ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ways in which Indian removal intensified in the 1820s and reached its peak in the 1830s, as both Northern and Southern states, pressed by a land-hungry American citizenry, signed land cession treaties with native peoples. It explores Native American resistance to this process. Florida Seminoles used the peninsula's difficult swampy environment to their advantage, waging the Second Seminole War for eight years and staving off large-scale removal until the 1840s. Christian missionaries tried a new tactic: they plucked the next generation of male Cherokee leaders from their homes and immersed them in northern schools instead. Two Cherokees, John Ridge and Elias Boudinot, lived at a school in Cornwall, Connecticut, from 1823 to 1825 under the auspices of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. The chapter concludes with an examination of the efforts of removed native peoples, particularly from the South, to rebuild their sovereignty and autonomy in new lands.
