Local History Website of the SMSU Department of History

Thomas Hart Benton, On the Indian Removal

From the earliest periods of the colonial settlements it had been the policy of the government, by successive purchases of their territory, to remove these tribes further and further to the .West; and that policy, vigorously pursued after the war with Great Britain, had made much progress in freeing several of these States (Kentucky entirely, and Tennessee almost) from this population, which so greatly hindered the expansion of their settlements and so much checked the increase of their growth and strength. Still there remained up to the year 1824--the last year of Mr. Monroe's administration--large portions of many of these States, and of the territories, in the hands of the Indian tribes….

All these States and territories were desirous, and most justly and naturally so, to get possession of these vast bodies of land, generally the best within their limits…. Justice to the other States and territories required the … relief; and the applications to the federal government, to which the right of purchasing Indian lands, even within the States, exclusively belonged, were incessant and urgent. Piecemeal acquisitions, to end in getting the whole, were the constant effort, and it was evident that the encumbered States and territories would not, and certainly ought not to be satisfied, until all their soil was open to settlement, and subject to their jurisdiction. To the Indians themselves it was equally essential to be removed. The contact and pressure of the white race was fatal to them. They had dwindled under it, degenerated, become depraved, and whole tribes extinct, or reduced to a few individuals, wherever they attempted to remain in the old States; and could look for no other fate in the new ones.

[The Louisiana Purchase offered a] future residence of all the tribes on the east of the Mississippi….  [I]t was [important] to take up the subject in its full sense, to move upon it as a system, and accomplish at a single operation the removal of all the tribes from the east to the west side of the Mississippi--from the settled States and territories, to the wide and wild expanse of Louisiana. Their preservation and civilization, and permanency in their new possessions, were to be their advantages in this removal—delusive, it might be, but still a respite from impending destruction if they remained where they were.
 

Source: Thomas Hart Benton, Thirty Years’ View (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1854), 1:27-28.