History of the Trail of Tears, Part I

In this first of two episodes on the Trail of Tears, learn about the forces that converged to create the series of events that formed the basis of what may be the most brutal decade in American history.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry and the air Conditioner.
So it's stuff you should know. This is a little

(00:22):
loud today from the Dank Bowels Bar Bowels. Oh I'm
glad you laughed, because it's probably gonna be the last
one that you folks are gonna hear. Yeah, this one's
heavy over the next two episodes. Not a lot of
great ways to inject humor into the trail of tears.
If it comes up and it's tasteful, we'll put it

(00:43):
in there. Sure, But I mean, you know, come on, yeah,
and I said two parter, Uh, you just spoiled it. Well,
it's gonna be a two parter for Thursday. This is
a dense topic and um yeah, so we'll do it Tuesday,
Thursday on this right. Yeah, not a thirsty day next Tuesday.
That'd be weird because people would sit around all weekend
without access to the internet. When how it all ended?

(01:07):
You know, Um, it's funny. It is a very dense topic. Choking.
I never I was a history major man, and I
didn't realize how dense this topic was background, there was
how many things that came together to lead up to it.
Because everything I knew about the Trail of Tears wash
what I think most people know about the Trail of Tears.

(01:27):
It was you know, the Cherokee people were forced onto
this trail to move out west, and it wasn't fun. No,
it was very sad. And one of the long standing
urban legends or myths or I don't know what you
call it, um, but falsehoods that I always had heard
was that it was called the Trail of tears because, um,
despite all the hardships, that Indians were so stoic that

(01:50):
it was the white sailors who came out to watch
them leave that we're crying. I don't think I ever
heard that. I heard that for years, starting in grade
school going up to college. So it's not called an
urban myth. It's called public school in America in the eighties,
I guess, so, yeah, But I mean that was overall though,
aside from that big falsehood, like my conception of the

(02:11):
the Trail of Tears was fairly correct, but it was
limited narrow. It was such a much bigger event. It
wasn't just one migration. It was actually multiple migrations. It
involved more than just the Cherokee. Um, it involved even
more than just the southeastern tribes. Just about every tribe

(02:32):
that was around west of the Mississippi was in the
about the eighteen thirties forced east of Thesa was forced
west of the Mississippi against their will, which as we'll see,
there were other tribes west of the Mississippi were like,
what's going on here? Yeah, well you didn't invite you. Yeah.
Uh And then you know, and not just Native Americans

(02:53):
were affected by this, but this this forced migration had
a huge impact on the African Americans who have been
brought here are slaves were being forced into slave labor
on these lands that the Indians were forced to migrate from. Yes,
there was a huge, huge thing that happened, and it
all happened in about a decade. Yeah, and I think

(03:13):
this is one of those that, uh, you know, you
don't know your past, you don't know your future type
of thing like that should be a song leric. There's uh,
you know, you look at stories like this and you
can apply certain aspects of it too modern times even um,
you know, that's all I'm gonna say. But it's true.

(03:36):
I mean, like it is true. There's a probably a
different um. It's its own reasoning. The trail of tears,
what what began and kicked off, the trail of tears
is its own thing that we don't really run into anymore.
It's almost like inconceivable in the United States because we
have so much land. But at the time the United

(03:57):
States was the Thirteen Colonies, and it ran from Georgia
up to oh basically Canada. What was the northernmost thirteenth
colony or colony was in Massachusetts. Maine wasn't around, was it, Well,
it existed. They were weird manners even back then. But

(04:18):
it would have been under probably like French control or
something in part of Canada, maybe, I would guess, I
don't know well. At any rate, the colonial America was
a in the early United States, was a strip of
land along the eastern seaboard, the west of that west
of the Appalachians. Basically, there were a lot of people,
a lot of Native Americans. The French were running around.

(04:40):
The British were out there as well, but for the
most part there was a lot of land elsewhere. But
it was a lot of it was under Indian control
native American control, and so when the United States said
we want to push out, as a matter of fact,
let's just take over the whole continent, what they ran
into was that this land was already on or Indian control.

(05:01):
And they had two choices either say, okay, we're gonna
stay here or go to war with the Indians, and
the United States chose the ladder at every turn. Yeah,
because like, uh, and you put this one together a
very nice job. Um, but you astutely point out that
by the late eighteenth century people white European settlers have

(05:22):
been co mingling for a couple of centuries. This wasn't
like a brand new thing. Um. And there was a
big there was a big push for more land because
ostensibly what would happen is white settlers would eventually say,

(05:43):
you know, we think that you people, it's very cute
that you're not claiming ownership and you just kind of
share and share alike mostly right, you don't recognize property rights. Yeah,
Louis k has a very funny little bit about that.
By the way, Um, you can look that up on YouTube.
But um, we think we can use this better than
you have been using it since the dawn of time.

