The Long, Bitter Trail

Book excerpt: Few issues in our history have proved as shameful as the white man's long conflict with Native Americans. The Indian Removal Act passed by Congress in 1830 was actively fostered by President Andrew Jackson. It called for eastern Indians to relocate west of the Mississippi River to the Oklahoma Territory - an early example of our government's racist policies. Anthony F.C. Wallace deals briefly with Indians of the Northeast, but focuses on the Five Civilized Tribes of the Southeast - Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles, whose ancestral lands were coveted by white settlers to meet exploding domestic and international demands for cotton. Andrew Jackson, Indian fighter and crafty negotiator, is at the book's center. He lived in an age dominated by self-serving moralists and untenable theories of Indians as savage, nomadic hunters who had to be either "civilized" or moved from the white man's path for their own good. The Indian removals in the 1830s over the Trail of Tears that led west culminated in tragedy for the Indians.