INDIAN REMOVAL POLICIES AND ACTIONS IN ALABAMA December, 2010 by Robert H. McKenzie. Number One in the Series History as Choice

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1 INDIAN REMOVAL POLICIES AND ACTIONS IN ALABAMA December, 2010 by Robert H. McKenzie AN OCCASIONAL PAPER OF THE DAVID MATHEWS CENTER FOR CIVIC LIFE P.O. BOX 6 MONTEVALLO, ALABAMA Number One in the Series History as Choice The David Mathews Center for Civic Life is a non-partisan, non-profit entity for the purpose of building infrastructure and habits of deliberative decision making. To think of politics as a public activity changes the very meaning of politics. Politics becomes the art of making productive relationships among diverse people rather than just passing legislation or electing representatives. David Mathews, Politics for People

2 1 HISTORY AS CHOICE INDIAN REMOVAL POLICIES AND ACTIONS IN ALABAMA December, 2010 by Robert H. McKenzie Foreword This Occasional Paper is the first in a series on History as Choice. The series is for those interested in the study of history, whether teachers or not. The Occasional Papers in this series seek to stimulate ways of thinking about learning from the study of history. Each paper in the History as Choice series comments on how principles of deliberative decision through democratic practices might be applied to learning from the study of history. Each paper provides an example of how the study of history may be linked to civic education and practice. Each foreword and each paper will repeat some information on democratic practices and general application to learning from history. A reason is that readers may examine one paper without examining the others. Each subject focus, however, brings out different points for consideration. Each paper will therefore have material that is not in the other papers. The rather long phrase learning from the study of history is intentional. In particular, it means learning how to make wiser decisions by studying how decisions were made in the past. Each Occasional Paper in this series is a reference. Teachers whether middle or high school or college may find ideas they can use. Others who just enjoy reading and thinking about history might also find ideas. Teachers and others using it will have to adapt information to their own particular needs. The material in Occasional Papers in this series on History as Choice is closely related to another series. That series is Using National Issues Forums Materials in Classrooms and Other Study Groups. Both series and other Occasional Papers and resources are available as free downloads at Each paper in the History as Choice series will include some teaching suggestions. But each paper is not intended to be a curriculum guide for any particular level of study. I simply provide suggestions and depend on teacher ingenuity to adapt any that interest them to whatever level is applicable. This Occasional Paper on Indian removal and actions in Alabama does not attempt to be a scholarly article. It provides a bit of historical context but does not attempt to be comprehensive. I will use the term Indian since it was the term of the times. Today, of course, the term of preference is Native American.

3 2 The major purpose of each Occasional Paper in this series is to illustrate how historical decisions can be studied through the lens of choices available about the decisions. The first level of study is choices people living in a given era had to make. We can expand that lens by examining the effects those choices had on later choices. History is not inevitable. It unfolds as the result of choices people make within the context of larger forces. These forces are geographical, economic, social, cultural, economic, intellectual, and so forth. I recognize these forces and the roles they can play, but I am not a strict determinist. People make choices. The lens I will use is drawn from research on what it takes to make democracy work as it should. That question is the research focus of the Kettering Foundation. The President and CEO of the Kettering Foundation is David Mathews. This Center is named for him and honors his life and work. Consult The particular dynamics of choice work are illustrated in citizen decision making aids (issue books) developed by the National Issues Forums Institute. Consult Other organizations and individuals have used the same dynamics to produce their own aids. NIF materials are intended to be used in deliberative forums. To deliberate means to weigh carefully in order to make more effective, creative, and sustainable choices. Deliberative forums involve shoulder-to-shoulder, eyeball-to-eyeball work. That work requires examining carefully the attractions, possible weaknesses, costs, and consequences of various approaches to a common problem. The purpose is to talk through acceptable and unacceptable tradeoffs, not just talk about the problem. Deliberative forums derive from application of democratic practices. Another series of Occasional Papers describes applications of these practices. That series is entitled Democratic Practices for Innovative Decisions. Again, consult A much longer resource is my Making Things Work for You and Others: Personal Effectiveness and Community Innovation (2d. ed., Montevallo, AL: David Mathews Center for Civic Life, 2010). It puts democratic practices in the context of research in the social sciences and humanities on individual and group behavior and development. This reference is also available for download from the Mathews Center website. The David Mathews Center for Civic Life primarily focuses on democratic practices applied to community decision making. We concentrate on building infrastructure and habits for more creative decision making in Alabama and its communities. We deal primarily with issues that involve decision making at local levels. Our primary vehicle for this work is the Alabama Issues Forums (AIF). Using NIF and AIF materials builds understanding and skills in making wiser choices. Making choices is essential to learning. Therefore, the study of choices in the past contributes to making better choices in the present.

4 3 Tony Wagner, a Harvard based scholar of education, notes basic skills he believes are necessary to thrive in a knowledge-based economy. 1 I would add to survive in democratic decision making. Wagner posits seven skills. All are important. I will emphasize four skills for purposes of this paper. They are (1) the ability to access and analyze information; (2) the ability to do critical thinking and problem solving, (3) the ability to communicate effectively; and (4) the ability to collaborate. To collaborate in a democracy means to make hard choices together. To know better is important, but simply to know is not to do. Study should lead to better informed civic participation. Citizen work in regard to national and community issues involves several responsibilities. Citizens cannot delegate them. These are setting direction, extending permission, creating political will, evaluating progress, and resetting direction. The cycle is repetitive. Only citizens can do this work in a democracy. Again, making democracy work as it should involves applying democratic practices to make more effective and innovative choices. The example in this paper is Indian removal policy and actions in Alabama. This topic does not have an existing NIF-type issue book as a possible preexisting framework for learning from the study of history. Each of the other papers is a slightly different example of how democratic practices as a framework for learning may be applied. Paper Number Two addresses the extension of slavery into the territories of the United States. This topic has an NIF-type issue book as a possible framework for learning. Paper Number Three addresses the question of the relationship of colonial America to England. This topic has an NIF-type issue book as a possible framework, but the decision it addresses is of a different order than in Paper Number Two. Paper Number Four addresses questions about immigration. This topic has an NIF issue book as a possible framework for study, but the issue is of a different nature than that in any of the other three papers. Paper Number 5 is different from the first four. It addresses conditions leading to the Civil War. It includes elements from the first four and introduces an additional level of learning from the study of history. Bob McKenzie December, The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don t Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need and What We Can Do About It (New York: Basic Books, 2008). Wagner is one of many calling for changes in the way we acquire necessary knowledge.