(06:06):
And uh so we're gonna well, like you said, there's
a couple of choices. You can stay here and become
more like us, or you can get the heck out. Well,
those were the two. Those were the two, um, the
two ways of dealing with what came to be termed
as the Indian problem in the early United States. And
from the beginning there there was this problem where white said,

(06:31):
we need more land. Indians had the land, so the
Whites wanted it. And so there were those two two
ways of doing it. It It was either you can stay
and become one of us, or you can move. And
George Washington was actually a proponent of the first one
called in culturation, Yeah, which, uh, you know, depending on

(06:51):
what tribe you were in, and even within the tribe,
it varied greatly on how much you were in cultured.
But a lot of Native Americans really kind of jumped
on board that. And you know, and this is something
I didn't really know to what degree it got to,
but you know, some of them gained great wealth and
changed their names to Anglo names, and had kids and

(07:11):
gave them Anglo names. Some of them married white settlers. Uh,
they formed I think it was at the Cherokee, who
established their own alphabet and had a bilingual newspaper by Yeah,
the Cherokee Phoenix. Yeah, they owned. There were slave owners.
I didn't even know that. So a lot of them,
well a portion of them really took to this uh
and culturation aspect and said, you know what, I'm on

(07:33):
board the shore beats the alternative, which is getting the
heck out of Dodge. Plus check out the steamship I
just bought, you know. Yeah, And I guess I shouldn't
say get the heck out of Dodge because it was
the means Dodge City, right. Okay. So there was the Cherokee,
the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, the Seminole, and the Creek, and

(07:53):
they were considered there were many more tribes obviously around
the United States than that, but those five were considered
what we're known to white people as the five civilized tribes.
They were the ones who had enculturated the most, and
from what I understand, out of all of them, the
Cherokee was the most inculturated of even the five civilized tribes. Right,

(08:16):
unculturated or uncultured, I don't know, I I have a thing.
I've noticed people instead of saying like oriented, they're they're
adding like an aided there, So orientated. Yeah, there's a
lot of words like that I've noticed lately. I don't
know where this is coming from. Why it's oriented is fine,
Well you gotta add a syllable. Yeah, it's not just oriented.

(08:37):
It seems it's we're losing our language. Well that's that's
a prescriptive ist thinking. No, I'm not like that a
long champion. The other which is language evolves. That's descriptive ist. Yeah,
but I also don't think you should say orientated. I agree.
So that's just specific. That's just that's just heavn something
stick in your crawl. So, um, what comes along with

(09:00):
uh in culturation is adopting this European materialism and said, hey,
I like I like having this nice stuff, right, and
not only that it shows other people, uh that I'm wealthy,
that I mean something. Yeah, I've got some status here.
And once uh, these Native Americans bought into that, these

(09:23):
European settlers like, well, now we've got them. Yeah, this
is kind of just what we hope for. Not that
it was some evil plan, but it kind of worked
in their favor basically. Yeah, because if you were a
leader in a Native American tribe, most of the Native
American tribes, one way to consolidate your power and basically
turn your position into an official chief to them, like

(09:44):
become an actual chief of your tribe um was to
basically be a patron to a large group of people, right,
and especially among the five civilized tribes, the the demand
for white produced European produced goods, it was pretty high.
So if you get your hands on a lot of
those and turn around and redistribute him like a patron

(10:05):
to your folks. Yeah, they were gonna say, hey, man,
we'll follow you into battle, We'll go up against your
political enemies on your side. You're our chief. And if
you could do that with enough people, you could become
chief of the whole tribe. Right. So early on the
Native Americans who were undertaking this process of becoming chief
through distribution of wealth, they were just trading like pelts

(10:28):
and stuff at trading posts. Yeah, they had it was
supply and demand that the European settlers had these, you know,
fancy new things that the Native America has never seen.
They wanted a piece of that and the European settler said, boy,
you folks are really good at hunting and skinning animals,
and the fur trade is is lucrative, and so why
don't we scratch each other's backs here we set up

(10:49):
these officially sanctioned trading posts and you can come. Uh.
I was about to say bye, but I guess it was.
It was swapping stuff, swapping the swapping post, right, and um,
it sort of worked out for a little while until
the fur trade started to decline because they wanted so
much for these animal populations started to dwindle a bit, right,

(11:13):
So the Europeans still had all the stuff that the
Native Americans wanted. The Native Americans were having a harder
and harder time getting their hands on pelts to trade.
What they found was that at the trading post, which
by the way, was the only place that they were
legally around allowed to trade, I think you have to
say trading post though the trading post. Um, they found

(11:33):
that they could be extended lines of credit there. Yeah,
and that was kind of the beginning of the trouble. Right. So,
if you were a Native American leader who was trading
at a trading post and you went into debt from
the understanding, the customary understanding between Anglos and Native Americans
was that you were in debt on behalf of your
whole tribe. It wasn't just you, wasn't just your family.

(11:56):
Your whole tribe was the people who didn't like you,
people who would fall you into battle, didn't matter. Everybody
was in debt now because of you. So all of
a sudden, the the Native American leaders who had gotten
into this credit trap would say, you know, how can
I repay you? And they tried every way they could.
The first thing they didn't they they basically went to work,

(12:19):
started growing crops, just did everything they could pay it back.
What they found was at the government at the trading post,
said we don't want any of that. We don't want
any money, we don't want any pelts anymore. We want
your land. That's how you repay this debt. That's the
only way. Yeah, there was kind of a general thing
I picked up on throughout this whole thing that that
was either it was probably both a lack of understanding

(12:40):
generally and a lack of caring about how these tribes
functioned and worked before they got there. Yeah, like you know,
these tribes were huge groups of people over wide swaths
of land, and they weren't all like one huge nation
with one central leader, like it was a regional many times.

