Module 5: “He loves his red children, and his tongue is not forked”

It never ceases to amaze me what humans are capable of doing when the idea of becoming wealthy at the cost of others is on the line. This first passage in chapter 7 of Howard Zinn’s: A People’s History of the United States, he immediately sets the record straight about the difference between what we have been taught as children and what actually happened. “ “Indian removal,” as it has been politely called, cleared the land for white occupancy between the Appalachians and the Mississippi, cleared it for cotton in the South and grain in the North, for expansion, immigration, canals, railroads, new cities, and the building of a huge continental empire clear across to the Pacific Ocean. The cost in human life cannot be accurately measured, in suffering not even roughly measured.” (Zinn page 97)

“…The Indian Removal Act of 1830 authorized President Andrew Jackson to move Indians residing east of the Mississippi to lands in the West.” (Reader, article: The Indian Removal Act) Tribes like the Shawnee Indians were frustrated once again that they were being asked to relocate out of land that they used to share and live in complete harmony with one another, not placing ownership over land, but that it was for everyone’s use. Chief Tecumseh, of the Shawnee tribe, gathered five thousand Indians in 1811 and spoke of an uprising. He wanted to send the white settlers back where they came from, and was tired of the way they had been treating the Indians. (Zinn page 98) Other tribes like the Creek and Cherokee Indians were occupying very valuable land in Georgia, “The Creek Indians occupied most of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. In 1813 some their warriors massacred 250 people at Fort Mims, whereupon, Jackson’s troops burned down a Creek village…” (Zinn page 98) Jackson, however, wouldn’t stop the war against the Creek tribe, as him and his men killed another eight hundred Creeks in 1814 in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Jackson used Cherokee tribesmen to help fight this battle in promise that they would be given “governmental friendship.” It wouldn’t take long for the white man to turn on the Cherokee’s too. “In 1829, gold was discovered in Cherokee terroratory in Georgia.” (Zinn page 102) In a passage written by tribesmen of the Cherokee’s by the name of Speckled Snake, Speckled Snakes is obviously angry at the way that the white man has continuously taken from the Indians, and how they have been taken advantage of again and again. In closing I found Speckled Snakes closing statement in his passage very interesting, and left me wondering, who’s side is he on? “He loves his red children, and his tongue is not forked.” (Moquin, page 149-150)

Works Cited

Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. Abridged Teaching Edition. New York, NY: The New Press, 2003. Print.

Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green, eds., The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History with Documents (Boston, 1995), pp. 116-17.

Wayne Moquin, ed., Great Documents in American Indian History, (New York, 1973), pp. 149-150.