The Loss Of Historical Lands: Native American Resettlement

Native Americans have always viewed land as something special that that should be shared by the community they live in. Within their communities or tribes, they would grow and hunt on the land. The land was a gift and they are supposed to care for the land. Their lives and religion centered around the land. When the Americans came over from England wanting to settle the land and make it theirs, there was resistance from the Native Americans, because the land was where their whole lives were spent, and the land was theirs to use but not to own.

The Americans wanted to own the land and designate what was theirs and what belonged to the Native Americans. At first, they moved the Native Americans west of the Appalachian Mountains and would not let anyone who was not Native American cross the mountains without special royal permission. This move of the Native Americans was called the Marshall Trilogy.

Soon “The American colonists resented, and eventually rejected this limitation,” (Healey, 3).

They started to think that the Native Americans were not progressing in their lives and the Americans wanted to move past the Appalachian Mountains, so they could move forward in life and because they believed that the land was rightfully theirs. With the Native Americans believing the land belongs to all, and the Americans wanting to separate whose land is whose and have everyone own certain plots of land the Native Americans would no longer be able to live their lives as they previously had.

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No matter how the Native Americans felt about the land they were forcibly removed from their native homes and moved to the states of Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma this was “designated “Indian territory” and the lands native people were “offered” for relocation,” (Healey, 8). This famous move of the Native Americans was called the trail of tears and the act that made it legal for the government to move the Native Americans was called the Indian Removal Act of 1830. When being removed from the lands they knew and being taken to unfamiliar lands the Native Americans had to battle the elements and were exposed with little to no shelter, tragically there were many deaths while being relocated.

This also helped to name the trail of tears. By moving the Native Americans away from their homes there were “46,000 Native peoples were displaced and 25 million acres opened up” (Healey, 8). With the relocation of all of these Native Americans the people there was a lot of land open for the Americans to progress their lives and live on the land they believed was rightfully theirs.

When the Americans first came over from Europe it caused tension between the Native Americans. The Americans quickly became greedy and forced the Native Americans off of the land they had been living on for as long as they could remember so the Americans could make it their own. The Americans kept wanting more and more land for themselves and kept moving the Native Americans to different areas in order to have more room for the Americans. Relearning about the trail of tears and going into further depth about what happened really makes me think about what this world would have been like if the Americans would have left the Native Americans alone or at least gave them a fair share of the land. Everything about this world would be very different from what we know today.