5 4 HISTORY AS CHOICE INDIAN REMOVAL POLICIES AND ACTIONS IN ALABAMA November, 2010 by Robert H. McKenzie Why Indian Removal Policies and Practices in Alabama? My interest in this subject is not based in scholarly study. As an undergraduate, I did a cursory examination of the subject in a course on Alabama history. As a graduate student, I experienced the most general coverage of the subject as an aspect of the presidency of Andrew Jackson 1 (As a historian, I prefer footnotes over endnotes, but in this case, I will use endnotes. Don t peek yet. I don t want to interrupt the beginning flow of stories.) 2 My interest in the subject evolved slowly and came from personal experiences. I was not aware of the impact of the earliest ones. That recognition came later. I will review those experiences as an illustration. Forgive some reminiscences. My illustration proposes the value of probing one s own experiences. That probing is a door for getting a feel for the impact of history on our individual and collective lives. The personal and local effects of even national policy decisions also comprise historical evidence. I grew up in Tuscumbia, Alabama, a small town south of the Tennessee River in northwest Alabama. The connection of the Indian name for my hometown to my interest is obvious. The town site was briefly settled by the French in the late 1700s. The area next included Chickasaw villages in the vicinity of Big Spring and what became Tuscumbia Landing on the river. Tuscumbia was originally incorporated as Ococoposa (Cold Water) in Then it became Cold Springs. Then it was named in honor of a local Chickasaw chief Tuscumbia. Legend has it that the town folk chose that name by one vote over honoring the first white child born in the village. I grew up with that story. 3 The Post Office in Tuscumbia had a large mural from the New Deal era. It depicted the arrival of the first white family by flat boat on the Tennessee River in about This occurred before the incorporation noted above. I grew up with the prominence of that large mural of Chief Tuscumbia welcoming the first white settlers. I saw it every week or two for nearly twenty years. 4 As a youngster, I often played in Spring Park. The park is the site of a very large spring. The spring emerges from under the bluff and the high ground on which the town is located. I was aware of the frequent discovery of Indian artifacts in the plain south of town. There the stream

6 5 from the spring connects with Bear Creek. When I was a young teenager, an old gymnasium there was torn down and revealed an Indian burial site. No one I knew ever said they had Indian blood at least not that I can remember. I never knew then if I met an Indian in Tuscumbia, but their spirits surrounded me. Nearby Tuscumbia Landing on the river, you see, was a gathering point for those forced on the Trail of Tears. I did learn later that Colbert County in which Tuscumbia is located was named for two Chickasaw Indian brothers, George and Levi Colbert. George operated a ferry across the Tennessee River near present day Cherokee, west of Tuscumbia. 5 Their father was a Scotsman who had several Indian wives, but the Colbert sons are consistently identified in early history as Chickasaw leaders and businessmen. 6 My life, of course, went on after leaving Tuscumbia. Five more experiences conditioned my thinking about Native Americans. One was two-week active duty tours as an Army Reserve officer at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. The federal court house nearby in Fort Smith had jurisdiction in the 19 th century over the Oklahoma territory. Stories abounded about Judge I. C. Parker, the Hanging Judge, and conditions in Indian Territory. Bad men took refuge there. 7 (The movie True Grit featuring John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn built on these stories.) A second was my involvement in prison ministries. I had frequent conversations with prison inmates who claimed Indian blood. They practiced what they understood as Native American religious traditions. A third was on-going conversations with Ruth Yellow Hawk, a Lakota Indian. She was a colleague in Kettering Foundation research and development of National Issues Forums around the nation. After moving from Ohio, among her activities was work with the Redbud Indian reservation in south central South Dakota. She and I often talked about ways in which Native American traditions approached restorative justice. (Ruth died of a brain tumor this past year.) A fourth was a family vacation trip into the states bordering the Four Corners of Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Arizona. We traveled through lands of the Southwest Indians Hopi, Navaho, and others. We visited Mesa Verdi and other sites. In Durango, Colorado, we spent an evening watching a Native American dance festival. It was very local, very casual, but very serious. As we left the small town plaza where dances had been performed, we met a middle-aged Native American lady. She greeted us as obvious tourists and asked, Now, do you understand us better? A fifth was working with a Kettering Foundation research group to develop a National Issues Forums citizen decision-making aid on racial and ethnic tensions. We expanded the focus of that issue book from concentration on black-white relationships to consideration of multiple ethnic and racial groups. Several Native Americans were among the folks we invited to help us think through what that issue book would contain. They spoke eloquently of the need for others to recognize their identity. 8

