Dispossession: treaties, Trail of Tears, reservations

Detail

How land was taken: the treaty method

• Natives were induced or forced to sign treaties selling land at very low prices. Pressure came first, paper came after.
• The 'Americans' who signed these treaties were, as the NCERT chapter notes, the European people of the USA — the term did not include the natives themselves.
• The cheating was routine. Settlers and officials often:
• took more land than the treaty said;
• paid less money than promised;

• read out one text to a chief who could not read English, while the signed text said something else.

• Law backing the process: the Indian Removal Act, signed by President Andrew Jackson on 28 May 1830, let the President offer land west of the Mississippi river in exchange for native land lying inside existing US states. The Creek, Chickasaw and Seminole were among those marked for removal. [2]

The Cherokee case in Georgia

• The Cherokees had tried hardest of all native peoples to learn English and American ways — farming, writing, Christian schools.
• It did not save them. Georgia put them under state laws but gave them no citizens' rights. They had duties, not rights.
• Georgia's squeeze in law:
• a Georgia act of 1830 ordered any white person living on Cherokee land to take a licence from the governor and swear loyalty to the state. [2]

• the missionary Samuel Worcester, living among the Cherokees and telling them to resist, had no licence — he was arrested and convicted. [2]

• In 1832 Chief Justice John Marshall ruled the Cherokees were 'a distinct community, occupying its own territory' where Georgia's laws had no force, and that they held sovereignty in certain matters.

• The case is Worcester v. Georgia, decided 3 March 1832, by a 5–1 vote of the US Supreme Court: states could not regulate Native American land. [2]

• President Andrew Jackson — a man with a reputation as a fighter against privilege — refused to honour the judgment. Georgia simply ignored the court, and Jackson declined to enforce it. [2]

• Jackson sent the army to drive the Cherokees west to the Great American Desert.
• Of 15,000 forced out, over a quarter died on the road. This march of 1838 is the 'Trail of Tears'.

  Note: the Library of Congress gives the forced march as taking place over the autumn and winter of 1838–39 with about 4,000 Cherokee deaths. The NCERT figure — "over a quarter of 15,000" — is the version to write in the exam. [2]

The words used to justify it

• The settlers built a moral cover story. The main charges against natives were that they:
• did not use land 'to the maximum';
• were 'lazy';
• would not produce for the market;
• would not learn English;

• would not dress 'correctly'.

• From this came the conclusion that they 'deserved to die out'.

• A visiting Frenchman put it plainly: 'Primitive man will disappear with the primitive animal.'
• Notice the trick in the argument: the test of who may own land is whether you farm it for sale. Hunting, fishing and shifting cultivation are counted as using nothing.

Reservations: the promise and the breaking of it

• Natives were pushed westward onto lands promised to be 'theirs in perpetuity' — meaning theirs for ever.
• The promise broke every time the land turned out to be valuable. They were moved again whenever lead, gold or oil was found.
• Several tribes were forced onto one tribe's land. Strangers packed together bred quarrels among people who had no old link with each other.
• Finally they were locked into 'reservations' — fenced-off blocks, often land they had no earlier connection to. A reservation was not a homeland; it was where the government put you.
• The squeeze continued by law after the reservations were fixed:
• the Dawes General Allotment Act, 8 February 1887, sponsored by Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts, broke up reservation land into individual plots — roughly 160 acres (65 hectares) to each head of household and 80 acres (32 hectares) to each unmarried adult, with the rule that the holder could not sell for 25 years. The stated aim was to turn natives into farmers "in the white man's image". [3]
• Result: native-held land fell to about 12.7 million acres, and about two-thirds of the land earlier under native control was lost. [3]

Resistance, defeat and the counter-voice

• United States: the US army crushed native rebellions between 1865 and 1890.

• The end point of that campaign was the Wounded Knee Massacre, 29 December 1890, where US Army 7th Cavalry troops killed roughly 150–300 Lakota at Wounded Knee Creek in south-western South Dakota. [4]

• Canada: the Metis — people of mixed native and European descent — mounted armed revolts between 1869 and 1885, and then gave up.

• The Red River Rebellion (1869–70) broke out when the huge territory of Rupert's Land was transferred from the Hudson's Bay Company to Canada. Metis led by Louis Riel seized Fort Garry (today Winnipeg) and set up a provisional government to bargain over the terms of joining Canada. It led to the creation of the province of Manitoba. [5]

• The North-West Rebellion (1885), in what is now Saskatchewan and Alberta, followed a rush of white settlers and the collapse of the bison herds. Riel set up a second provisional government in March 1885; the Canadian army crushed it quickly. Riel was tried at Regina, found guilty of treason, and hanged. [5]

• The counter-voice — Chief Seattle, 1854. Asked to sell his land, he wrote to the US President:

• 'How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land?'
• 'Every part of the earth is sacred to my people.'
• His point answers the settlers' whole argument: land is not a commodity to be priced, so a "sale" is not even a meaningful idea.

Prelims Hooks

• Trail of Tears = forced march of the Cherokees, 1838; of 15,000 driven out, over a quarter died (NCERT).
• 1832 — Chief Justice John Marshall held the Cherokees were 'a distinct community, occupying its own territory'; the case is Worcester v. Georgia, decided 3 March 1832, 5–1. [2]
• President Andrew Jackson refused to honour the 1832 judgment and sent the army.
• Indian Removal Act signed by Jackson on 28 May 1830 — land west of the Mississippi in exchange for native land inside US states. [2]
• Dawes General Allotment Act, 8 February 1887 — 160 acres per head of household, 80 acres per unmarried adult, no sale for 25 years. [3]
• Wounded Knee Massacre — 29 December 1890, South Dakota, 7th Cavalry, about 150–300 Lakota killed. [4]
• US army crushed native rebellions 1865–90; Metis revolts in Canada ran 1869–85.
• Red River Rebellion (1869–70) — Louis Riel, seizure of Fort Garry, triggered by transfer of Rupert's Land from the Hudson's Bay Company; produced the province of Manitoba. [5]
• Chief Seattle's letter, 1854 — 'How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land?'
• Natives were moved off 'perpetual' lands whenever lead, gold or oil was found.

Mains Points

• Law was no shield when the executive chose to ignore it. The Cherokee case is the sharpest example: a favourable Supreme Court ruling in 1832 recognised native sovereignty, yet Jackson refused to enforce it and the Trail of Tears followed in 1838. Useful for any GS-I answer on the gap between legal recognition and political will in colonial settings.
• Dispossession ran on an economic test of worth. Natives were called lazy for not producing for the market, and "perpetual" reservations were broken open the moment lead, gold or oil appeared. The moral argument tracked the mineral map — assimilation was never the real condition.
• Assimilation offered no protection. The Cherokees adopted English, farming and American ways more than any other people and were still expelled; the Dawes Act of 1887 then used "make them farmers" as the reason to break reservations into plots and strip about two-thirds of remaining native land. [3] This can be compared with colonial policies in India that promised advancement through Western education while withholding real rights.
• Resistance was widespread and everywhere defeated by state force, from the US campaigns of 1865–90 ending at Wounded Knee to the Metis risings of 1869–85 ending with Riel's hanging. [4][5] Chief Seattle's 1854 letter supplies the alternative worldview — land as sacred and unsellable — and is the standard quotation for the ecological-ethics angle in a settler-colonialism answer.