Secondary Source

“Although we use the term ‘removal,’ the United States actually engaged in ethnic cleansing when it forced Native Americans west of the Mississippi. By 1830 most white Americans did not believe that Indians and whites could live together, and they thought that Indians held resources, especially land, to which whites were entitled. Democratic institutions meant that Native peoples, who had no vote, could be dispossessed by those who did. As a result, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, the United States expelled Indians from the East ‘with wonderful ease, quietly, legally, philanthropically.’ The insistence of the United States that its policy was just should lead modern Americans to contemplate not only why their ancestors so desperately wanted Indian land, but also how they justified taking it.”

- Theda Perdue, Historian, “Indian Removal,” 2011