“[Tocqueville] identified what may be a particular genius of the American people: their ability to inflict catastrophic destruction all the while claiming to be benevolent.”
Map of Native American nations in eastern U.S. circa 1760:
Map of Native American nations in eastern U.S. circa 1760:
(This map is from: powells.com/book/-97803002…)
“Remarkably, despite fifty years of aggressive American expansion, the Indigenous population east of the Mississippi actually *increased* from the 1780s to 1830.”
The U.S.’s first treaty with an Indian nation, with the Delawares in 1778, saw U.S. officials promise “not only to guarantee Delaware lands but to consider admitting the Delawares and other Indian nations as a state in the new union.”
TIL the largest number of Americans killed in a single battle against Native Americans came in 1791 along the Indiana-Ohio border, against the United Indian Nation confederation—over double the fatalities at Little Bighorn:
“Jefferson’s declaration of the possibility of genocidal war [against Indian nations] was more than idle musing... It was an official statement of a policy for dealing with Indians who refused to accept U.S. terms for dispossession.”
Some estimates on the (significant!) population growth of Native Americans east of the Mississippi, in the decades before the Trail of Tears:
“Realizing that Native populations were actually increasing underscores that the removal policy was built on a falsehood.”
“Realizing that Native populations were actually increasing underscores that the removal policy was built on a falsehood.”
“Had Andrew Jackson not been elected President in 1828, the federal government likely would have adopted a formal policy of [Indian] removal anyway”—especially given that the idea was endorsed by none other than John Quincy Adams.
Native American migrations, conflicts, and expulsions in the eastern Louisiana Purchase, 1815 to mid-1830s:
“At the time of the Indian Removal Act, Cherokees retained over a tenth of the lands in Georgia, Creeks one-sixth of the lands in Alabama, and Choctaws and Chickasaws half the lands of Mississippi.”
Mapping out ethnic cleansing(s) in the northern U.S., 1830-50:
Some of the “genocidal threats” U.S. officials used against Native American nations in the American East to force them to sign assorted treaties, give up their land, and move west:
