Document A - President Jackson’s First Annual Message to Congress (December 7, 1829:
Our conduct toward the Indians is deeply interesting to our national character. Surrounded by the whites with their arts of civilization the whites have destroyed the resources of the savage doom him to weakness and decay, the fate of the Mohegan, the Narragansett, and the Delaware is fast overtaking the Choctaw, the Cherokee, and the Creek. That this fate surely awaits them if they remain within the limits of the states does not admit of a doubt. It is too late to inquire whether it was just in the United States to include them within the bounds of new states, whose limits they could control. That step cannot be retraced. A state cannot be dismembered by Congress or restricted in the exercise of her constitutional power. But the people of those states and of every state, actuated by feelings of justice and a regard for our national honor, submit to you the interesting question whether something cannot be done, consistently with the rights of the states, to preserve this much-injured race.
Document Question:
1. What does President Jackson say about previous white people, how the white people interacted with Native Americans and what is the Indians fate?
My Answer: American colonists and later the states and U.S. government had tried to introduce the Native Americans the arts of civilization. Many Indians adapted the customs or beliefs of the white settlers into their traditional ways of life. The ways they did this, and their reasons for doing so, depended on their own circumstances but this will be their fate. Some of the tribes is fast overtaking the others because of their relationshis with the settlers and agree with the government without a doubt....”Surrounded by the whites with their arts of civilization the whites have destroyed the resources of the savage doom him to weakness and decay, the fate of the Mohegan, the Narragansett, and the Delaware is fast overtaking the Choctaw, the Cherokee, and the Creek. That this fate surely awaits them if they remain within the limits of the states does not admit of a doubt.”
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