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Cherokee Nation on "Trail of Tears w --1838<br />
thirds of Mississippi.(9)<br />
pean settlers. In magnitude this was as sweeping as Hitler's<br />
grand design to render continental Europe "free" of Jews.<br />
The settlers were particularly upset that the Indian Under Jackson's direction, the U.S. Army committed<br />
nations of the Old Southwest showed no signs of collaps- genocide on an impressive scale. The Cherokee Nation, for<br />
ing, "dying out" or trading away their land. All had instance, was dismantled, with one-third of the Cherokee<br />
developed stable and effective agricultural economies, with population dying in the Winter of 1838 (from disease,<br />
considerable trade. Euro-Amerikans, if anything, thought famine, exposure and gunfire as the U.S. Army marched<br />
that they were too successful. The Cherokee, who had them away at bayonet point on "The Trail of Tears9').(l 1)<br />
chosen a path of adopting many Western societal forms,<br />
had a national life more stable and prosperous than that of So the man who led the settler's "national struggle<br />
the Euro-Amerikan settlers who eventually occupied those for economic and political democracy" was not only a<br />
Appalachian regions after they were forced out. A bourgeois politician, but in fact an apostle of annexation<br />
Presbyterian Church report in 1826 records that the and genocide. The President of "The Trail of Tears" was a<br />
Cherokee nation had: 7,600 houses, 762 looms, 1488 spin- stereotype frontiersman-a fact which made him popular<br />
ning wheels, 10 sawmills, 31 grain mills, 62 blacksmith with poorer whites. After throwing away his inheritance on<br />
shops, 18 schools, 70,000 head of livestock, a weekly drinking and gambling, the young Jackson moved to the<br />
newspaper in their own language, and numerous libraries frontier (at that time Nashville, Tenn.) to "find his forwith<br />
"thousands of good books". The Cherokee national tune". That's a common phrase in the settler history<br />
government had a two-house legislature and a supreme books, which only conceals the reality that the only "forcourt.(lO)<br />
tune" on the frontier was from genocide. Jackson eventually<br />
became quite wealthy through speculating in Indian<br />
Under the leadership of President Jackson, the land (like Washington, Franklin and other settlers before<br />
U.S. Government ended even its limited recognition of In- him) and owning a cotton plantation with over one hundian<br />
sovereignty, and openly encouraged land speculators dred Afrikan slaves. The leader of "Jacksonian<br />
and local settlers to start Seizing Indian land at gunpoint. A Democracyw had a clear, practical appreciation of how<br />
U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding Cherokee sovereign- profitable genocide could be for settlers.<br />
ty vs. the state of Georgia was publicly ridiculed by<br />
Jackson, who refused to enforce it. In 1830 Jackson finally First as a land speculator, then as slavemaster, and<br />
got Congress to Pass the lkmoval Act, which authorized finally as General and then President, Jackson literally<br />
him to use the army to totally relocate or exterminate all spent the whole of his adult life personally involved in<br />
Indians east of the Mississippi River. The whole Eastern genocide. During the Creek War of 1813-14 Jackson and<br />
half of this continent was now to be completely cleared of his fellow frontiersmen slaughtered hundreds of unarmed<br />
Indians, every square inch given over to the needs of Euro- 2(j women and children-afterwards skinning the bodies to