While there were plenty of southern people financing the take over of native land. But there were plenty of supposedly respectable northerners and others corporations that were involved in basically stealing native land and then selling it at an obscene mark up.
There's lots of interesting details about this. One is that the government split up land into 6 mile by 6 mile squares they called townships with the basic idea that those would be further subdivided and the proper owner found so their land could be purchased in good faith. None of that was really sincere though. The government wasn't looking out for the rights of the native people that were getting displaced. A common refrain when any native would complain to the feds about all thus they would basically be told to take it up with the state. The problem with that is that under state law in Geogia, Mississippi and Alabama really only white men had rights. This was a fun difference between native and state law. Anyone could own land in native territory. So a lot of the time when the feds did try to do the right thing and buy land from the rightful owner it would turn out the rightful owner was a woman or black and at that point the feds stopped trying.
Ch 8 a combination of designing speculators. Pg 201
Here we get into more detail over how native land was "purchased" Very few natives were able to read so it was very easy to trick them into "signing" away their land. Also a lot of people just took up residence on native land and then just presented themselves as the legitimate owner and the government was ok with that. Also, when the government went to auction off land these land buying monopolies had kinda taken over so the land was sold super cheap so most natives ended up getting nothing for their land.
In the rare circumstance when a native had a legitimate case and did like the feds said and took it up with the state they were told to bring white evidence.
At this point in the expulsion efforts almost all the transport was via boat. This wasn't any better because people are still dying of Colorado in droves and being packed onto a boat made it much worse. But when the other option was the certainty that someone would kill you on their way to stealing your land, people got on those boats to settle down on some of the shittiest land in the country.
Ch 9 1836: the southern world at war pg 231
When expulsion didn't work as swiftly as the government had hoped they pretty much just started murdering natives. Not that this wasn't already being done, but now it was being done on purpose by the government rather than by individuals that were never brought up on charges as there was never any white evidence against them. All over the south the army was attacking any groups of natives that weren't heading west.
There was also just a lot of fear mongering that if we didn't get rid of all the Indians we would have tons of situations where natives and slaves worked together to kill whites. One of the any reasons for this type of thought is that Mexico 🇲🇽 had just outlawed slavery and as a result Texas had take up violent revolution so the whites there could stay profitable 📈 with slave labor. And as a result all southern states pointed to Texas as an example of what could happen if they didn't kill all the natives that wanted to end slavery.
There was also talk that after we killed or moved the rest of the natives to Oklahoma we had to build a wall to protect ourselves from them. So yeah.
Ch 10 at the point of a bayonet
Nowadays all Republicans are racist. Back in the 1830s all southerners are where supremacists. Even the ones that didn't own slaves. The idea that natives might be able to love freely on what southerners thought of as "their" land was offensive. So they really and truly sent in the army to get rid of all the Indians.
Ch 11 tis no sin 282
Never fight a land war in Florida.
No comments:
Post a Comment