(13:01):
And like you said, when they went to make these trades,
the Indian chief might have thought, and by the way,
I did look up like Indian, Native American, American Indian,
and in terms of discussing history, they say, it's kind
of okay to use all three. Yeah, so I just
wanted to c a there, that's a good one, thanks. Uh.

(13:22):
But like the Native American chief might come in and
and in his mind he's thinking, I'm just sort of
making this deal for our little regional section of the Cherokee.
But to the white settlers they were like, I can't
tell the difference you get. You're all one big tribe
to me, right, you all got feathers on, yeah exactly.
You know, that was sort of the attitude. Right. So
when they went to debt, and when they couldn't repay

(13:43):
the debt, the the tribe would be forced to seed
land to the government to repay that debt. So in
that is one way that massive amounts of land were
seeded from Native Americans in the Southeast and the east
um ceded land to the federal government because the government,
again was in the business of collecting land from Native

(14:06):
Americans and redistributing it to white settlers. Yeah, and and
some of them kind of uh, smartly and naively at
the same time, said, you know what, they're coming for
our land, so maybe we can we can give them
some of this land in exchange to be able to
keep some of it ourselves. And so they tried this

(14:26):
this process at first, and like an accommodation basically, yeah,
like you let us keep some you can have this.
We got some swamp land we don't care about where.
We're not going to tell you that you can have
the swamp land. You've got to protect this and the
and the settler said, sure, that sounds great. Well, the
fed the federal government would say that, but what the

(14:47):
problem was the settlers, the white settlers who would encroach
on that land, were like, we didn't sign any treaty
with you, and who's going to stop us. The federal government. No,
you're not going to lift a finger. They may tell
you one thing, but nobody's stopping me from coming on
your land and hunting, growing crops or building a barn. Uh,
killing your livestock, maybe killing you. There were squatters with

(15:09):
basically yeah, but with impunity. Yeah, and they they either
didn't get the message or they didn't care, or both.
It was probably both. So then what happens and throughout
this whole process, it's very cyclical. It happened over and
over again in regions all over the original well basically
everywhere east of the Mississippi River. So this would happen.

(15:30):
These people would spot encroach, didn't care what deal they
had made with the federal government, and so then there
would be retaliation by the Native American tribes and they
would they would fight each other. They would go, you know,
into battle, not huge wars, yet you know, these skirmishes
basically would take place, skirmishes and massacres on both sides
for sure. I mean, you gotta you have to say

(15:51):
it like. It was very bloody and very brutal on
both sides. So when white blood was spilled, the federal
government would arrive and say, probably shouldn't have done that. Uh,
maybe there would be a battle with the with the
the tribe that was being subdued at the time. Maybe
maybe not, But either way, the treaty that the government

(16:12):
hadn't been enforcing before now was officially out the door.
A new treaty had to be established that would include
seating even more lands to the federal government, which would
in turn be given to white settlers who would come
in and would then further encroach on the the Indian
land and the cycle would start over again. Alright, so

(16:34):
let's take a break. That was sort of the uh,
the setup for in culturation. We're gonna come back and
talk about the other side of the coin separation proposed
by one Thomas Jefferson right after this. All right, so

(17:01):
you got George Washington saying, assimilate into our society. Maybe
we can work this all out. It'll be great. There
won't be any problems. Do you have, Thomas Jefferson. George
Washington was a used car salesman. Uh. Then Thomas Jefferson
comes along and said, you know what, here's what we
should do. It's pretty clear that what will become our

(17:22):
United States. You didn't use those words, is like the
western borders is gonna be the Mississippi River. Who needs
anything west of the Mississippi, right, what's out there? Uh?
So here we have this Louisiana purchase. We just bought
eight hundred and twenty seven thousand square miles. Uh, a
lot of square miles. There's a lot of squy. We
should do one on that, by the way. At some point, um,

(17:45):
we did one on the Lewis and Clark expedition. They
had a lot to do with the Louis. Yeah, that
was one of my favorites do. Um. So he said,
you know, here's what we'll do. Why don't why don't
you we just relocate you folks west of the Mississippi.
That way, we've got our little country over here. You're
out there where we you know, you won't be bothered
by us anymore. Trust me, I'm Thomas Jefferson. Uh. And

(18:07):
it'll it'll work out for everyone. And then the Plains
Indians were going, what about us, We're already out here?
And then what, yeah, who are you? We don't recognize you. Uh.
And like you point out, there were some real problems,
one of which was it wasn't theirs to uh, to
resettle or to resettle other people, right because what would

(18:30):
become in the American's mind, Indian territory was already Indian territory.
It was just different. India but it also, I mean
it displays not like a lack of comprehension on the
part of the federal government, it displays a lack of
caring about what happened. It was like, there's already Indians
out here, there's not white people out here. We're probably
never gonna want to go out here. So get off

(18:53):
of this land and go out here. And how about this,
We'll say that the War Department will protect you. Yeah.
And another big problem was these these eastern uh Native
Americans were like, well, we don't want to go out there.
We're used to the lush South and I don't know
how to succeed out there. Really, Yeah, have you read

