treaty been

properly negotiated. Along with the land, the Cherokee Delegates essential relinquished the

Cherokee people of their rights as an independent nation. In trading the land, John Ross claims:

“[the Cherokee people] are stripped of every attribute of freedom and eligibility for legal

self-defence. Our property may be plundered before our eyes; violence may be committed on our

persons; even our lives may be taken away, and there is none to regard our complaints.We are

denationalized; we are disfranchised. We are deprived of membership in the human family! We

have neither land nor home, nor resting place that can be called our own.” (Chief John Ross,

Cherokee letter protesting the Treaty of New Echota)

 The Treaty of New Echota displaced the Cherokee people. It put them under the thumb of

the United States government; the treaty took the freedom the Cherokee people enjoyed as a

sovereign nation and made them the property of the United States. The treaty allowed the

Cherokee people to exist in a self-governing system, yet soon after the treaty was ratified by the

Senate, Andrew Jackson refused to acknowledge the role of the Cherokee government. The

Cherokee were given two years to leave their homes with the promise that when they arrived in

their new lands, they would be their own people whose land would not be taken again, nor would

it be incorporated into the United States.

Three years later, the Cherokee people were forcible removed from their homes,

regardless of the stipulations in the Treaty. They were not payed the 5 million dollars they were

promised and were forced to endure the unimaginable. The Trail of Tears, the direct result of The

Treaty of New Echota, forced 16,000 Native Cherokee from their homes in Florida to new land

in the Midwest. They waited for removal in camps where those that tried to leave were shot to

death, and those who waited for removal were ill, malnourished, and subject to sexual assault

(Hicks, 2011). The treaty, meant to help the Cherokee who were to be removed by force, did

more harm than good. Despite offers to allow the Cherokee their freedoms, they were

systematically stripped by the United States government that was given the power to

continuously check up on a people with whom they believed to be less than human. Rather than

giving the Cherokee an opportunity to improve their livelihoods, they were removed from their

homes, and murdered for land the United States government believed they deserved. The United

States government took advantage of a peoples who were at their wits end. When the Cherokee

had nothing left to give, the government kept taking, reducing them to a shell of the sovereign

nation who had fought for their rights to exist.

 The Indian Removal Act itself did what it could to strip Native Americans of their rights

as independent nation-states within the U.S. Where before they could choose where and how

they lived, the act allowed the President to remove Native Americans to Western lands as he saw

fit. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 is the first of many documents by the U.S government to

downplay the negative aspects of force removal and make it appear to be a choice the Native

Americans could opt in or out of:

“That in the making of any such exchange or exchanges, it shall and may be lawful for

the President solemnly to assure the tribe or nation with which the exchange is made, that the

United States will forever secure and guaranty to them, and their heirs or successors, the country

so exchanged with them.” (The Removal Act of 1830).

Looking at the language of official United States documents, one does not see the

atrocities laid out. Instead, the government perpetrated a strategy to make the forced removal of

the Native Americans from the Southeast appear to be a voluntary movement across the nation.

The language of Indian removal, as it is addressed by the Jacksonian administration is that of

positive ideas that would allow the Native Americans to not only be secure in their future, but

allow them to prosper once they reached the lands in the west.

Before the passage of the Indian Removal Act in September of 1830, Jackson wrote a

letter to the chiefs of the Chickasaw Tribes stating the following: “Brothers! If you are disposed

to remove say so, and state the terms you may consider just and equitable" (Jackson, August

1830). In this letter, Jackson appears both willing to forcibly remove the Native Americans, and

willing to give them whatever they want to make the process more efficient and beneficial to all

parties involved. It appears as if the Native Americans are given two options that allow them to

prosper in the United States when that was never the governments intentions; rather the president
is offering false pretenses and platitudes to foster a political agenda supported by the citizens of

the United States. What the president was doing was supported by the Constitution wherein the

President could regulate commerce with sovereign nations, such as Native American tribes. The

letter represents the beginning of a process of bribery, threats, and persuasion where in the

Native Americans were conned into giving up their homes. That notion is not represented in the

language of presidential correspondence nor other government documents. Rather the

government aimed to cover up their intents; they offered the Chickasaw’s an option for equity

when they left the southeast. However, for most Native Americans, these offers were not the

reality. Rather, the government made promises, including the promise of funding for the

development of the new lands in the West, that would never be fulfilled.

