Notes 1: Manifest Destiny

Modern US History

Unit 1-3: The West

October 21, 2010

American Expansion

Trail of Tears

• Cotton farming was prosperous in the coastal South, but a growing number of farmers required more land.

Trail of Tears

• They began to move West where Native American tribes such as the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles lived. State governments quickly began to take Native American land: Georgia stole land from the Creeks in 1825 through a false treaty and took legal rights and land away from the Cherokees in 1828.

Trail of Tears• By the time Jackson was elected president in

1828 there were only 125,000 Native Americans living East of the Mississippi River, but Jackson decided to help the states remove the Native Americans.

Trail of Tears

• The Indian Removal Act moved Native Americans that were East of the Mississippi to West of the Mississippi (mainly Oklahoma). This was a completely different climate and way of life for the transplanted Native Americans. As many as 25% of the Native Americans that began this forced migration died before they reached Oklahoma. This became known as the Trail of Tears.

Trail of Tears

Trail of Tears

Original Reservations• The original

“reservation” lands were quite large. Americans called the Oklahoma region “the Great American Desert” and thought that it was useless to farmers - which is why the government gave it to the Native Americans.

Original Reservations

• Later, though, the American government would realize that farming could happen in the Midwest, and the Native Americans’ land would once again be taken.

Manifest Destiny

• In 1845, a politician proclaimed America’s “manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent…” This view held that white people were special and should spread Christianity and civilization (democracy and progress) to others.

Manifest Destiny

• Missionaries quickly took up this idea and moved West, especially to California and Oregon.

Manifest Destiny

• Soon people in the East began to see the West as a promise of a better life – away from industrialized cities and towards lots of land for everyone. Wagon trains began to move West and the government gave incentives to Railroads to expand their service into West. As Americans pushed West, they ran into conflicts with Native Americans over land and game.

Manifest Destiny

Manifest Destiny

Native Americans Americans Moving West

Believed that every one shared the land and that all should respect it

Believed that individuals owned land

Migrated to follow game

Settled in an area and raised crops and animals in one place

Manifest Destiny

Native Americans Americans Moving West

Felt no one was superior

Thought they were superior and had a right to take Native Americans’ land

Fought with bows, arrows, spears, and tomahawks

Knew how to work iron and made guns with it