7 6 Two more recent happenings in my life refocused the importance of earlier experiences while growing up in Tuscumbia. I learned what one of my former pee-wee football coaches had done. And I attended my high school class s fiftieth reunion. Tommy Hendrix had coal black hair and high cheekbones. He was an end on the high school football team. He taught me how to play the defensive end position when I was twelve years old. His sister, Shirley, was homecoming queen a few years ahead of my class at Deshler High School. In 2000, I heard from a former classmate that Tom had built a wall and he had written a book. Tom had built a stone wall at his rural home in Lauderdale County across the Tennessee River from Tuscumbia. Tom started the wall with stones from his fields. When others heard why he was building it, they brought stones. The wall now contains stones from every state, from many places around the world, from the bottom of the ocean, and from the moon. The wall provides a ishatae, a quiet place. The three-mile long, meandering wall is a commemorative, a wichahpi. It includes a prayer circle. Tom built it to honor his great-greatgrandmother, Te-lah-nay, Woman with the Dancing Eyes. At the age of 14, she walked and rode from Lauderdale County, north of the Tennessee River, to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears. 9 Then she walked back home. She left a note on the table of her hut in Oklahoma for her relatives. TE-LAH-NAY GON HOME. The journey took her more than two years. Tom wrote a book about it, If the Legends Fade. 10 When my high school senior class gathered for our fiftieth year reunion, we went one morning to the local train depot, now the town historical center. The local town historian told us a story. When Tuscumbia continued sprucing up Spring Park as a tourist attraction, leaders decided to erect a large statue of an Indian. Discussions about the prospective statue revealed the story. Leaders of the statue project communicated with the tribe in Oklahoma that had stayed at Tuscumbia Landing on the river. The found that white citizens of the town had treated kindly a party of Creeks from further east who had encamped nearby on the Trail of Tears. 11 In Oklahoma, the tribal folklore spoke of Tuscumbia as a word describing a place of peace and rest. Younger members of the tribe knew only the word, not the place. When the tribal spokesman was brought back to Tuscumbia for dedication of the statue, he arrived late at night but asked to be taken immediately to Spring Park. He cried. The town historian went on to say that those who lived well with the local Indians tended to settle south of the Tennessee River. Local place names are Tuscumbia, Colbert, and Cherokee. Those who did not live well with the local Indians tended to settle north of the Tennessee River. Local place names are Florence, St. Florian, Lexington, and Waterloo.

8 7 Interestingly, Waterloo was an encampment site for Indians brought from the Chattanooga area on the Trail of Tears. Now the town commemorates the ending of the Trail with an annual motorcycle enthusiasts gathering and ride. Of course, the tragic journey continued on to Oklahoma. Choices were made in the 1830s. Choices were made in 1993 when the annual motorcycle ride was begun. Learning from the Study of History The reminiscences above illustrate a principle. To get inside study of an historical experience, probe your own experiences that relate to it. A second principle involves what one looks for in history. Professional historians of a social science bent are likely to seek to verify the facts of whether or not a story is true. Such is valuable. Some stories lead in mischievous, if not tragic, directions. Moreover, professional historians make reputations from re-examining facts, locating previously undiscovered ones, and writing revisionist publications. On the other hand, historians of a more humanities-based bent are likely to examine a story in terms of why people believe it or not believe it. That belief is itself part of history. 12 Another principle is to then step outside one s own experiences to see how others saw the same experiences. This principle is central to democratic practices. We will turn to this principle in detail later in this paper. Here are some more principles. They set the stage for how we can use democratic practices as a lens for learning from the study of history. I first worked with David Mathews as a graduate assistant teaching U.S. history at the University of Alabama. Early on in class, he said that there was a difference between knowing something you didn t know before and learning something. He also had suggested a thought-provoker in an earlier class. He said that we knew all there was to know before we were born, but the shock of being born made us forget it. Learning therefore was remembering. The thought provoker is derived from Plato. One can argue about its premise in philosophical terms. Its practical use is that it does not allow us to ever say. I don t know. We can only say, I don t remember. These different statements establish different motivations for studying something. The first focuses on taking in information. The second focuses on getting inside the information. 13 Taking the thought provoker as a principle, the younger someone is, the closer they are to being born. Thus, a presumption is they are more likely to remember. I don t know if that assumption works for calculus, but it has utility in probing our experiences. Consider that an adult can throw a small child into the air and catch her or him, and the child will probably laugh. Adults are likely to be afraid of falling. They may have lost memory of what trust and joy mean.

9 8 Observing David s second statement to provoke thought, I asked my five-year old daughter what his first statement meant. What is the difference between knowing something you didn t know before and learning something? She said, Well, Dad, it s like this. If you put your hand on a hot stove, what you know that you didn t know before is that a stove can be hot. What you learn is don t put your hand on a hot stove. Learning has behavioral consequences. We learn from making choices and reflecting on the results. What guiding principles for behavior come from understanding the consequences of a choice? Let s look at democratic practices as means of making more effective choices. Then we will look at their applications for learning from the study of history. Understanding Democratic Practices In the work of the David Mathews Center, we speak of seven democratic practices. 14 They are not new techniques. They are historic ways of dealing with common problems in democratic environments. Those who work with the Kettering Foundation and with this Center do have a language for talking about those practices. That language is drawn from Kettering Foundation research on what it takes to make democracy work as it should. That language enables us to talk among ourselves about what we are learning. It is research language. Readers of this paper may speak of the same practices in different terms. Teachers, in particular, may find that much of what is discussed below is familiar. It just uses different terms. They use democratic practices for constructing research and teaching, but they use other terms to describe what they do. The meaning behind the terms and the applications of that meaning are the important considerations. I hope readers can find connections between the democratic practices described herein and practices they already use. One point of this Occasional Paper is that democratic practices provide a framework for understanding a particular approach to learning from history. Another point is that this particular approach or framework more closely connects historical thinking to decision making. That ability of citizens to make hard choices together is one of the major challenges and tasks of making democracy work as it should. That work is the work of living together more effectively. Another Center series of Occasional Paper discusses democratic practices as contemporary ways to make more effective choices. Democratic Practices for Innovative Decisions is available for download from the Mathews Center website. Here is an overview of democratic practices in terms we use to describe their contemporary applications in the work of this Center. We will then address how they apply to learning from studying history.

