History of the Trail of Tears, Part I

If it comes up and it's tasteful, we'll put it 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? 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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. 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. 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 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, 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. 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,

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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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

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 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, 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 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. 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, 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 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.

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. 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 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

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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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

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 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, 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 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 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 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

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 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 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,

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 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, 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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, 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 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 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

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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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

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 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 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 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, 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. 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, 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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

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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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, 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 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.

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 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, 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 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

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 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 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. 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, 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, tweet to us at s y s K podcast, join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you should Know. It's all good again. There by the way, sorry about the hacking. Technically it's not hacking. Send us an email to Wow that is really somebody said that. Send us an email to Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com for more

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