The "Indian Problem"

by the early 19th century the US was rapidly growing both in size and power land hungry and ambitious the new country was also drastically changing his policies towards the Indian nations and nowhere was this more evident than in the trees the United States primary interest in treaty making was to acquire Indian land and so the treaties were used for that purpose especially as the United States found itself in a position to pretty much dictate the terms of the treaty and so the treaties morphed from this friendship and reciprocity sort of relationship into a very one-sided thing there's almost a mythology about this that somehow when the pilgrims arrived they were dragging land behind them there was no land brought here the land here was Native Nations and this is what the United States needed it's what it wanted they wanted all of them they wanted everything the greed came in oh we have a little tract here now now we need a little more and well we need to go make another treaty we didn't understand that eventually those treaty making processes ended up to the acquisition of all of our ancestral homeland that land was a part of us I then helped us be that land was who we were and who we are the command of removal came unexpectedly upon most of us there was a time that we noticed several overloaded wagons were passing our home that we did not grasp the meaning then one day wagons stopped we were to be taken away and leave our homes never to return to get what they wanted US officials brokered treaties through any means available their tactics were so corrupt that the once trusted treaties became quickly known as bad paper there were people at these treaty negotiations who would do anything to get an agreement on the table and so there was very routinely bribery individual payments made to tribal leaders alcohol would be used with people in an agreeable frame of mind and even coercion to say to people you must sign this agreement or else every means of trickery and fraud was employed against Native Nations the United States would appoint a false leadership people who had no right to speak for the tribe and say you're the leader of this tribe signed this paper giving away all your land as the century progressed the treaties became more and more lopsided a far cry from the parallel paths of the goose winter despite appeals from the Indian nations the u.s. kept on its new trajectory rationalizing its aggressive actions along the way they have neither the intelligence the industry the moral habits nor the desire of improvement the tribes of Indians inhabiting this country were fierce savages to leave them in possession of their country was to leave the country a wilderness it's important in the great American mythology to describe the Americas as wilderness because of its wilderness then there's really nobody to dispossessed it was okay to come here and prosper and conveniently forget that there were already people and civilizations in place at first we had something to eat but that gave out and we were starving we came to a slippery elm tree and ate the bark of that lots took sick and died as Americans successfully pushed the bounds of the frontier they not only believed that they were destined to take over the land and prosper they believed that God was the one who put them there to do it they believe that it was God's will that the United States should be a continental nation stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific as each wave of immigration would come they move into an area the United States would then make some sort of arrangement with the tribe to get that land from them and then more would come and they'd advance the frontier even further the power of manifest destiny of expansion of inevitability God's providence helped rally people around not only the idea of Americans as entitled to North America but rallied them around the idea that Indian people were barriers to civilization and barriers to progress no matter how many treaties were signed or how much land they gave to the United States the Indian was still in the way this was known as the Indian problem this so-called problem continued despite a decades-old policy to force Indians to swap their land east of the Mississippi for land west of it the Indians would then move to those western parts and away from the Americans this plan was simply called removal the Removal Act was the centerpiece of Andrew Jackson's political agenda and was very controversial at the time it was very widely debated there was lots of discussion across the country and very many prominent people spoke up against it the American government steel will it lie will it kill I have no desire to see the poor remnants of a once powerful people the removal bill represents oppression with a vengeance the removal process it was alright you've made these treaties now you can have one of two things you can keep your sovereignty but you can't keep your land if you keep your land and you have to assimilate and no longer be Indian you will have sovereignty or you have your land you can't have both across the United States the Removal Act divided the country but across the Indian nations reaction was unanimous we are surrounded by white people and there are encroachments made what assurances have we that similar ones will not be made on us should we remove to the Mississippi look here father our lands belong to us we shall keep them we do not wish to talk to you anymore we had already been fighting to keep that land and sure enough when the government was coming in there to take us out of that land we fought even more but at some point you have to realize that this fighting is all gonna be about death and death is coming then I need to be detecting my family and I want my children to survive so we have to endure this removal many of the tribes did choose to accept removal as a means of maintaining the tribal nation what choice was there after decades of engagement they could no longer resist and so they gave up their lands they gave up their homes they gave up their fields and forests they gave up literally their way of life in order to be able to stay together and be what they were we are poor but we are free no white man controls our footsteps some try to assimilate to avoid removal some were removed completely but in the end every nation met the same fate every nation and to give up land brothers you cannot remain where you are now you have but one remedy within your reach and that is to remove to the west may the Great Spirit teach you how to choose the loss of land was devastating and so was the loss of lives the most famous of these incidents was the Cherokee nation's Trail of Tears but there were numerous other trails just as violent injustice crushing everyone had to walk my baby brother Joel was four years old I was just eight but I took my turn at carrying him because he could not walk much I would get so tired I think I was going to die but I would hang on to him I was so afraid they would kill him I saw them kill babies who were too big to be carried and would give out that really was a road of death people were falling on the side of the road or being shot are being murdered on the road and being left there the removal process was done in a way that was not efficient in making people survive of the millions of Indian people that lived before the first colonists arrived but the end of the 19th century only 250,000 remained the removal of a tribe was certain to destroy all of the things they knew about taking care of themselves all their medicines all of their foods everything about them had to change in order to survive it can only be understood as an act of destruction when you move a people from one place to another when you displace people when you wrench people from their homelands wasn't that genocide we don't make the case that there was genocide we know there was yet here we are when we were forced to leave our land we took the fires with us we took the embers along then when we got to Oklahoma we rekindled build fire old home or new home it is the same fire you

Channel: SmithsonianNMAI

Views: 1,423,791

Keywords: Smithsonian, National Museum Of The American Indian (Museum), treaties, treaty, native, american

Id: if-BOZgWZPE

Length: 12min 31sec (751 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 03 2015