(19:13):
our newspaper. We've been talking about this for years now.
We don't want to move. What was it called the
Cherokee Phoenix, which is kind of confusing. It wasn't at
the time because Phoenix didn't exist yet. But now Cherokee
or Phoenix, make up your mind what town. I don't
think they met the town, I know, because it didn't
exist yet. I get the joke. And did Phoenix burn

(19:36):
or something? Is that why it's called Phoenix? That I
don't know? Someone will tell us from Phoenix and then say,
why haven't you toward Phoenix yet? We'll come to Phoenix
at some point, right probably, or Tucson or Yuma. Didn't
He used to do time in Yuma. Yeah, I did

(19:56):
some hard time in hum. I don't know if we
could fill a small restaurant in Yuma. Okay, that's just
not a lot of people there. That's fine. Maybe you
never know, we'll do an intimate storytellers show an evening
with Josh and Charge at my former restaurant, Julietta's Patty
O Cafe. Nice. That's some buzz marketing right there. Yeah,

(20:17):
I assume they're still around. So I think ultimately we
were talking about far through a soft track was um,
the Plains tribes were like, we're here, please don't send
anyone out here. And the Eastern tribes were like, we
don't want to move. What are you guys not kidding
about this? And so the federal government said, oh, this
is a real pickle. Where are we gonna do? Oh
we'll just ignore both. Well. Yeah, and also they were

(20:39):
I don't know how a where they were this, but
what was going on where these factions were being created
and within tribes they were being split into people who
wanted to kind of stay and defend their homeland and
people that were like, oh, maybe we should just pack
up and go and try and resettle somewhere else. Uh.
And this factionalism, it was kind of a recurring thing,

(21:00):
part of this big cycle and would end up in
many ways being their undoing I think. Yeah, and a
lot of tribes basically split into like in eighteen seventeen, um,
it's a group of Cherokees said, you know what, forget it,
where is this gonna move to Indian territory? And they did.
They were called the old settlers, will move from Indian
territory to Indian territors, right, and they call his Indians

(21:24):
right exactly. Um, they ended up in Arkansas and then Oklahoma,
and basically we're the factionalism was already deep enough, but
the separation then following that factionalism effectively split the Cherokee
into two separate tribes, the Eastern and the Western. But
they were no longer like it wasn't like the Eastern

(21:45):
was the satellite division or the Western was the satellite
division of the whole tribe. They were like two different
tribes as a result of that, and that happened with
more than just the Cherokee as well. This this whole
idea of should we stay in fight or should we
just say forget it and and move It was a
big problem. It was a big discussion that had a
tough a tough solution because if you said we need

(22:07):
to move, well, then you needed to negotiate a treaty
so you could get as much land as possible out west.
But if you wanted to stay, you needed as many
people as possible to stay because there's strength and safety
in numbers. So the fact that it was split was
a real problem for the tribes themselves. I wonder if
the tribes had not split up, and in fact, if

(22:31):
the tribes, all the different tribes had banded together, well,
they tried that. Well. I guess what I'm asking is
what what was the total population east of the Mississippi
River of Native Americans compared to white people. I don't know,
but I think it was significantly less, so they probably
it probably wouldn't have mattered. No, but if you want

(22:54):
to get into alternate histories, if the if Native Americans
had had an immune I need a smallpox may not
have been a United States because many more people, Yeah,
something like a hundred million or something like that, as
much as Europe, all of Europe so had small bands
of European colonists coming. Even if they'd sent like armies

(23:15):
and stuff, they would have had a much harder time.
But the fact that the North American continent had been
effectively decimated um by smallpox, meant that there were far
fewer people and that their cultures had had been hit
in large part already by this breaking up of of
these epidemics. All right, so I gave the world or

(23:36):
Hollywood um shark Nado okay um, a TV show on
the alternate history where smallpox never happened and Native Americans
ended up enslaving the white man. Make that into a
show kind of like Man in the High Castle. But
but you know, rewrite it for Native Americans coming out,

(23:57):
that'd be pretty good. Yeah. The white sellers are like, well, okay,
we we get it. We've upset. You were just gonna leave.
And the New Americans were like, you're not going anywhere.
You see that boat, it's on fire. That's our boat.
We need that to escape, all right. So uh for
the people that uh said, you know, we're gonna stay here.
We're going to resist. One. There was a big thing

(24:20):
that happened, well, a couple of things that happened that
kind of set the course of history in one direction
that would never return. Right here in Georgia's particularly North Georgia,
particularly Delonica, Georgia and other places. Um, there was gold discovered,
and whenever there's gold discovered triggers a gold rush. A

(24:41):
lot of people moved there, which means you need, you know,
sort of supporting economy. You need guys named Cookie just
to come out and cook the beans. Right. See, I
knew there would be humor in this everyone lats at Cookie. Uh.
So that couple huh I know. Um that coupled with

(25:02):
the invention and widespread availability of the cotton gin from
one Eli Whitney. Um, it lowered the barrier to getting
into cotton farming. And so you have these people moving
south to get in the gold rush. Then you have
people moving south for this land that was now super
super valuable. Uh yeah. It went from like just being