In his December, 1830 State of the Union Address, President Jackson declared that no

one has a “more friendly feeling” toward Native Americans than the president himself (Jackson,

1830). He believed his policy of Indian Removal would behoove all parties involved. For the

White Settlers who wanted land in the American Southeast, the land would be opened; for the

Native Americans directly impacted by the forced removal from their land, they would

experience life as a civilized people. For the two tribes who immediately accepted the terms of

Indian Removal, the Choctaw and the Chickasaw, the Jackson himself promised an opportunity

for self-government and “liberality” regarding the relationship between these peoples and the

Federal government. To the Jackson administration, and to the rest of the United States, the

Indian Removal Act offered Native Americans the opportunity to be more civilized. Because the

moral character of the Native Americans in the United States had been in question since the

settlement of the United States, the Indian Removal Act offered a chance to reconcile the notion
of Native Americans, savagery, and the growth of U.S. morality. In moving across the country,

the Southeastern tribes allowed the United States to flourish.

Throughout his State of the Union, Jackson goes on to compare the movement of the

Native American tribes against their will to that of the White Settler who chooses to move across

the country or to immigrants who once left a distant home where their ancestors made their roots

for a new world. He regards the removal as a positive good; an opportunity to start anew. The

movement, to Jackson, should not be a source of sadness because it does not represent and

ending. Rather, when the Native Americans choose, as he told Congress they did, to move across

the country, they do so because they recognize it as a chance to embrace change. The role of the

United States government in this process is to help the individual states reclaim the lands the

Native Americans were residing on. Getting the land from Native Americans works in the Native

Americans favor as it allowed them to have their eyes opened to the evils of their ways, and

work towards a future that embraces western thought.

Looking through other government documents gives the same notion of removal as a

conscious choice the Native Americans made. An 1836 map is another example of the

government using specific word choice to shape their version of what happened with the Native

Americans. The map, titled, Map Showing the lands assigned to Emigrant Indians West of

Kansas and Missouri, acts as a census of Native Americans in the late-1830s. It charts the lands

“granted” to different Native American tribes that had been removed from the Southeast to west

of the Mississippi River paying special attention to the amount of land the Native Americans had

before removal, the amount of land they would have in the new territory, and the number of

Native Americans from each tribe that lived both East and West of the Mississippi River.
 The map itself isn’t too special, but the language on the map is important in recognizing

the depth of Indian Removal. It impacted more than just treaties and acts passed in Congress.

Indian Removal was an invasive force in the United States; the map was created by the U.S

Topographical Bureau, an arm of the United States Army. Where the rest of the documents

examined have come from the most educated members of U.S. society, or those in the greatest

positions of power, the Army represents a common man without a formal education. The most

telling phrase on the map is “emigrant Indian” which creates the image of a willing group of

people leaving their homes for the West rather than those forced. Emigration is the process of

people leaving their country for somewhere new. This is the notion that the United States

government wanted to perpetuate. The Native Americans were forcibly displaced to the West,

they were not emigrants. Relocation by force removes the autonomy Native Americans had, and

made it impossible for emigration to be the correct term. Yet, its inclusion on the document

signals the presence of the government’s narrative of positivity rather than atrocity. The addition

of the Cherokee on the map even though they hadn’t agreed to their Removal West, exhibits a

belief in the government program that pushed the Native Americans from their homes. It implies

an eventual compliance, and, like the Treaty of New Echota, outlined the beginning of the Trail

of Tears that would decimate the Cherokee people.

After the end of the period known as Indian Removal, White Men still believed the

Native Americans to be less than but believed that the movement west was a positive good for

Native Americans. Rather than paying attention to the role of Indian Removal in harming the

Native Americans as it was occurring, the painter George Catlin emphasized a past that was

idealized, focusing on the notion of savagery that would appeal to a mass audience and the

fantasy Native American that had been created in media. Catlin’s paintings depicted Native
Americans “playing ball” a sport he deemed primitive and incomprehensible to individuals who

were not “happy” enough to understand the rules (Goodyear, 2006). While the government

focused on the notion of emigration as a way to help Native Americans find their place in

Western society, Catlin saw the forced movement west as a positive for a different reason.

Moving west allowed the tribes to be removed from the vices of the western world; in his world

view, Native Americans could reinvent themselves as they moved west. To this branch of the

common man, Indian Removal acted as a stepping stone towards renewing their civilization; the

Native Americans “looked happy” in their new setting, thusly from this perspective the entire

process of Indian Removal was not all bad. These paintings, however, reduced the status of the

Choctaw Tribe from one of the five sovereign nations to a people seen only as hunter gatherers.

If the actual process of Indian Removal didn’t belittle the Native Americans, the ways they were

portrayed in media harmed any chance of reconstructing their lives in a new land.

Native Americans had their own points of view on the removal from their lands. Where

the government focused on the apparent positives of the Indian Removal, Native Americans were

more critical of these actions. Although the versions of the Cherokee Newspapers being used

have been translated into English, and thusly may not have the exact same meaning, the

Cherokee Phoenix provides a uniquely Native American perspective on the Indian Removal

process. In a May 2,1830 article, the Cherokee describe the likelihood of the passage of the

Indian Removal Act by calling they “have fallen on evil times”. The Native Americans focus on

the betrayal of the United States government. The Cherokee emphasize the notion that the U.S

government has repeatedly broken treaties it had made with Native Americans. Following the

passage of the Indian Removal Act, the Phoenix calls the United States government “petulant”

and “perverse” commenting once again on the actions of the government that had made and
broken promises over and over again (Cherokee Phoenix, June 5, 1830). In the same paper, the

Phoenix suggests that the provisional funds set aside by the United States government to sponsor

Indian Removal are for bribing the chiefs on Native American tribes to forcibly remove them

from their lands. The paper goes further, stating that those who trusted the government have been

“wantonly abandoned to destruction” (Cherokee Phoenix, June 5, 1830; pg 2, Col. 3b).

The language used to describe the actions of the United States government in these two

instances are powerful reminders of the stark differences in the story history chooses to tell.

Where a history based on the perspective of the “average American” have noted the benefits of

Indian Removal on both the Native American and the White Man, the Cherokee Phoenix is the

first occurrence where the imagery surrounding Indian Removal is inherently negative. No

longer are people benefiting from a migration across the nation; instead they are actively harmed

by a policy that disregards the history Tribes have with the government of the United States. The

same article also associates Native Americans with the notion of oppression, a concept that was

lacking in the official documents of the United States. Oppression, the prolonged, cruel or unjust

treatment of a people, is an apt term for the relationship between Native Americans and the

United States government. Were the relationship the U.S. government tried to illustrate to have

been real, the notions of bribery and oppression would not be common themes in the articles in

the Cherokee Phoenix.

Other Native American tribes were offered removal before the Indian Removal Act was

passed in 1830, and many politely declined. The Choctaw Nation is one of those groups; in a

series of letters David Folsom, the Chief of the North East District of the Choctaw Nation,

expressed a desire not to sell the lands of the Choctaw Nation. He states that the Choctaw people

“do not wish to move, to better their condition” (Choctams,1830). The language is not as strong
as the language provided by the Cherokee in the Phoenix, it emphasized the same notion,

contradicting the U.S government’s reasoning for Indian Removal. Folsom continues his

argument with the idea that the Choctaw land has been just that for generations; the children of

the Native Americans who lived there in 1830 should have the opportunity to raise their children

in their ancestral home, not be forced to a land away from the Southeast United States.

As debates surrounding Indian Removal began to get heated in Congress, the language

used by Folsom changed. By this point, his emphasis matched that which would come from the

Cherokee following the passage of the Indian Removal Act. He emphasized the notion of

calamity and lack of willingness on the part of the Choctaw to be systematically removed from

their lands. There would be no benefit to the Choctaw if they were to be removed and forced

West. Removal would have, and did, destroyed the Choctaw people.

Again, we see how the language of Indian Removal in official government documents did

not align with the values and beliefs of the people who were removed. Destruction and calamity

are not the positives described by the United States government; they do not look like prosperity

or the promise of civilization. Rather these terms illustrate a direct negative that would come

from the removal from their home lands. Belief, culture, and history would be lost with a

continental move. People would no longer have a direct connection to their past that allows for a

rich present culture; the Choctaw people would suffer. The Choctaw people did suffer. As

evidenced by the Catlin series of paintings, they were reduced from a sovereign nation actively

fighting against the notion of Indian Removal in the Southeast to a peoples associated with

simplicity and barbarianism in the West.

