Indian removal

Indian removal was a policy of the United States government in the 19th century whereby Native Americans were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands in the eastern United States to lands west of the Mississippi River, thereafter known as Indian Territory. That policy has been characterized by some scholars as part of a long-term genocide of Native Americans by European settlers to North America in the colonial period and citizens of the United States until the mid-20th century. This view has been disputed. The policy traced its direct origins to the administration of James Monroe, though it addressed conflicts between European Americans and Native Americans that had been occurring since the 17th century, and were escalating into the early 19th century as white settlers were continually pushing westward. The Indian Removal Act was the key law that forced the removal of the Indians, and was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830.

Some of the American Revolutionary thinkers and leaders viewed the American Indians not as a single people, but as nations in their own right, and developed early policies for the new United States to interact with the Indian nations:

Benjamin Franklin, in his "Proposed Articles of Confederation" (presented to the Continental Congress on May 10, 1775) for the nation about to take birth, called for a "perpetual Alliance" with the Indians, especially with the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.

Article XI. A perpetual Alliance offensive and defensive, is to be entered into as soon as may be with the Six Nations; their Limits to be ascertained and secured to them; their Land not to be encroached on, nor any private or Colony Purchases made of them hereafter to be held good; nor any Contract for Lands to be made but between the Great Council of the Indians at Onondaga and the General Congress. The Boundaries and Lands of all the other Indians shall also be ascertained and secured to them in the same manner; and Persons appointed to reside among them in proper Districts, who shall take care to prevent Injustice in the Trade with them, and be enabled at our general Expense by occasional small Supplies, to relieve their personal Wants and Distresses. And all Purchases from them shall be by the Congress for the General Advantage and Benefit of the United Colonies.

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