(25:24):
coveted to being like it's done, Like like playtime is over.
Where Like if you thought we were being nice before,
we're going to war with you guys. Now yeah, and
and violence really kind of ramped up at this point,
um because of the value of the land all of
a sudden because of cotton and and white settlers were
basically like, we're taking this land. Yeah they were, they

(25:47):
were provoking, Um, the Native Americans are assing them just
basically undertaking a terrorist campaign against the Native Americans on
their land. Uh. And then the federal government was being
called the task for not doing more about the Indian problem.
So for a lot of the um Native Americans east

(26:08):
of the Mississippi, they basically saw this writing on the wall,
like this is never going to stop, and we're gonna
have to go to war or we're gonna have to leave.
And so that factionalism started to lean a lot more
towards people who were prepared to leave. There was still
plenty who were prepared to stay as well. It just
made that wedge even deeper, this understanding that like whites

(26:32):
were never gonna let up. Yeah, Like we've given them
some land and asked to keep some of it, right,
and they say sure, but then they don't let us
keep that land. So this is not going to end
well for us. Yeah, I mean, plus a lot of
us are dying, they're killing our livestock, they're burning our
our farms and houses. It was just a pretty horrible situation. Yeah.
I think early on this, in this piece you wrote,

(26:55):
you called it possibly the darkest decade in American history,
which is what like eighteen to eighty. Yeah. Alright, so
the federal government does get involved in their first um
go at. This was saying in eighteen twenty four officially, like,
how about we have this voluntary relocation thing and it's

(27:17):
up to you. It's pretty nice out west, you know there,
you know, an Indian territory. And again they said, but
we're in Indian territory. And they said, well, we don't
know what you're talking about. It's pretty nice, so why
don't you just pack your bags and get out there?
And then along came a man, uh who it's fairly
controversial through the lens of history still today. Yeah, well

(27:40):
more than ever probably today. Uh named Andrew Jackson from
South Carolina. Yeah, he was born in South Carolina. He
made his name as a frontiersman lawyer, you know, which
is what does that even mean? I defend people for
like squirrel related charges, they think? And he uh, he

(28:00):
also was a wealthy planter, slave owner. But more than anything,
he was elected president because he was the people's candidate,
and he was the people's candidate because he was a
war hero and very famous Indian fighter is what he
was known as. Yeah, and weirdly uh an Indian fighter,
but also had which was at the Choctaw that fought

(28:24):
with him alongside him at the Battle of New Orleans. Yeah.
So this which he kind of forgot or didn't forget
but didn't care much about. Right, this is the factionalism
also resulted in tribes splitting and actually going to civil
war with one another, and so some that were in
favor of accommodating um the whites or the federal government
would actually fight alongside them against the other members of

(28:47):
their tribe, and some of them did fight directly under
Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans. So yeah, he
was like that was years ago. Who cares. So he
had a nickname the sharp Knife for the long knife,
because one of the things that he advocated for was genocide. Basically, um,

(29:07):
kill all the women and children once we're done and
we've had our victory, and that will really kind of
take care of this area. Yeah, which is it's really
surprising that I looked all over it didn't find any
specific like this instant or this incident really characterizes that mentality.
He seemed to advocate it rhetorically, and he was he

(29:30):
he was a vicious um commander, military commander as far
as fighting Indians went. But I didn't run across anything
where he actually did just exterminate a whole village. And
he had plenty of opportunities too, So I guess he
thought he was a good idea, but never really pulled
the trigger or something like that. But I was really

(29:50):
surprised because I've always heard he was basically genocidal, but
I never found any specific instance him carrying out what
amounted to genocide. He just advocated did it well, they
didn't have cell phone cameras, that's true. Who knows what
would have happened. Um. So you also bring up a
good point, which is that this, uh, this practice of

(30:12):
of massacre was happening on both sides. When the American
Indians would win a battle, um many times, they would
also have a massacre of women and children, burned down
an entire fort. Perhaps, um what was it fort? The
massacre at Fort Mims in Alabama or what would be
Alabama in eighteen thirteen is one of the prime examples. Yeah,

(30:34):
the so the Creeks were became a very deeply divided
tribe with um accommodationists fighting with the federal government against
the resistance groups which basically came to be known as
the Red Sticks. And the Red Sticks were basically a
an Indian army in the War of eighteen twelve. It's

(30:56):
prior to the War of eighteen twelve, some of the
northern front tier tribes had kind of come down led
by to come say, I think, had come down and
basically rallied everybody they could and said we need to
like stop this white encroachment once for all and go
to war and all just come together for good our
differences and come together and beat back the federal government

(31:18):
and these white settlers. And when the War of eighteen
twelve broke out, these groups sided with the British and
this gave the federal government license to basically declare war
on the frontier UH tribes, including the Red Sticks. And
at the Battle of Fort Mims, the Red Sticks surrounded
Fort Mims and inside where a bunch of white settlers

(31:40):
um some African American slaves, some accommodation ast Creeks, and
then some federal troops and they set the fort on
fire and killed almost everybody, including women and children. Yeah,
but interestingly, they spared the lives of most of the
slaves and took them hostage. So I like how you

(32:01):
kind of brought in the the how slaves factored into
this whole thing, because I think a lot of that
is sort of brushed aside, you know, pretty interesting stuff.
And then you said, Chuck that Jackson kind of forgot
any alliance with Indians that fought with them. This is
a great example of that. After this, this war with

(32:21):
the Creeks, there was a second war with the Creeks
um shortly after, and after that the Creeks as a
whole were forced to see um their land. In fifteen
thousand of them were forced to move out west after
this battle, despite the fact that that included plenty of
them who had fought alongside Jackson's federal troops. It's just,

(32:44):
I mean, no a lotman whatsoever. It was from what
I understand that Jackson, you're an Indian. That was that
it didn't matter what you did, you were an Indian.
You needed to go. Yeah, and it's important to point out,
like um you did here that there were massacres on
both sides. And while you can never justify the killing
of families and women and children in such a like
a vicious way, the white people were the invading force here.

