Manifest Destiny

Andrew Jackson had little sympathy for Indians. During his presidency, it became a national policy to remove Native Americans from the east by force. By the time Jackson wasn't president anymore, only 125,000 Indians still lived east of the Mississippi River. Jackson was determined to remove the remaining Indians to a new territory in the West. Most of these Indians were the Five Civilized Tribes; the Creek, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole. While the five civilized tribes hoped to live in peace, the whites decide they had to go. In 1830, urged on by presidnet Jackson, Congress passed the  Indian Removal Act of 1830. The new act allowed the president to make treatiesin which Indians traded their land s for new territory on the Great Plains. The law didn't say that the Indians could be removedby force, but Jackson disagreed. Groups the refused to move west were met by military force. The Sac and Fox of Illionois, led by a cheif named Black Hawk, fought rewmoval for two years. The war eneded in 1832 with many Indians slaughtered. In 1836, thousands of Creeks who refused to leave Alabama were rounde up and marched west in hancuffs. Two years later, under President Martin Van Buren, more than 17,000 Cherokee were dragged from their homes in Georgia and herded west by fedeeral troops. About fourthousand Cherokees died and those who surrvived remembered the terrible journey as "The Trail of Tears." Led by a yound chief name dOsceola, the Seminloes of Flordia resisted removal for ten years. A munber of Seminoles were sent west but but others found refuge in Florida swamps. their descendants still live in Florida today.

Jackson's Indian Removal Policy was inportant to manifest destiny  because it pusehed the Indians west of the Mississppi River. This later aroused conflicts with whites and Native Americans  when whites were trying to settle in the west.