American Experience

NARRATOR

In his first address to Congress, President Jackson announced his intention to do as his voters pleased, which is to say rid the East of the Indian tribes once and for all. He championed new legislation giving him power to offer the tribes land west of the Mississippi... if they would go nicely.

GAYLE ROSS

The Indian removal bill was Jackson's first priority once he was in office. It became the first major focus of his administration. It did reflect a fundamental shift in the way that America was beginning to define itself. Not very many people in Georgia and Tennessee, Alabama, at that time, were willing to even go so far as to say that Indian people were people.

TILLEY

The thinking of the day becomes more racist, that the Cherokees are inferior and cannot be like the whites. It's convenient rhetoric to say that Cherokees are inferior and we need to get them out of the way, out of harm's way, as Jackson would put it.