The language of dissent surrounding the policy of Indian Removal from Native

Americans notes the ways they have been attacked and systematically diminished. It emphasized
the role the United States government played in both legally and extralegally determining the

worth of an entire race of people. The United States government ignored requests and demands

from Native Americans to stay in their homes; when the Native Americans fought against these

policies, they were recast from civilizations to barbarians who could use these new lands to start

anew, ignoring the centuries of history that emerged in the home lands of various Native

American tribes. Yet, Native Americans and the U.S. government are not the only two groups

that through language into the ring to spark a conversation about Indian Removal. Since many

“average” Americans would not listen to the Native Americans, it was the job of religious groups

and abolitionists to provide a White, anti-Removal response.

Religious groups and abolitionists were among the more radical peoples in the United

States in the mid-nineteenth century, so it stands to reason they would have sided with the Native

Americans in fighting the policies of Indian Removal. Reverend William White wrote, in The

Friend; a Religious and Literary Journal, that Native Americans, as the original inhabitants of

the United States were “entitled an immemorial inheritance to a home and resting place upon the

land of their fathers” (White, 1830). It was their right to maintain control of the lands they

resided on before Colonial Settlement. White goes as far as to reinterpret documents created by

the United States government, specifically treaties the government signed with Native American

tribes, to show where the documents favored the Native Americans rather than the White men

who wrote them. White stresses a notion of equality between White Men and Native Americans

that has hitherto been ignored by the two parties involved in deciding the role of Indian Removal

in the United States. White went as far as to say the Cherokee had evolved beyond the

primitiveness associated with Native Americans; they had become a largely civilized people

whom have “forsaken the superstitions of the heathen, and embraced the gospel” thusly making
the frontier west an unsuitable place for them to reside (White, 1830). For religious groups,

civilization and religion were the important turning points that made removal of Native

Americans from their home lands cruel.

Abolitionists took a different approach altogether, though some abolitionist works

rejecting the policy of Indian Removal had a similar background argument to that of William

White. Many abolitionists began their reform work not in the business of ending slavery, but

trying to put an end to unlawful removal of Native Americans. Lydia Marie Child, noted anti-

slavery advocate, published a book in 1829 that was highly critical of the United States

government in its actions regarding the “Indian Crisis”. According to Linda Kerber, Child’s

books containing Native American themes used them to reflect on White America. While the

United States preached freedom and democracy to the outside world, within its own boundaries

equality and justice were sacrificed for tyranny as the government worked to overtake those with

less power than themselves (Kerber, 273). David Lee Child, in an open letter in 1838 openly

criticized the United States treatment of Native Americans; to him there was no greater

American crime than the systematic removal of Native Americans from the south in order to

have a chance to obtain their lands. To him, the role the national government played to help

individuals in this land grab was “doubly atrocious” as the government removed a peaceful

people to institute slavery (Kerber, 278). Both authors aimed to convey the oppression of the

Native Americans without using those exact words. It is likely that they, like Catlin, also had an

audience to retain, but they unlike Catlin, were willing to call out the behaviors of individuals

and the government in the mistreatment of Native Americans.

The language used by abolitionists and religious leaders does not have the strength to it

that the Native American writings have, but they had a larger impact in reaching the people.
White speakers, speaking out against the atrocities committed against the Native Americans put

the issue in the mind of the American citizen. These writers did not speak of the destruction of

Native American culture, but they did speak of diminishing American values in the continuing

saga of American History.

Language has an impact on the way the world is viewed. The language used in any

situation changes not only the meaning of an event, but the context in which it is situated. For

Native Americans, the language of Indian Removal was a harmful facet of the nineteenth century

that was spread throughout the Nation. It did not matter what the Native Americans had to say

about their own standing or place in society, they were put in a box as savages, and treated as

such, all based on initial encounters between colonial settlers and the Native Americans

themselves. Racism and a desire for more land helped push this story in the direction it was

headed: the eventual total annihilation of the Native American population in the United States.

The stories told about Indian removal change depending on who was taking the time to

tell them. For a majority of White America, led by the common man president, Andrew Jackson,

Indian Removal was a beneficial system that would do some deal of good for all parties

involved. Native Americans saw the policy in a completely different light. Where the

government focused on potential goods, the sovereign nations that systematically lost power

were telling a different story: one of loss and anger. The destruction of civilization for monetary

gains and political power is a different image than the one presented by the United States

government. The twist by abolitionists and religious groups, blaming the White Men for

betraying the ideals America was built on.

 The power of Indian removal is built into the language that tells the stories we read in

history textbooks; when that language focuses on the United States government, we hear excuses

and belief in a positive historical outcome, when the reality was destruction and autrocity.

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