October 10

"The consequences of a speedy removal will be important to the United States...and to the Indians themselves. It will place a dense and civilized population in large tracts of land now occupied by a few savage hunters...(and) will separate the Indians from immediate contact with settlements of whites."

Andrew Jackson, 7th President, 1829-1837. From Jackson's State of the Union Address, December 6, 1830. Jackson rationalizes that the government is generous in giving land to the native tribes rather than seeing them lost or annihilated. Those Native Americans who did not leave voluntarily were forced to leave in late autumn resulting in the death of hundreds in what is now called, 'The Trail of Tears', as the tribes traveled from the southern states across the Mississippi River into Oklahoma. "...It gives me pleasure to announce to Congress that the benevolent policy of the Government, steadily pursued for nearly 30 years, in relation to the removal of the Indians beyond the white settlements is approaching to a happy consummation. Two important tribes have accepted the provision made for their removal at the last session of Congress, and it is believed that their example will induce the remaining tribes also to seek the same obvious advantages... The consequences of a speedy removal will be important to the United States, to individual States, and to the Indians themselves... Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this country, and Philanthropy has been long busily employed in devising means to avert it, but its progress has never for a moment been arrested, and one by one have many powerful tribes disappeared from the earth...What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and religion?"