Realizing that
further resistance was useless, a portion of the tribe signified its
readiness to go. The remainder, however, held out, and it was only at
the close of 1835 that the long-desired treaty of cession could be
secured. All Cherokee lands east of the Mississippi were now
relinquished to the United States, which agreed to pay five million
dollars for them, to provide an adequate home in the new Indian
Territory created by Congress during the preceding year, and to bear
all the costs of removing the tribe thither.
It was not alone the South, however, that witnessed widespread
displacements of Indian populations in the Jacksonian period. How the
Black Hawk War of 1832 grew out of, and in turn led to, removals in
the remoter Northwest has been related in another volume in this
series.[13] And, in almost every western State, surviving Indian
titles were rapidly extinguished. Between 1829 and 1837 ninety-four
Indian treaties, most of them providing for transfers of territory,
were concluded; and before Jackson went out of office he was able to
report to Congress that, "with the exception of two small bands living
in Ohio and Indiana, not exceeding fifteen hundred persons, and of the
Cherokees, all of the tribes on the east side of the Mississippi, and
extending from Lake Michigan to Florida, have entered into engagements
which will lead to their transplantation.
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