(33:09):
You know, Um, that's kind of a pretty big factor here,
is I mean, I yeah, I think it is. Yeah. Um,
all right, well let's take another break and we're gonna
come back and talk about Florida. Al right, Florida, Florida seventeen,

(33:43):
the Sunshine State. Um boy, I used to love when
I would go to Florida as a kid. Imagine they
still do this. You would get free orange juice at
the state line. Did they still do that? That's great?
I just thought, like, oh my gosh, like anything free.
I still have that mentality. Have state prisoners lined up
and they just pull over on the shoulder and the

(34:04):
your cup of orange juice? Did you drive off? I
used to love the official I still do. I just
don't take a ton of road trips the official like
rest stations instead of you know, just hitting the gas station,
go to like the official what are they called rest
rest areas? Yeah, rest area. Man, it's like a gas
station without gas. Yeah, and I had no idea how

(34:26):
many crimes are being committed, like behind the outhouse. Yeah,
there's what was it? What was the movie where that had?
Was it? There's something about Mary? Oh yeah, we're Ben
Stiller was He's like to take a leak in the
woods and he got caught up in something, some sting operation. Um, alright,

(34:49):
so it's eighteen seventeen. Uh, Jackson says, you know what,
Florida's kind of nice. I might like to take it
for my own. Uh. They have orange juice on the yeah,
the state line. But there was a problem. It was
under Spanish rule at the time, and the Florida was
kind of a crazy place back then. It was a
safe haven for militant Indians, runaway slaves, anyone who basically

(35:13):
was an enemy of uh Americans. Yeah, the Seminole tribe
was like, you hate America, to come join us? And
uh there were Yeah, there were maroons is what they
were called. But runaway slaves who had found uh safety
living amongst the Seminoles in Spain would arm them, right
they because they were they would harass the United States

(35:35):
and the federal the federal army and the plantations along
the border. Right, so the fact that there were runaway
slaves down there with the Seminoles gave Jackson just enough
of a uh reason to invade, not a legal reason. No,
he basically waged in illegal guerrilla war in Florida, Spanish

(35:56):
Florida against the Seminole and then when he whenever he
came across the Spanish fort, he just take that out
and then he claimed that land as um American. Yeah,
and this was under the order the secret order of
President James Monroe. Meaning Jackson went to Monroe and said, hey,
we should stage a guerrilla war down there in Florida

(36:17):
so we can grab some land. And Monroe said, are
you crazy? And he said crazy like a fox. And
Monroe basically said, yeah, go go do your thing, and uh,
it's illegal, but who cares, right, Just don't don't implicate
me if you get caught. And he I mean, the
Congress knew what was going on. There are people calling
for him to be recalled to uh Jackson, that is right, right, yeah,

(36:41):
no one I I you still run across historical documents, um, well,
not not first first or primary sources or anything, but
like analysis of of this era, and Monroe does not
get mentioned. Only find him like here or they're um.
So he kept his cover pretty well. But Jackson was
more than happy to take the fall. And when he

(37:03):
came back finally after the first Seminole War, Um, he
came back to hero. He carved out large portions of
Florida for the United States. He had fought the Seminole
He had lost, but he still had gained enough ground
against the Spanish at least that he was considered a hero. Yeah. Boy, this,
I mean, this was the first Seminole War. Will get

(37:25):
to the others, but they were. They were a tenacious group.
Oh yeah, you don't mess with the Seminole. I think
that was her motto. I think. Uh so Jackson was
a hero such that he was elected president in and um,
who how do you call his followers? Um, you say

(37:45):
backwoods frontiersman. Yeah, that's a good way to say it.
But his inauguration party was so wild that these visitors
that came to see the inauguration trash the White House
and they said, moved this party outside. You you folks
are out of hand. And so it depending on what
who you read, either it was great that Jackson opened

(38:08):
the White House up to the American people for his
inauguration party, and the Washington elite got the vapors and
fainted or uh it was just a bunch of brutes
just trashing the White House who didn't know how to
conduct themselves because they were all drunk on whiskey and
wearing raccoons on their heads, some of which were still alive. Really.

