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The fact that the Arab nations have been using the Palestinian's cannot be denied - it does not mean the continued theft of their land, abuses of their rights and liberties should be allowed to be continued....
Source: Niles’ Register, February 25, 1832, 41:480.
Note: Harkins’ letter was reprinted from a paper in Natchez, Mississippi. Preceding it was a prefatory statement from that paper, titled “The Choctaw’s Lament,” as follows:
“In our paper today, will be found an address to the American people, by George W. Harkins, the present chief of the Choctaw nation. Capt. Harkins, is the nephew, and successor in office of Greenwood Laflour [sic]; and is now on his way with a large body of people, to their new residence in the west. The address was hastily written with a pencil, on board of the steam boat Huron, the day before his arrival at our landing. The time was so short as to afford Capt. Harkins no opportunity to send us a revised sheet.
“To the speculators and land jobbers, whose grasping avarice force this people from their homes and the graves of their forefathers, the language of this address will be unintelligible; but there are others, who, we presume, are not entirely devoid of shame, and to whom some allusion is made, who will feel the full force of its mild, but pointed rebuke.”
I could cheerfully hope, that those of another age and generation may not feel the effects of those oppressive measures that have been so illiberally dealt out to us; and that peace and happiness may be their reward. Amid the gloom and horrors of the present separation, we are cheered with a hope that ere long we shall reach our destined land, and that nothing short of the basest acts of treachery will ever be able to wrest it from us, and that we may live free. Although your ancestors won freedom on the field of danger and glory, our ancestors owned it as their birthright, and we have had to purchase it from you as the vilest slaves buy their freedom.
Yet it is said that our present movements are our own voluntary acts—such is not the case. We found ourselves like a benighted stranger, following false guides, until he was surrounded on every side, with fire and water. The fire was certain destruction, and a feeble hope was left him of escaping by water. A distant view of the opposite shore encourages the hope; to remain would be inevitable annihilation. Who would hesitate, or who would say that his plunging into the water was his own voluntary act? Painful in the extreme is the mandate of our expulsion. We regret that it should proceed from the mouth of our professed friend, for whom our blood was co-mingled with that of his bravest warriors, on the field of danger and death.
. . .
Friends, my attachment to my native land was strong—that cord is now broken; and we must go forth as wanderers in a strange land! I must go—Let me entreat you to regard us with feelings of kindness, and when the hand of oppression is stretched against us, let me hope that a warning voice may be heard from every part of the United States, filling the mountains and valleys will echo, and say stop, you have no power, we are the sovereign people, and our friends shall no more be disturbed. We ask you for nothing, that is incompatible with your other duties.
Andrew Jackson continued the removal of the Native Americans with the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. In 1831 the Choctaw were the first to be removed, and they became the model for all other removals. After the Choctaw, the Seminole were removed in 1832, the Creek in 1834, then the Chickasaw in 1837, and finally the Cherokee in 1838
ARTICLE THE NINTH.
The United States of America engage to put an end immediately after the Ratification of the present Treaty to hostilities with all the Tribes or Nations of Indians with whom they may be at war at the time of such Ratification, and forthwith to restore to such Tribes or Nations respectively all the possessions, rights, and privileges which they may have enjoyed or been entitled to in one thousand eight hundred and eleven previous to such hostilities. Provided always that such Tribes or Nations shall agree to desist from all hostilities against the United States of America, their Citizens, and Subjects upon the Ratification of the present Treaty being notified to such Tribes or Nations, and shall so desist accordingly. And His Britannic Majesty engages on his part to put an end immediately after the Ratification of the present Treaty to hostilities with all the Tribes or Nations of Indians with whom He may be at war at the time of such Ratification, and forthwith to restore to such Tribes or Nations respectively all the possessions, rights, and privileges, which they may have enjoyed or been entitled to in one thousand eight hundred and eleven previous to such hostilities. Provided always that such Tribes or Nations shall agree to desist from all hostilities against His Britannic Majesty and His Subjects upon the Ratification of the present Treaty being notified to such Tribes or Nations, and shall so desist accordingly.