*This is an image of the major Native American Tribes before the removal era
INTRODUCTION
The Natives' vulnerability began ...
In 1492, Christopher Columbus set off to discover the New World. When Christopher Columbus arrived in the Americas, he believed he was in the Indies, which led him to name the First Americans "Indians." At first, the Europeans and the Native Americans had peaceful encounters. The Europeans gave the Natives ideas about construction, domestication of animals, and farming. The Native Americans believed they had become allies with the Europeans, but that wasn't the case they were just assimilating them. They wanted to claim the land as solely theirs which caused the Native Americans to be forced out of their own land and almost complete extinction of their history and culture.
The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was put in place by President Andrew Jackson, which exerted pressure for the tribes to move west of the Mississippi River. This act gave states like Georgia and Florida the right to remove tribes out of land forcefully. Tribes like the Seminoles and Cherokees fought hard to keep their land but fell short. Georgia passed many laws to make it impossible for the Cherokee tribe to live peacefully within their land. Georgia had found gold on "Cherokee Land, and one of those laws made it illegal for Cherokees to mine gold"(Crutchfield, Moutlon , & Del Bene, 2015, p.470). In June 1838, the removal of all Cherokees begun which is known as the Trail of Tears.The Trail of Tears was a result of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. In this horrific incident, the Cherokees had to travel in harsh weather conditions, women were raped, and diseases spread like wildfire which resulted in over 4,000 Cherokees who lost their lives as a consequence of the forceful removal from their land. "The Trail of Tears has become an symbol of the nineteenth- century federal Indian policy designed to remove America's first inhabitants from their ancestral lands"(Crutchfield, Moutlon , & Del Bene, 2015,p.471).
America wanted to end the existence of the Native American culture. The United States wanted the Native Americans to become more "American" by forcing them to change their culture and customs to fit the American society better. The idea is known as "Kill the Indian in him and Save the man"(Meza, 2015, p.354). To guarantee they achieved this goal, they would force Native American Children to attend Boarding schools. They had to leave their families and culture behind, and unsure if they will ever return to them.They were forced to speak English, drop their birth names, attend church, and cut their hair. They wanted them to forget their history, culture, and language which would ultimately kill off the Native American culture. During the assimilation era, any language other than English was forbidden which caused many Native languages to become extinct. "The extinction of native languages also has an affect on tribal sovereignty as “native cultures begin to die with [the language]”(Meza, 2015, p.355-356). When they took the future generations that would have carried on the traditions of their tribes, it reduced the chances of keeping the Native American culture alive.