Reply #5: It was called Manifest Destiny

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/prelude/md_native_american_displacement.html

Native American Displacement Amid U.S. Expansion
A Conversation With R. David Edmunds
University of Texas at Dallas

There is an interesting symbolic portrayal of Manifest Destiny that shows "Columbia," the great American angel or woman, floating over the plains. Ahead of her, in the West, is a great darkness populated by wild animals. There are bears and wolves and Indian people, who are fleeing her light. In her wake come farms, villages and homesteads and in the back are cities and railroads. As the figure progresses across the land, the light of civilization dispels the darkness of ignorance and barbarity.

In this painting, Native American people are portrayed along with the animals and the darkness. They have to be removed before Columbia can bring the prosperity promised to the United States. It's an interesting portrayal and, I think, very symbolic of the thinking of many Americans during the mid-19th century.

Another interesting symbol of Manifest Destiny shows a railroad train coming out of the east with smoke billowing out of its boiler. It's moving west, bringing technological enlightenment into the wilderness. Americans in the 19th century and ever since, have equated civilization with technological development, no matter what the cost, particularly in terms of spirit or morality.

From your viewpoint, how did the United States justify its efforts to expand?

The U.S.-Mexican War and the capture of lands in the Southwest was very difficult for the United States. It was rationalized in terms that it would bring Anglo-Saxon institutions into an area that was devoid of such enlightenment.

Expansion and Indian removal created some phenomenal problems for the new American nation in terms of its moral character. How can this unique experiment in the new world — this nation that prided itself upon its democratic institutions, force Native American people westward? How do you rationalize the taking of land and the usurpation of property?

The argument that was used was, "This had to be done to save these poor Indian people. They don't fit in the East, so we have to move them out beyond the frontier where they can do their Indian thing unmolested. This is the only possible way to save them."

The hypocrisy of this is obvious because many of the people, though not all of them, who were removed were very sophisticated and relatively "civilized" people. For example, the literacy rate of the Cherokee nation is higher than that of the white South up through the Civil War, yet the tribe was moved westward as an uncivilized people, so that their land could be open for American expansion.