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The Indian Removal Act was passed by Congress on May 28, 1830, during the presidency of Andrew Jackson. The law authorized the president to negotiate with southern Indian tribes for their removal to federal territory west of the Mississippi River in exchange for their ancestral homelands.〔The U.S. Senate passed the bill on April 24, 1830 (28–19), the U.S. House passed it on May 26, 1830 (102–97); Prucha, Francis Paul, ''The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians'', Volume I, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984, p. 206.〕〔The (''Congressional Record'' ); May 26, 1830; House vote No. 149; Government Tracker online; retrieved October 2015〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Indian Removal Act: Primary Documents of American History )〕 The act enjoyed strong support from the non-Indian peoples of the South, who were eager to gain access to lands inhabited by the southeastern tribes. Christian missionaries protested against the law's passage. ==Background== In the early 1800s, the United States government began a systematic effort to remove Native American tribes from the southeast. The Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee-Creek, Seminole, and original Cherokee Nations—referred to as the "Five Civilized Tribes" by Anglo-European settlers in reference to the tribes' adoption of aspects of colonial culture—had been established as autonomous nations in the southeastern United States. This acculturation (originally proposed by George Washington) was well under way among the Cherokee and Choctaw by the turn of the 19th century. In an effort to assimilate with white American culture, Native peoples were encouraged to "convert to Christianity; learn to speak and read English; and adopt European-style economic practices such as the individual ownership of land and other property (including, in some instances, the ownership of African slaves)." Thomas Jefferson's policy echoed Washington's proposition: respect the Native Americans' rights to their homelands, and allow the Five Tribes to remain east of the Mississippi provided they adopt Anglo-European behavior and cultural practices. Jefferson encouraged practicing an agriculture-based society. However, Andrew Jackson sought to renew a policy of political and military action for the removal of the Native Americans from these lands and worked toward enacting a law for Indian removal. In his 1829 State of the Union address, Jackson called for removal. The Indian Removal Act was put in place to give to the southern states the land that Indians had settled on. Although the act was passed in 1830, dialogue between Georgia and the federal government concerning such an event had been ongoing since 1802. Davis states in his article that, "the federal government had promised Georgia that it would extinguish Indian title within the state's borders by purchase 'as soon as such purchase could be made upon reasonable terms'". As time had passed, southern states began to speed up the process by posing the argument that the deal between Georgia and the federal government had no contract and that southern states could pass the law themselves. This scheme forced the national government to pass the Indian Removal Act on May 28, 1830, in which President Jackson agreed to divide the United States territory west of the Mississippi into districts for tribes to replace the land they were removed from. President Jackson promised this land would be owned by the Indians forever. The Indian Removal Act brought many issues to the table, such as whether it was constitutional; who had the authority to pass what; and could the sovereignty of Indians be protected as was promised. In the 1823 case of ''Johnson v. M'Intosh'', the United States Supreme Court handed down a decision which stated that Indians could occupy lands within the United States, but could not hold title to those lands.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title=Indial Removal 1814-1858 )〕 Jackson, as was common before the American Civil War, viewed the union as a federation of sovereign states. He opposed Washington's policy of establishing treaties with Indian tribes as if they were foreign nations. Thus, the creation of Indian jurisdictions was a violation of state sovereignty under Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution. As Jackson saw it, either Indians comprised sovereign states (which violated the Constitution) or they are subject to the laws of existing states of the Union. Jackson urged Indians to assimilate and obey state laws. Further, he believed he could only accommodate the desire for Indian self-rule in federal territories, which he deemed required resettlement west of the Mississippi River on federal lands. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Indian Removal Act」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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