10 9 1. Creating public space in which citizens can do their work. This is an overarching task. It permeates the others. Every community needs ample physical spaces in which people are comfortable. It needs spaces which do not by their sponsors imply pre-existing positions on issues. Public space is not just physical space. It is also intellectual and emotional space created by modes of discussion in which people feel they can freely speak, listen, and learn across perceived differences Naming common problems in terms of what citizens hold valuable, not expert terms. 16 This task does not mean simply creating a catchy title. It means connecting with the way citizens understand a situation that affects them and requires their action. Trust building is a step-by-step dynamic; it is not humanly created as a precondition apart from joint endeavors. 3. Framing approaches for choice work. This task means identifying the fundamental three or four basic ways of approaching a common problem. It means sketching out the key attractions and hesitations about each one in a given situation. For example, any effort to change human behavior has three basic modes of approach. They are legislation, education, or demonstration and motivation. Each approach is rooted in something that human beings jointly hold valuable. Differences of viewpoint result in differences in how individuals and groups prioritize those things held valuable Deliberating together to make hard choices. This task requires talking through (not just talking about) attractions, hesitations, costs, and consequences of each possible approach. The object is to identify acceptable and unacceptable tradeoffs among the various approaches. This work identifies what people are willing to do together between full agreement and full disagreement. It seeks to be integrative and unitary, not majoritarian and adversarial Securing commitments to act together. Every task is important. This one is critical. Without it, the prior work and the succeeding work do not produce sustainable results. This task, the first above, and the seventh below are pivot points for community effectiveness Acting together in complementary fashion. Complementary simply means actions that reinforce one another. This task does not require formal planning (although such planning may be a part of it). It emphasizes common agreement on basic approach and varieties of actions by many people to implement that agreement. It seeks to avoid fragmentation of effort resulting from partial efforts that compete for resources and recognition. Natural disasters often bring out this type of action. Complementary action may include governmental or other institutional action, but it is not limited to it. A primary challenge for healthy communities is the capacity to perform this type of action habitually. David Mathews and others describe this capacity as resilience Turning evaluation into civic learning. Institutional politics tends to turn this task into assessing blame in order to win the next election. Public leadership approaches this task in terms of having tried that what are we learning, what do we do now, and how do we do it? What would work better in our community if we worked better together? 21 Applying Democratic Practices to Learning from the Study of History For purposes of learning from the study of history, we can restate these practices as simpler investigative questions.

11 10 1. The first practice becomes a factor in assessing the other six. Who was permitted to be part of the decision-making process? 2. How was a problem named to identify with what people in the past were struggling? Who named that problem? Who agreed with that name? In some cases, people can agree on a common problem. In some cases, they cannot. They talk past one another. 3. The third practice follows. What were the several basic approaches being considered for how best to deal with the problem? If there were different ideas about what the problem was, what were the approaches offered to deal with each possible view of the problem? Who offered them? Whose voices were not heard? 4. The fourth practice follows. What choices were made? Who made them? 5. The fifth practice follows. What happened? Who acted? 6. The sixth practice is a part of investigating the effectiveness of the fourth and fifth practices. Who committed to act? In what ways? Who did not? 7. The seventh practice follows. What were the consequences? What was learned? By whom? How was the problem renamed? How were different approaches developed? And so forth. The practices thus constitute a cycle. These practices relate to Tony Wagner s calls for skills to function effectively in a global economy. 22 Wagner, an education professor at Harvard, lists seven needs he thinks important in re-conceptualizing education in the United States. All have been stated in one way or another by others. All can be developed through democratic practices. Several are particularly relevant to the thrust of this Occasional Paper. All seven democratic practices correlate with Tony Wagner s plea for developing capacity to access and analyze information and to develop critical thinking and problem solving skills. The second and third democratic practices are especially relevant. Critical thinking and problem solving skills are often thought of in individual terms. But the capacity of groups to do critical thinking and problem solving together is important to making democracy work as it should. The fourth democratic practice connects with Wagner s plea for skills in communicating effectively. Again, this skill is often thought of in individual terms. But the capacity of groups to communicate effectively is a key to doing critical thinking and problem solving together. The fifth, sixth, seventh, and first democratic practices connect with Wagner s plea for skills in collaborating with others. Ability to collaborate is what makes important capacities of groups to access and analyze information, develop critical thinking and problem solving skills, and communicate with one another. Teachers who use National Issues Forums materials on contemporary issues initially appreciate that forum dynamics allow students to discover that their views matter and that they can have voices. From that base, students develop more individual understanding of an issue. With patient work and practice, students can move from individual understanding to group understanding. Group understanding establishes a climate in which individuals can act together toward common goals. That action can be complementary individual actions, not all doing the same thing. 23

12 11 The logic is simple. To act together, people have to choose together. To choose together, they have to know together. To know together, they have to think together. To think together, they have to talk together. And they have to talk together effectively across perceived differences. The result is something more than aggregating individual preferences. Voting and polling are modes of aggregating individual preferences. Voting is important, but at best a majority is only a majority of those voting. CHOICE is a very interesting word. Note that you can recognize the word upside down. It is not a palindrome. But the capital letters are all recognizable from any angle. In an oddball novel by Tom Robbins, a character observes that the word may mean that a parallel universe is attempting to communicate with us. Let s just take the point that communication is important. Many, many choices are made that profoundly affect life together that do not involve formal voting. Making choices is a deeper order of decision making than simply expressing preferences. The result of democratic practices is what Daniel Yankelovich, a respected student of American public policy, calls movement from mass opinion to public judgment. 24 Students of history in schools or otherwise can investigate how these practices were or were not employed in dealing with their common problems. They can use learning from the study of history to develop behavioral consequences needed for a global economy. The Study of Indian Removal Policies and Practices in Alabama as an Example Several approaches are possible. Most secondary sources develop a narrative about a historical issue and the era in which it occurred. That narrative engages the second and third democratic practices without articulating them as such. Shorthand terms for these practices are naming and framing. Often, the problem named is a governmental action. In the case of policy toward Indians, an obvious pivotal action was the Indian Removal Act of A narrative describes what led up to a pivotal action and what resulted from it. A pivotal institutional action is shorthand for how at least a temporary majority of voters saw the problem. Obviously, what led to the pivotal action and what followed consists of numerous actions outside the realm of governmental jurisdiction. These other actions are systemic; that is, they are taken by individual and groups in multiple ways at multiple times. No single jurisdiction is responsible. Naming a problem in terms of an institutional decision is relatively easy. Therefore, the study of history as institutional decision making is common. Studying institutional decision making alone can be misleading. History consists of both institutional and non-institutional actions. This Center concentrates on non-institutional or organic actions by communities. The connection between the two types of actions is important.

13 12 Creativity, effectiveness, and sustainability are functions of how well institutional and organic actions connect with one another. That said, we can use the Indian Removal Act of 1830 as an entry point. Many sources provide a description. The one below is quoted (with some grammatical corrections) from the Public Broadcasting System on-line Resource Bank. 25 This narrative is similar to that found in many textbooks and general accounts. Early in the 19th century, while the rapidly-growing United States expanded into the lower South, white settlers faced what they considered an obstacle. This area was home to the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole nations. These Indian nations, in the view of the settlers and many other white Americans, were standing in the way of progress. Eager for land to raise cotton, the settlers pressured the federal government to acquire Indian territory. Andrew Jackson, from Tennessee, was a forceful proponent of Indian removal. In 1814 he commanded the U.S. military forces that defeated a faction of the Creek nation. In their defeat, the Creeks lost 22 million acres of land in southern Georgia and central Alabama. The U.S. acquired more land in 1818 when, spurred in part by the motivation to punish the Seminoles for their practice of harboring fugitive slaves, Jackson's troops invaded Spanish Florida. From 1814 to 1824, Jackson was instrumental in negotiating nine out of eleven treaties which divested the southern tribes of their eastern lands in exchange for lands in the west. The tribes agreed to the treaties for strategic reasons. They wanted to appease the government in the hopes of retaining some of their land, and they wanted to protect themselves from white harassment. As a result of the treaties, the United States gained control over three-quarters of Alabama and Florida, as well as parts of Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky and North Carolina. This was a period of voluntary Indian migration, however, and only a small number of Creeks, Cherokee and Choctaws actually moved to the new lands. In 1823 the 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. This was because their "right of occupancy" was subordinate to the United States' "right of discovery." In response to the great threat this posed, the Creeks, Cherokee, and Chickasaw instituted policies of restricting land sales to the government. They wanted to protect what remained of their land before it was too late. Although the five Indian nations had made earlier attempts at resistance, many of their strategies were non-violent. One method was to adopt Anglo-American practices such as large-scale farming, Western education, and slave-holding. This earned the nations the designation of the "Five Civilized Tribes." They adopted this policy of assimilation in an attempt to coexist with settlers and ward off hostility. But it only made whites jealous and resentful.

14 13 Other attempts involved ceding portions of their land to the United States with a view to retaining control over at least part of their territory, or of the new territory they received in exchange. Some Indian nations simply refused to leave their land -- the Creeks and the Seminoles even waged war to protect their territory. The First Seminole War lasted from 1817 to The Seminoles were aided by fugitive slaves who had found protection among them and had been living with them for years. The presence of the fugitives enraged white planters and fueled their desire to defeat the Seminoles. The Cherokee used legal means in their attempt to safeguard their rights. They sought protection from land-hungry white settlers, who continually harassed them by stealing their livestock, burning their towns, and squatting on their land. In 1827 the Cherokee adopted a written constitution declaring themselves to be a sovereign nation. They based this on United States policy; in former treaties, Indian nations had been declared sovereign so they would be legally capable of ceding their lands. Now the Cherokee hoped to use this status to their advantage. The state of Georgia, however, did not recognize their sovereign status, but saw them as tenants living on state land. The Cherokee took their case to the Supreme Court, which ruled against them. The Cherokee went to the Supreme Court again in This time they based their appeal on an 1830 Georgia law which prohibited whites from living on Indian territory after March 31, 1831, without a license from the state. The state legislature had written this law to justify removing white missionaries who were helping the Indians resist removal. The court this time decided in favor of the Cherokee. It stated that the Cherokee had the right to self-government, and declared Georgia's extension of state law over them to be unconstitutional. The state of Georgia refused to abide by the Court decision, however, and President Jackson refused to enforce the law. In 1830, just a year after taking office, Jackson pushed a new piece of legislation called the "Indian Removal Act" through both houses of Congress. It gave the president power to negotiate removal treaties with Indian tribes living east of the Mississippi. Under these treaties, the Indians were to give up their lands east of the Mississippi in exchange for lands to the west. Those wishing to remain in the east would become citizens of their home state. This act affected not only the southeastern nations, but many others further north. The removal was supposed to be voluntary and peaceful, and it was that way for the tribes that agreed to the conditions. But the southeastern nations resisted, and Jackson forced them to leave. Jackson's attitude toward Native Americans was paternalistic and patronizing -- he described them as children in need of guidance and believed the removal policy was beneficial to the Indians. Most white Americans thought that the United States would never extend beyond the Mississippi. Removal would save Indian people from the depredations of whites, and would resettle them in an area where they could govern themselves in peace. But some Americans saw this as an excuse for a brutal and inhumane course of action, and protested loudly against removal. Their protests did not save the southeastern nations from removal, however. The

15 14 Choctaws were the first to sign a removal treaty, which they did in September of Some chose to stay in Mississippi under the terms of the Removal Act. But though the War Department made some attempts to protect those who stayed, it was no match for the land-hungry whites who squatted on Choctaw territory or cheated them out of their holdings. Soon most of the remaining Choctaws, weary of mistreatment, sold their land and moved west. For the next 28 years, the United States government struggled to force relocation of the southeastern nations. A small group of Seminoles was coerced into signing a removal treaty in 1833, but the majority of the tribe declared the treaty illegitimate and refused to leave. The resulting struggle was the Second Seminole War, which lasted from 1835 to As in the first war, fugitive slaves fought beside the Seminoles who had taken them in. Thousands of lives were lost in the war, which cost the Jackson administration approximately 40 to 60 million dollars -- ten times the amount it had allotted for Indian removal. In the end, most of the Seminoles moved to the new territory. The few who remained had to defend themselves in the Third Seminole War ( ), when the U.S. military attempted to drive them out. Finally, the United States paid the remaining Seminoles to move west. The Creeks also refused to emigrate. They signed a treaty in March, 1832, which opened a large portion of their Alabama land to white settlement, but guaranteed them protected ownership of the remaining portion, which was divided among the leading families. The government did not protect them from speculators, however, who quickly cheated them out of their lands. By 1835 the destitute Creeks began stealing livestock and crops from white settlers. Some eventually committed arson and murder in retaliation for their brutal treatment. In 1836 the Secretary of War ordered the removal of the Creeks as a military necessity. By 1837, approximately 15,000 Creeks had migrated west. They had never signed a removal treaty. The Chickasaws had seen removal as inevitable, and had not resisted. They signed a treaty in 1832 which stated that the federal government would provide them with suitable western land and would protect them until they moved. But once again, the onslaught of white settlers proved too much for the War Department, and it backed down on its promise. The Chickasaws were forced to pay the Choctaws for the right to live on part of their western allotment. They migrated there in the winter of The Cherokee, on the other hand, were tricked with an illegitimate treaty. In 1833, a small faction agreed to sign a removal agreement: the Treaty of New Echota. The leaders of this group were not the recognized leaders of the Cherokee nation, and over 15,000 Cherokees -- led by Chief John Ross -- signed a petition in protest. The Supreme Court ignored their demands and ratified the treaty in The Cherokee were given two years to migrate voluntarily, at the end of which time they would be forcibly removed. By 1838 only 2,000 had migrated; 16,000 remained on their land. The U.S. government sent in 7,000 troops, who forced the Cherokees into stockades at bayonet point. They were not allowed time to gather their belongings, and as they left, whites looted their homes. Then began the march known as the Trail of Tears, in which 4,000 Cherokee people died of

16 15 cold, hunger, and disease on their way to the western lands. By 1837, the Jackson administration had removed 46,000 Native American people from their land east of the Mississippi, and had secured treaties which led to the removal of a slightly larger number. Most members of the five southeastern nations had been relocated west, opening 25 million acres of land to white settlement and to slavery. The name of the problem addressed by these events changed over time. By the time of the Indian Removal Act, both whites and Indians saw the problem as how to live with another culture when both parties wanted the same land. This general statement is an expression of the first democratic practice. However, few articulated the problem in this broad fashion. Many stated the problem in adversarial terms. That is, they saw the problem as the others were living on, if not trespassing on, land that was theirs at least in their own eyes. In other words, few could agree on what the problem common to both whites and Indians. As we saw with anecdotes about the early days of Tuscumbia, both cultures could live among one another as long as population pressure on the land was scant. In fact, they needed one another for trade and mutual prosperity. As time passed, each side began to redefine their views of the problem. To study the choices made in the events leading to the Indian Removal Act of 1830, we can construct two framings of possible approaches (the second democratic practice). One is choices whites could make. The other is choices the Indians could make. Students, whether in school or interested for other reasons, can then use these choices to learn more. One way to arrive at possible choices is to research their existence as described in secondary sources. A deeper historical study is to research their existence as revealed in primary sources. In times past, the latter approach was most often the province of professionals. Increased internet access to primary sources enables students at many grade levels to do the same. In some cases, issue books patterned after those produced by the National Issues Forums are available. Another Occasional Paper in this History as Choice series examines such an issue book of pre-constructed approaches for consideration. That issue book focuses on the Kansas- Nebraska Act as a pivotal action in controversies over the extension of slavery into the territories. 26 Creating an issue book from other sources and using an issue book are both learning opportunities. Which approach to use depends on what is already available and how one seeks to develop a learning opportunity. In the application of deliberative decision making, each approach is presented best foot forward. This way of phrasing approaches avoids simply arguing against an approach as meanminded. Such may be a possible judgment, but to begin with that point of view cuts short ability

17 16 to learn from how another sees a problem. Everyone wants to believe they are right in their own minds. Whites might have considered these approaches. 1. Approach One: Live Together. We can live peaceably with Indians as fellow citizens. The Indians for the most part welcomed the first white settlers. For many years, both peoples needed one another for trade and overall prosperity. Intermarriages have occurred. The Indian culture has progressively become more synonymous with white culture. 2. Approach Two: Maintain Separate Cultures. We must keep Indians in buffer zones where they can follow their own customs. They are of different nature and cannot easily live in our culture. They can trade with us, and we both profit. However, some are hostile. If they are confined to specific areas, we can better protect ourselves. Whites know better how to use the best land for maximum profit. 3. Approach Three: Protect Everyone by Removing Indians. We must move the Indians westward to their own lands for their own protection and ours. Although some whites want to live peacefully with Indians, other whites are determined to take Indian lands. Other whites seek to exterminate Indians to obtain those lands. Economic pressures are paramount. Some Indians are hostile to whites and commit crimes against them. Indian approaches were similar but differently stated. 1. Approach One: Assimilate into white culture. We are outnumbered and at risk. We must blend into white culture and seek equal footing in economic and legal matters, political matters if possible. 2. Approach Two: Maintain Separate Cultures. We are distinctive people with our own culture. We must celebrate that culture. We must accept the risks of being different. 3. Approach Three: Fight Back. We are outnumbered and at risk. If our heritage and our lands are at risk, we must resist, with armed force if necessary. 4. Approach Four: Move Away. We are outnumbered and at risk. We cannot win battles with whites in their legal system and against their armed might, both formal military forces and armed gangs. We must move away from these threats. At least two uses of framing of approaches are possible. Both approximate the fourth democratic practice of deliberating together to make hard choices. One is to use the framework as a research template. Students in school or otherwise can use the approaches as ways of investigating historical events. They can read secondary sources and primary sources if desired. Sorting material about historical events into how they expressed different viewpoints helps internalize learning. This approach can be used by individuals and by groups. Another is to use the framework for an actual forum. This approach, of course, requires group activity. Students can work through approaches as a total group, drawing on historical research to make points relevant to each approach. Or they can role play being advocates of different points of view contained in the approaches. Either approach may use the white framework or the Indian framework or both at the same time.

18 17 To repeat, deliberating together to make hard choices requires talking through (not just talking about) attractions, hesitations, costs, and consequences of each possible approach. The objects are to identify how different people prioritize what they hold valuable and what are acceptable and unacceptable tradeoffs among the various approaches. This work identifies what people are willing to do together between full agreement and full disagreement. It seeks to be integrative and unitary, not majoritarian and adversarial. Many, many historical events, within the United States were not approached as a full exercise of democratic practices (and are not today). This particular issue of Indian policy and practices was not. Approaching understanding of a problem through democratic practices teaches what is needed to make democracy work as it should. It also provides insight into what might have been more effective, creative, and sustainable ways of making choices. The major decision that resulted in the Indian Removal Act of 1830 was made in adversarial and majoritarian ways through institutional procedures. Other organic decisions in communities in the then United States were often made in the same way. Some communities, as seems the case with Tuscumbia, made different decisions but within the parameters established by the institutional procedures. 27 Students can investigate the fifth and sixth democratic practices by studying what happened as a result of decisions made through the application or lack of application of the fourth practice. Again, the investigative questions are these. Who committed to act? In what ways? Who did not? What were the consequences? What was learned? By whom? How was the problem renamed? How were different approaches developed? And so forth. The practices thus constitute a cycle. Investigation of the fifth and sixth democratic practices leads back to examination of the first democratic practice. What public space existed? Who was given voice in making the decision? Who was denied that voice? Examining the other democratic practices through the lens of the first democratic practice raises questions for how history is studied. The usual questions for historical study are who, what, when, where, how, and why. The first democratic practice focuses on the ultimate question of what difference did it make. One variant of this question is counterfactual historical investigation. Some professional historians take this approach. Most students, in class or otherwise, are not likely to explore history in counterfactual terms. The what-difference-does-it-make question opens up examination of the relevance of choices about events in a given historical era on subsequent choices. In this case, this examination leads to many subsequent questions about U.S. policy and practice toward Native Americans. The same questions arise in looking at policy and practice toward all minority groups. Individual students, in school or otherwise, and administrators and teachers, in school settings, must choose to what extent they bring investigation of the past up to the present. Policies and

19 18 practices in regard to Indian removal in Alabama comprise but one area in which this question pertains. A SUMMARY This Occasional Paper has used the attitude and events surrounding Indian removal policies and practices in Alabama as an example. The example posits the value of using seven democratic practices as a lens through which to learn from studying history. In particular, this approach encourages students, in school or otherwise, to deepen understanding of history as the result of choices that people make. Further, this approach connects the study of history to making wiser choices in the present. 1 The most recent and comprehensive reference on the history of Alabama is William Warren Rogers, Robert David Ward, Leah Rawls Atkins, and Wayne Flynt, Alabama The History of a Deep South State (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1994). Indian removal is discussed briefly on pages Robert V. Rimini is perhaps the most recognized historian of the life and times of Andrew Jackson. Most detailed among his many books are three volumes on The Life of Andrew Jackson. They were published as a single volume, Andrew Jackson (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1998). 2 Did you peek? If you did, that action probably says something about your learning style, perhaps your Myers- Briggs Type Indicator. See Part I and Part II of Making Things Work for You and Others: Personal Development and Community Innovation (2d ed.; Montevallo, AL: David Mathews Center for Civic Life, 2010). This resource is available for download from the Mathews Center website. In later endnotes, I will cite this reference for more detailed discussions of democratic practices than are contained in this Occasional Paper. Another series of Occasional Papers on Democratic Practices for Innovative Decisions is also available from the David Mathews Center website. I will not cite those papers individually in later endnotes. I use that series of Occasional Papers to provide shorter references for downloading and to develop a next edition of Making Things Work for You and Others. Democratic practices and their applications are also discussed in materials developed by the Kettering Foundation and by the NIF network. I will not cite all those materials individually in the interest of space, but they are important resources. Consult and 3 The standard source on the early history of Tuscumbia and surrounding area is Nina Leftwich, Two Hundred Years at Muscle Shoals: Being An Authentic History of Colbert County with Special Emphasis on the Stirring Events of the Early Times (Tuscumbia: Reprinted by Colbert County Memorial Post No. 31, the American Legion, ; originally published in 1935). Articles on the early history of Tuscumbia are contained in Tuscumbia, The Journal of Muscle Shoals History, XVII (2001). The first article in this publication is Captain Arthur H. Keller, History of Tuscumbia, Alabama, Captain Keller was the father of Helen Keller, who grew up in Tuscumbia. My grandmother played with Helen as a child. Keller s piece was originally published in T. A. DeLand and A. Davis Smith, Northern Alabama Historical and Biographical (n.p., 1888). A brief article written by a professional historian is C. Wilder Watts, Indians at the Muscle Shoals, The Journal of Muscle Shoals History, I (1973), Little mention is made of the Indian heritage of the area in Historic Muscle Shoals, The Journal of Muscle Shoals History, IV (Bicentennial Edition, 1976). 4 Chief Tuscumbia Greeting the Dickson Family was painted in 1939 by Jack McMillan. It was funded by the Treasury Department Section of Fine Arts, not the Works Progress Administration. The incongruous presence of plains style tepees in the background does not detract from the mural s theme. See Marlene Park and Gerald E. Markowitz, Democratic Vistas: Post Offices and Public Art in the New Deal Era (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984); Patricia Raynor, Off the Wall: New Deal Post Office Murals, Enroute, VI (October-December, 1997); New Deal Art in Alabama Post Offices and Federal Buildings, Alabama Moments in American History, on the website of the Alabama Department of Archives and History. 5 Colbert County was first created from Franklin County in 1867 as part of partisan maneuvering during Reconstruction. It was abolished after eight months but recreated in See Alabama Counties on the website of Alabama Department of Archives and History. 6 Leftwich, passim. and Watts, p. 9.

