the western parts of Iowa and Minnesota,
against the heroic struggles of Black Hawk and a handful of followers.
From the lower South the Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws
were gradually removed during the years 1830 to 1838, sometimes after
the most shameless and brutal treatment by the representatives of both
the States and the Nation. Before Jackson came to office the Creeks of
western Georgia had been browbeaten into sales of their lands and then
removed to the region beyond Arkansas, to be known thereafter as the
Indian Territory. In 1833 to 1835 the Choctaws and Chickasaws of
Mississippi were defrauded of their best lands and carried forcibly to
the new Indian country; but the most arbitrary part of the governmental
policy was the expulsion of the Cherokees from their beautiful hills in
northern Georgia. Thirteen thousand in number, civilized and devotedly
attached to their homes, these people insisted on remaining and
becoming a State to themselves. Under the leadership of John Ross, they
presented the case to the United States Supreme Court, which decided in
1830 that they composed a nation and that they could not lawfully be
compelled to submit to Georgia. The people of Georgia would not for a
moment consider such a proposition, and moreover they had made up their
minds that the Cherokees must likewise give up their lands and migrate
to the Far West. Jackson took this view, and in December, 1835, he made
a treaty with some of the chiefs whereby the Cherokees were to receive
new lands in the Indian Territory and more than five millions in money.
This treaty was at once denounced and repudiated by the majority of the
Indians, but the government agents executed it, and during the next
three years the helpless natives were hunted down and carried, all save
a small remnant, to the new region. Thus President Monroe's plan of
settling the natives beyond the western frontier in Minnesota, Iowa,
Kansas, and what is now Oklahoma, was worked out, and the land-hungry
Western settlers were fast following them into their distant homes; but
practically all the lands east of the great river were open to
settlement, and Wisconsin, Illinois, Alabama, and Mississippi rapidly
became populous communities.[4] No measure of Jackson's Administration
won him greater popularity than that of the removal of the Indians.

[Footnote 4: Compare maps showing Indian lands of 1830 and 1840 on pp.
26 and 88.]

[Illustration: Growth of