Removal.

In the early 1830s there were still 125,000 Native Americans living east of the Mississippi River. The United States had two conflicting policies toward this population: assimilation and removal. Assimilation encouraged Native Americans to conform to European- American ways to survive. The federal government even funded missionaries to Christianize and educate native people. The Cherokees, who occupied land in the Southeast, had successfully assimilated by the 1830s. They had created a written alphabet, ratified a republican constitution with a bicameral legislature, learned to farm, and built one of the better public school systems in the South. But the government's second policy, removal, dismissed the possibility of assimilating Native Americans. It sought to make Indians leave whatever land they had in the East and relocate west of the Mississippi River. Some proponents of removal believed that separation was the only way to protect Indians from...