20 19 7 Mary M. Stolberg, Politician, Populist, Reformer: A Reexamination of Hanging Judge Isaac C. Parker, The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, XLVII (Spring, 1988), An older source, with considerable detail about savagery in the Indian territory, is Glenn Shirley, Law West of Fort Smith: Frontier Justice in the Indian Territory, (New York: Collier Books, 1957). 8 This issue book was Racial and Ethnic Tensions: What Should We Do? (Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 2000). The Kettering Foundation, National Issues Forums Institute, and other cooperating entities have prepared other issue books dealing primarily with relations between whites and African-Americans. They are Remedies for Racial Inequality: Why Progress Has Stalled, What Should Be Done? (Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1990) and How Can We Be Fair?: The Future of Affirmative Action (Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1995). 9 Sources on the Trail of Tears are many. For concentration upon the removal of Cherokees. see John Ehle, Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation (New York: Anchor Books, 1988) and Theda Perdue, Michael Green, and Colin G. Hardaway, The Cherokee Nation and the Trial of Tears (New York: Penguin Books, 2008). Although the Cherokees are most often associated with the Trail of Tears, several tribes were involved. An examination that extends beyond the Cherokees is Gloria Jahoda, The Trail of Tears: The Story of the American Indian Removal, (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1975). 10 (Florence, AL: Country Lane Printing, 2000, 6 th printing in 2009). Te-lay-nah was a member of the Yuchi, a small tribe with a distinctive language. Entering Yuchi or Euchee in an internet search engine will reveal many sources on the tribe. I have skimmed in the text the incredible circumstances of the removal of Te-lay-nah and her relatives from Alabama and her return. 11 John L. McWilliams, The Trail Where They Cried, Life on My Side of the River (Arab, AL: Heritage Publishing Company, 1995), pp This article contains part of the story McWilliams told as town historian. An undated letter from Chilly McIntosh to an unnamed person describes how well the Creek Indians who encamped at Tuscumbia were treated by its people. See story of Chilly McIntosh is also remarkable. 12 Another related series of Occasional Papers available from the Mathews Center website is Humanities and Public Policy. 13 One way to describe this difference is in terms of separated and connected knowledge. Separated knowledge asks what is the structure of a poem, Connected knowledge asks what does the poem mean to you. See McKenzie, Making Things Work for You and Others, pp. xx-xxi, 22, 83, 103, and 121, all references to the work of William Perry on cognitive development. 14 In his writings about democratic practices, David Mathews speaks of six, not seven. He implies the practice of providing public space, but he does not lift it out for separate attention. I do. Mathews provided the initial articulation of democratic practices that we use as touchstones. 15 This democratic practice is discussed in McKenzie, Making Things Work for You and Others, pp. 4, 81-82, 107, 155, 167, 169, , 200, and The nature of a problem being considered is critical. Some problems require yes-or-no decisions. A single jurisdiction can take action and be held accountable. Some problems are systemic, but the name of the problem is recognized. They require multiple actions by many actors over time in many complementary ways. Single jurisdictions cannot be held accountable. Some problems are systemic, but people cannot agree on what the problem is. Each of these types of problems requires a different mode of talking through them. See McKenzie, Making Things Work for You and Others, pp. 65, 67, 70-71, 179, 229, 235, 288, and The relationship of common things held valuable by human beings is central to understanding how to use democratic practices to work through issues in deliberative fashion. See McKenzie, Making Things Work for You and Others, pp. 21, 24, 83, 92, , 110, 115, 138, 141, , 147, , , 176, 178, 180, , , , 201, , , 230, , 248, , 263, , 272, 280, 282, 284, 286, , 301, 303, and 305. The multiple page references illustrate how central this factor is. Much of the rationale behind framing approaches to create attention to tensions among these things held valuable is drawn from the research of Milton Rokeach. 18 The roles of moderators and other roles in conducting effective forums are discussed in Part III of McKenzie, Making Things Work for You and Others. 19 This democratic practice is discussed in McKenzie, Making Things Work for You and Others, pp , , 175, 178,213-14, 218, and See McKenzie, Making Things Work for You and Others, pp , 175, 208, 215, 235, 238, 246, and 289.