Genocide Destiny

Genocide Destiny

Manifest Destiny is a phrase used to express the belief that the United States had a mission to expand its borders, thereby spreading its form of democracy and freedom. Originally a political catchphrase of the nineteenth-century, Manifest Destiny eventually became a standard historical term, often used as a synonym for the territorial expansion of the United States across North America towards the Pacific Ocean. The United States government believed that the Native Americans were a problem that was hindering Manifest Destiny from being fulfilled (or at the very least, used the idea of Manifest Destiny to gain land and resources the Indians possessed), and would do everything in their power to exterminate the “Indian Problem.” The U.S. government, along with the majority of the U.S. population, eradicated this problem through lies, forced removal, and murder. This eradication nearly wiped out a race of people, whose only crime was mere existence in a land they had lived on, respected, and cherished for hundreds of years. The U.S. government had three main ways of solving the “Indian Problem”. They would remove them, kill them, or segregate them from the “civilized” white man by placing the Indian on reservations. The Indians soon learned that the U.S. government could not be trusted, and fought fiercely against the harsh injustices that were being administered. Tragically, the Indians would eventually have their spirits broken, living out their meager existence in the terrible homes called reservations.

The U.S. Government sponsored solution to the “Indian Problem” started in the early nineteenth century among the southern states. This area was home to the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole nations. Eager for land to raise cotton, the southern settlers pressured the U.S. government to acquire Indian Territory. The Seminole nation in Florida, one of the tribes being targeted for removal to areas west of the Mississippi, violently resisted the acquisition. The ensuing war cost the U.S. upwards of twenty million dollars, and ended in the death of fifteen hundred American soldiers. In the end, almost three thousand Seminole had been relocated forcibly across the Mississippi, and countless others killed. This relocation was an idea that had already been proposed by previous U.S. presidents, as George H. Phillips points out in his book, Indians and Indian Agents (1997): “With the end of Seminole resistance, the goal of relocating eastern Indians to the west, suggested by Thomas Jefferson, proposed by James Monroe, and implemented by Andrew Jackson, largely had been achieved.”

This goal of relocation, and the annihilation of Indians that would come along with it for years to come, was largely achieved as a direct result of U.S. President Andrew Jackson. In his first inaugural address, Andrew Jackson claims that under his administration the Indians would be treated justly: “It will be my sincere and constant desire to observe toward the Indian tribes within our limits a just and liberal policy, and to give that humane and considerate attention to their rights and their wants which is consistent with the habits of our Government and the feelings of our people." This claim, however, would turn out to be a lie when he passes into law the Indian Removal Act of 1830, stated as “An Act to provide for an exchange of lands with the Indians residing in any of the states or territories, and for their removal west of the river Mississippi.” Removing a nation of people from their homes out of greed and jealousy is not a “just and liberal” policy. This location the Indians were to be relocated to was satisfactory to much of the U.S. population because many people thought that the borders of the U.S. would not extend past the Mississippi, and because the land there was thought to be unfarmable. However, when the “singing plow” was invented in 1835, the land became valuable overnight, because this machine was able to cut through the sticky soil without clogging, allowing the land to be farmed. Later, these same Indians would be taken from their homes and relocated again, so that white settlers could own this land for themselves. In order to reach their new reservation “homes” in the west, the Indians were herded mercilessly across the country, killing many Indians in the process.

The worst of these marches, known as “the Trail of Tears,” was by far the most brutal and savage removal of the “Indian Problem” in the name of Manifest Destiny. In 1836, the Cherokee tribe was given two years to relocate voluntarily, and if they did not comply with this order, they would be removed by force. At the end of the two years, only two thousand had relocated. The U.S. government sent in seven thousand troops who forced the “savages” into stockades. They were not even allowed time to gather their belongings before the long one thousand mile march to Oklahoma began, and as they left, the southern settlers looted their homes. In his book, Distant Horizon: Documents from the Nineteenth-Century American West (1999), Gary Noy informs us that: “On the forced march, known as “the Trail of Tears,” approximately 25 percent (about 4,000 people) of the Cherokee nation died of starvation and exposure.”

When the “Indian Problem” could not be solved through removal, the U.S. used murder as a solution, illustrated In the book, Exterminate Them, edited by Clifford E. Trafzer and Joel R. Hyer: “The state of California set aside $1.5 million to reimburse volunteer militia units that hunted down and killed so-called hostile Indians. Thus, the state of California paid men to murder Native Californians.” The Mariposa Battalion was one of the units that received money to exterminate the Indians. After the discovery of gold in the Sierra Nevada foothills in 1849, thousands of miners came to the Sierras to get rich. Their arrival resulted in conflict with local Indians who fought to protect their homeland. Because of Indian resistance, the Mariposa Battalion was organized. Under the authority of the State of California, the Mariposa Battalion was to bring an end to the Indians in the area now known as Yosemite National Park. Clifford E. Trafzer, and Joel R. Hyer, declare that the U.S. government sought to end the Indians way of life when they wrote: “All in all, the state government of California and the United States federal government