Indian Removal is a nineteenth century policy of the government of the United States that seeks to relocate Native American tribes living east of the Mississippi River to lands west of the river.

The reasoning behind the removal of Native Americans is Americans' hunger for land (stemming from Andrew Jackson’s talk of “agriculture, manufacture, and civilization”), though not all Americans support the policy as many poor white frontiersmen are neighbors and often friends to the Native Americans.

Principally, it is the result of Americans who envision a cultivated and organized nation of prospering cities and productive communities which fueled the forces of removalThe growth of populations, cities, transportation systems, and commerce in the decades following the American Revolution has created demand for agricultural development.

President Jackson and his followers, recognizing the Native Americans are in their way, set out to civilly and gently move them out of the way.

This results in numerous treaties in which lands are purchased from Native Americans.

Eventually, the U.S. government begins encouraging Native American tribes to sell their land by offering them land in the West, outside the boundaries of the then-existing U.S. states, where the tribes can resettle.his process rapidly increases with the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which provides funds for President Andrew Jackson to conduct land-exchange treaties.

An estimated 100,000 American Native Americans eventually relocate in the West as a result of this policy, most of them emigrating during the 1830s, settling in what was known as the, "Indian territory" or the present state of Oklahoma.

Those native Americans who choose to produce and prosper are, of course, free to purchase as much of the land as they wish.However, the Removal Act does not directly force Native Americans from their land.

Many Native Americans do not have the food or means of transportation to make a journey west of the Mississippi, so the Removal Act is a way to enable Native Americans to move west.

According to the federal laws that are put in place to oversee the expedition, the government is to provide food and transportation for the Native Americans, and if they stay, then they will no longer be protected or given funds.To most Native Americans, the problems with leaving their land are more than just lack of resources.

Native Americans’ land is their heritage and their history.

The Native Americans’ way of life is already greatly disrupted by the white society, with its formal government, ideas of private property ownership, and their notions that a man's mind is the source of his power and his productivity its expression.

What little the Native Americans can retain of their past, and the very meaning of their lives is now being taken away.

The Jackson administration puts great pressure on tribal leaders to sign removal treaties.

This pressure, plus the added shame of seeing themselves reduced to obstacles for men of great achievement, creates bitter divisions within Native American nations, as different tribal leaders advocate different responses to the question of removal.

Sometimes, U.S. government officials ignore tribal leaders who resist signing removal treaties and deal with those who favor removal.

The Treaty of New Echota, for example, is signed by a faction of prominent Cherokee leaders, but not by the elected tribal leadership.

The terms of the treaty are enforced by President Martin Van Buren, which results in the deaths of an estimated 4,000 Cherokees (mostly from disease) on the Trail of Tears.Regrettably, the mass exodus of Native Americans are unable to provide themselves with proper provisions of food and transportation, and are reduced to limping off the land which they once proudly occupied.

The Choctaw tribe also suffers greatly from disease during removal, and are unable to keep themselves clean and fed enough to prevent the decimation of their numbers due to these illnesses.

The Choctaws are very much against removal, but their fifty delegates ware easily bribed with money and land to sign the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, which cedes their land east of the Mississippi to the United States.

The army that leads the thirteen thousand Choctaws on their journey is disorganized, and because of their ineptitude, but through no fault of the Native Americans, their food quickly runs out and their children begin to starve.

Many die of pneumonia in the winter, and of cholera in the summer.

The seven thousand Choctaws left behind see the conditions of the trek and refuse to go, choosing to accept the subjugation that has become their nature, over the certain death of vacating, while left to their own devices.

Some groups, however, go to war to resist the implementation of removal treaties.

This results in two short wars (the Black Hawk War of 1832 and the Second Creek War of 1836), as well as the long and costly Second Seminole War (1835–1842).