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the functioning of Indian governments. In The American Indian Experience, Weeks writes how the laws threatened to arrest or imprison any chief that attempted to govern his tribe. Purposefully attempting to make life miserable for the Native tribes, the laws only allowed other chiefs to get together if they were planning to discuss the release of their land (191).

Jackson gave the Indians of these states an ultimatum: they could either deal with the discriminatory laws, or move westward and preserve their way of life (109). This is how Jackson justified the removal of Indians to the American people. He told them that the tribes would much prefer being separated from their lands due to the encroaching settlers. By removing them from civilization, he would be saving them and aiding them to keep their currant way of life. However, "the plan for removal of the Indians [...] ran counter to the idea that the role of the United States was to redeem the Indians from benighted savagery" (Ward 40). Therefore he was forced to be tactfully deceptive.
Throughout this time, five "civilized" tribes attempted to please the government by abandoning their heritage and emulating the Anglo way of life. Among those five tribes were the Seminole, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Creek. Some tribes went even as far as to own African slaves! Welcoming missionaries, not only for religious reasons but for teaching as well, they became literate and even more learned than some southern settlements (Weeks 190). This cultural assimilation did not please the government or the surrounding settlements at all. In fact, some settlers became jealous of the prosperous Indians and were more hellbent on oppressing them. In 1829, Congress encouraged settlers to go further south into the Cherokee territory. Once they did, they took their land, forced them into the woods, killed off their game and destroyed their crops. Cultural assimilation had done no good for the Cherokee people, who faced mass starvation once exiled into the wilderness (Stannard 111). It was the drafting of the "Indian Removal Act" in 1830 which gave way to a full scale removal of America's Native peoples. The government gave $500,000 for the implementation of the treaty that was meant to "compensate emigrants for improvement (such as houses, cleared and fenced fields, barns, orchards, ferries) and assist them in their journey west" (Weeks 109). Jackson told the public that once the Indians were removed from their territory,

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