A Different Mirror: Part 2, Chapter 4: Toward “the Stony Mountains” Summary & Analysis

Where Jefferson believed in trying to cajole Native people to sell their land, President Andrew Jackson favored taking it by force. As a young man, Jackson had profited enormously from buying Chickasaw land and opening it to white settlement. He held extremely racist views about Native people, whom he had brutally fought in the early 1800s. He expressed a desire to “distroy” [sic] the indigenous population, asserting that it was actually his duty to do so. Jackson was “revered as a hero of Indian wars,” and elected president in 1828.

Once in office, Jackson claimed it was not within his power to intervene when states violated treaties they’d made with tribes or forced laws on indigenous communities. In 1832, the Supreme Court ruled that states could not impose their jurisdiction in this way, but Jackson refused to implement this ruling. He did not believe that Native people could be integrated into settler society, and thus established an area west of the Mississippi river where Native people could live freely and govern themselves. He advised Native communities to move there, saying that they should make the same sacrifice of abandoning their ancestral homeland and European settlers had done.

Jackson characterized Native people as “children” and said he wanted to treat them fairly, like a parent should. However, he did not regret the enormous number of Native deaths that had thus far occurred as a result of colonization. The area he was clearing by pressuring Native people to move would become the home of the Cotton Kingdom. The land-allotment program, which was originally established by Jefferson, was the main way in which land was taken from the Creek, Chickasaw, and Choctaw tribes.

For example, the 1805 Choctaw treaty aimed to turn Choctaws into farmers, ignoring the fact that the tribe had an advanced agricultural system long before colonization. Before settlers arrived, they were a communalist people, who shared everything from each harvest with the whole community. After the establishment of the American settler colony, some Choctaw became rich through land ownership and owning enslaved people. In 1830, the sovereignty of the Choctaw nation was overridden by the Mississippi state government. No longer sovereign on their own land, the Choctaw reluctantly signed the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, handing their land over to the US.

At this point, white settlers simply started moving onto Choctaw land and claiming it as their own. Meanwhile, a large number of Choctaw began their move west, filled with unbearable sorrow at the prospect of leaving their homeland. The journey was difficult, and many died en route. To observers, it was clear that the white settlers orchestrating the move west were slaughtering the Choctaw without having to do so directly. The Choctaw felt that in leaving their home, they’d chosen the less of two evils, although in this sense they’d hardly had a choice at all. The tribe sued the government for making a $3 million profit on the sale of Choctaw land when they had promised not to do so. Although the Choctaw won, almost all the compensation money went to their lawyers.

Like the Choctaw, the Cherokee Nation had been told that their sovereignty was no longer respected, and that they would have to comply with the laws of the state of Georgia. They were also “given the option” to go west, but at first they refused to abandon their homeland. Chief John Ross pleaded with President Jackson, calling him “Father” and imploring him to honor earlier promises to the tribe. However, this did not work, and in 1835 a treaty was signed selling Cherokee land to the US for just over $3 million. This was done largely in secret and against the will of most people in the Cherokee Nation.

Most Cherokees refused to leave their home, and as a result, the federal government ordered the military to remove them by force. Soldiers ambushed Cherokees in the midst of their daily activities, forcing them to abandon their homes without time to pack, and brought them to internment camps. Meanwhile, settlers looted the homes that had been left behind. The march west took place in the middle of winter, and once again, the tribe were vulnerable to cold and disease. A quarter of the Cherokee Nation (4,000 people) died on the journey, which came to be called the Trail of Tears.

The Plains Indians originally lived on what is currently Nebraska and Kansas. For the Pawnee people, corn and buffalo were central to their way of life, and buffalo hunting was considered a sacred activity. They were strict about never killing more buffalo than was necessary to their survival, and they used every part of the animal for housing, clothing, and tools. The corn harvest was likewise a sacred ritual. By the beginning of the 19th century, some Pawnees participated in the fur trade, which in turn caused many of them to become ill and die from diseases. Meanwhile, the construction of the railroad—and the closure of the frontier it promised—further threatened the Pawnee way of life.

In 1871, the Indian Appropriation Act was passed, which declared that no indigenous nation would be acknowledged as independent from the US. In this way, the government gave itself the legal right to build the railroad wherever it pleased. Buffalo were massacred in enormous numbers, while the Pawnee were being pushed from their land by both settlers and the Sioux (who had in turn been pushed from their own land). Although some Pawnees resolved to stay on their homeland, others felt that they had no choice but to migrate to Kansas. A Pawnee named Overtakes the Enemy lamented that to be “civilized” by white settlers was to be destroyed. Indeed, the way of life of the Plains Indians came to be totally destroyed by the brutal march of “American Progress.”