(38:31):
Uh So, Jackson, needless to say, was a divisive figure
in American history, so much so that his party was
split during his candidacy. Think about that. Yeah, the candidate
for the Democrats was so divisive that the Democratics party
party split in two during the election year. Imagine such

(38:54):
a thing. That's crazy, it is. And this also made
me want to do a show on the history of
political parties in the United States and how they have
uh yeah, two major times. And which is why when
you I don't know, if you do too much social

(39:15):
media uh stuff so at all and you see people,
you know, harping about like, well, the Democrats were in
favor of this and the Republicans were in favor of this,
It's like, we'll do a little research. These are names
that can't be applied, as you know, for three hundred years,
as one single, solitary set of values. No, they s

(39:39):
which sides A couple of times switched hats. So what
were the two? Uh, the Democrats and the Whigs. Yeah,
the Whigs banned one of my favorites. Oh yeah, Afghan Wigs. No, no, no,
the Whigs inspiral carpets. But the Whigs athens in Atlanta's

(40:00):
own oh hey wigs with an h uh. Yeah, we
were the old Man band covers a few of their songs,
probably too many, Okay, I'd just be like, oh, I
guess this is an original of el chiepos if I
heard it, well, there are no originals. Well, then I'd
have to correct myself. That's right. So Jackson had this belief,

(40:22):
if you haven't picked up on it by now, that
the right of discovery was more important than the right
of occupancy. Right and by discovery meaning oh hey, look
there's some Indian land we would like get off. Yes,
that was basically the view that Jackson held. The thing was,
it wasn't just Jackson again. He was a very popular,

(40:43):
considered the people's president who came into power against the
entrenched elite who were considered corrupt um, and he had
a lot of public support behind him. Yeah, like, like
we said earlier, we can use a land better than
you can, and you're getting in the way of our

(41:03):
ultimate prosperity. Right, So he had he gave a State
of the Union address in eighteen thirty that really sums
that up. His views on that. He said, what good
man would prefer a country covered with forests arranged by
a few thousand savages to our extensive republic, studied with cities, towns,
and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art

(41:23):
can devised or industry execute, occupied by more than twelve
million happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization,
and religion. And every American Indian raised her hand said me,
and he well, not you. I mean, what white person
would prefer a country I should have qualified that, I
see now, But like you said, he had. You know,

(41:45):
that was sort of the popular opinion at the time
as we came over here, fought for our independence and
uh so, so you know, let's really grow this country. Right.
We've got technology, that's right, so let's put it to use.
But it wasn't everyone, though there was one Henry Clay. Uh,
shout out to our old friends Joey and and Ecra

(42:08):
of the great band the Henry Clay People, which is
no more. They did a theme for this stuff you
should know TV show, that's right. Um. So, Henry Clay
was a candidate for the National Democratic Party, so they
were the Whigs right just before they were called the Whigs.
That's right. And they said, what's a better name for
a band? Actually, National Democratic Party. Pretty good band name.

(42:28):
It's okay, not bad. Um. There are quite a few
good band names in here, but I didn't say any
of them because it would just be a bunch of
like white hipster dudes kind of ripping off some cool
Native American name. So I'm not even going to mention them.
Ladies and gentlemen, Indian Territory, there probably is a band
called that. Um. So, Henry Clay was running for the

(42:52):
National Democratic Party of the Whigs, and at two he said,
you know, part of a big part of my platform
is to respect uh, they're the Native American claim to
their own land and to oppose Jackson's Indian removal policies. Yeah,
and everyone, well not everyone. He lost pretty big. Yeah,

(43:14):
but he basically dedicated his campaign to opposing Jackson. So
go Henry Clay. Yeah, there's a guy, a senator from
New Jersey named Theodore frayleng Using. Wasn't the German immigrant
at all? Was he? He? He gave a six hour
speech in opposition to Indian removal. He had a pretty
good quote. You want to take that one. Yeah, no

(43:36):
argument can shake the political maxim that where the Indian
always has been, he enjoys the absolute right to still
be in the free exercise of his own modes of thought, government,
and conduct. And the populace is like, no, screw that.
We want to farm cotton and get gold. Have you

(43:57):
ever been gold mining up there in Delanaga? No, but
you know that's where that there's golden them our hills.
That's where it comes from. Is the mayor of Delawaga? Really,
I should say gold Panning. They don't let you do
gold mining in there, but you can go up there
in gold pan They cut your arms off if you
tried to gold mine up there. They take it seriously.
Another big critic of Indian removal, and we should totally

(44:19):
do a podcast, Davy Crockett. We did know that we did.
Why was Davy Crockett King of the Wild Frontier. Wow,
he said you may go to Hell and I will
go to Texas. Yeah, we talked about it. Yeah, just
in the last couple of years. No, I swear, all right,
I'm gonna look that up. Well right now, you keep talking,
all right. So Davy Crockett, who I completely forgot that

(44:41):
we podcasted on UM, was against his Indian removal and
he actually, like you said, he threatened to leave the
US for Texas if well, he was the first one
to do that. If Martin van Buren was elected and
he was basically Jackson's successor that was going to kind
of keep up this UM. No in the Indian removal
was the best path forward, and um van Buren was elected.

