Indian Removal ActWord Count: 1203Joshua Shaw5/20/16History BMr. MorseThe Indian Removal Act of 1830 was passed to remove all Indians from their lands to give to white settlers who wanted the land, it was fertile and the towns were becoming too crowded. The government thought it would be better for the Indians to relocate them because whites went to Indian reservations and sometimes killed Indians. A relocation soldier had this to say in a letter to his son on his eightieth birthday: "I saw the helpless Cherokees were arrested, dragged from their homes and pushed against the stockades at bayonet point. And in the freezing cold of a pouring rain on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle or sheep onto six hundred and forty-five wagons and headed west. This statement by the soldiers simply shows how cruel the United States was towards the Indians of this soldier is very important because it tells the truth behind what happened during the harsh removal Many true accounts of this event do not exist, they have been edited just enough to make them seem not as bad as they were. Many of these documents say things like whether it was “for them” or “it was the only option we had”. America's real reason behind this act was greed, they wanted their fertile land. The government itself said they were doing it for the survival of the Indian race and if that were the case they would not have moved them to a place they had never been, a place they knew nothing about, a place thousands of miles away. in which they could not survive, much less thrive. Instead they moved them to a barren desert like land they didn't want. The government said it would pay for... half the paper... stood out sooner than it already had. What we did to them wasn't nice and that will never change. Some of them survived and their race is now almost one with ours, but it could happen again, maybe not for years, but it is possible. We will do what we think is best almost every time and if you have something we want, be prepared to have it taken when we need it. Works Cited Cave, Alfred A. "Abuse of Power: Andrew Jackson and the Indian Removal Act of 1830." Jacksonian Democracy and Historians. Gainesville: University of Florida, 1964. Page No. Print.Remini, Robert V. "The Indian Removal Act." Andrew Jackson and his Indian Wars. New York: Viking, 2001. Page no. Print."10.8 A soldier remembers the trail of tears." A soldier remembers the trail of tears. Np, nd Web. March 23, 2016."Path of Tears." Room 32. Np, nd Web. 24 March 2016.Np, nd Web. 20 May 2016.