Question

How did the American government address the "Indian Problem"?

Answer 1

• White Americans who lived on the western frontier,feared the Native Americans.American Indians seemed to be a group of unfamiliar and alien people who had occupied their land,which the white americans believed they deserved.
• Then President,George Washington,believed that the solution to this Indian problem was to simply civilize the Native Americans and make them as much like the white americans by converting them into Christanity,make them learn English and adopt European style economic practices like individual ownership of land.
• But the white only wanted their land back as they earned fortunes my growing cotton,so they wanted to drive the Native Americans away and for this purpose State governments passed many laws to limit the Natives sovereignty and rights encroaching on their territory.
• Andrew Jackson in 1830,signed the Indian Removal Act,which gave the federal government the power to exchange the Natives held lands of cotton in east Mississippi for land to the west in the Indian colonization that America had acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase.The natives were forced to leave the lands and by 1840 tens of thousands of natives had left their lands and were forced to the Indian territory.