(45:06):
So Crockett said, all right, I'm going to Texas and
he did so, yeah, he did. He lost his Senate
bid and he says, he said, you may go to
Hell and I will go to Tech, which is Tennessee. Correct,
this Senate bid. We did the episode in August two. Wow. Yeah,
it's getting bad. Well that was almost like ten years ago. Yeah,

(45:29):
big shout out to Jill Hurley. By the way, our
official stat keeper. Yeah, thanks Jill Um. She has really
done a good job with a spreadsheet that keeps track
of how many episodes we've done. She's basically the only
person on the planet who knows for sure how many
original episodes we've really Yeah, we have her locked away
at the Seed Vault in Norway. Um it is Norway, right,

(45:52):
But Jill just wrote us and she said that I
believe this November, November two will be somewhere. It will
be one thousand episodes. Crazy, it's crazy. They won't let
us leave. And all that is to say, please forgive
me if I forget that we did Davy Crockett just
three years ago. Yeah, if he was said three months ago,

(46:13):
I would have just got it been left this August,
it will be four years ago. Okay, so you're fine, yeah,
because I don't remember anything after one year. So they're
also a lot of missionaries who had worked with especially
the Five Civilized Tribes. Very interesting story there. They saw
it to oppose in your removal as well. Uh, and

(46:35):
the like we're trying to make these people Christians, right,
you're messing up our bag. And the federal government was like, well,
that's a really great point. But we don't care. And um,
at first we should say we keep saying the federal government.
The federal government was trying to figure out the best
way forward. What they finally settled on was Jefferson's plan
for UH separation, but that that removal, that separations should

(47:00):
be through a voluntary, peaceful removal. Right. The white settlers
and then the states themselves were harassing the Indians on
the ground. Right, Whereas the federal government was like, hey,
let's let's just try this or let's do that or
something like that wasn't the reality of what was really
going on there. And a good example of that is
Georgia passed a law that said that, um, if you

(47:22):
are white, you have to apply for a license to
live with Native Americans missionaries. And then if you were
a missionary, they'd be like approval denied or application denied, yes,
either way. Right. Um, So things were kind of going
along like this for a little while, and then finally

(47:43):
UH in eighteen thirty, the official stance was made into
law with the Indian Removal Act. Right, And this is
what really set into motion what would become known as
the Trail of Tears, right, and the that all that harassment,
all of the illegal activity, all the encroachment UM and
mistreatment by white settlers and the states was now enshrined

(48:06):
in federal law. It was now official policy under the
Jackson administration. Yeah, and that policy said broadly that, um,
the President can come in, they can negotiate these treaties
with tribes, these land deals. Uh. And we could grant
land um in the Indian Territory west of the Mississippi
and relocate you. We have legal claim to do so

(48:28):
right now some of if you're if any of your
people want to stay, they can stay. Uh. They will
become citizens of the state they live in. Not full citizens,
but it's kind of citizens. Will call them. You can
get a little bit of land too, Yep. They'll be
given a parcel of land, but it's not going to
be their ancestral land. Will decide what land it turns
out to be. But they're basically just gonna be acclimated

(48:51):
and assimilated. And then what's more, Uh, if you choose
to move, the War Department will enforce the treaties that
we have with you. They'll keep people off of your land,
native white or otherwise. Yeah, and they'll also help you
relocate to help you get settled out there on the
plains and make sure you're all taken care of. So

(49:13):
as we've seen, the Creeks and the Seminoles have both
said we're not leaving, and we're gonna fight you. Right.
The Cherokee tried a different tax, They tried the courts.
Actually it was very smart, actually because what they did
was they went back and used the federal government's own
uh declaration against them because they said, hey, you know,

(49:33):
a while back, in order to make these deals, you
had to official you they you made us a sovereign people, right,
we made our land sovereign land. The federal government recognized
them as a sovereign nation in order to carry out
these treaties where they ceded land to the federal government. Yeah,
said so you remember when you did that, Well, you
said that yourself, we're sovereign people. Yeah, and we just

(49:55):
drummed up this constitution. Were a sovereign nation with sovereign
soil within the borders of the US. And the Supreme
Court actually affirmed that and said, you know what, sorry, guys,
the Cherokees at least are a sovereign nation and you
can't remove them. They said, you really didn't think this through,
and uhty one. They ruled against Georgia in favor of

(50:17):
that sovereignty. And um, you point out that's all well
and fine, but that requires a president that says, oh well,
the Supreme Court said so, so I guess that's the deal. Yeah,
and Andrew Jackson was not that way. There's actually a
quote he was talking about Justice John Marshall, who wrote
the majority opinion siding with the Cherokees. He said, Mr

(50:38):
Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it,
so called judge right. So, the the idea that you
have to have an executive branch willing to uphold or
respect the decisions of the judicial branch in order for
those those judgments to be carried out. If you don't

(50:58):
have that, and you don't have a Congress that will
check an executive that's that's not doing that, or a
public that will, then things like the Indian Removal process
are allowed to happen. And on paper, Indian Removal Act
was supposed to be beneficial to Native Americans. It was
supposed to be something that could be carried out peacefully

(51:22):
in actuality under the administration of Andrew Jackson. It was
a humanitarian travesty. Uh. So that's the end of part one.
I have no listener mail in our tradition of two parters,
and in the tradition of those serious different stroke two
parters is where we got it. So yeah, we'll hold
off on listener mail, but you can you can send

(51:43):
us out traditionally. Oh yeah, okay, well, uh, stay tuned
for part two coming out on Thursday. And uh. In
the meantime, if you want to get in touch with us,
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(52:07):
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