The Conflict between Natives and White Americans

The Conflict between Natives and White Americans Student’s Name Institution The Conflict between Natives and White Americans The 19th century experienced a conflict between the native and white and Americans. The cause of the fighting was the different way of life for each group. The natives mainly hunted wild animals for food. On the other hand, a majority of the white settlers made a living by farming; they cleared forests and natural vegetation pushing way wild animals. The natives saw the settlers as a threat to their lands and livelihood while the settlers considered as uncivilized savages resulting in conflict. This paper highlights why conflict was truly inevitable and issues could not have been worked out to everyone’s benefit as the needs of both groups clashed. The issue of land was at the center of the conflict with both groups having different uses for it. The natives had over the years relied on hunting as a means of livelihood with a few practicing subsistence farming. The whites on their part mostly used the land for farming as evident in the land for sale posters, “Grand Rush for the Indian Territory!” and “Indian Land For Sale” (Amazon, 2019). The posters advertised the land as good for irrigation, grazing, agricultural dry farming among other things, with all that at cheap prices and promising possession within thirty days. In his speech “To the Cherokee Tribe of Indians East of the Mississippi” on March 16, 1835, President Andrew Jackson laid out his case for the removal of American Indians from their homelands (Jackson, 1835). The elected president was of the view that the survival of the American Indians depended on their separation for the whites. In the circular, the president uses paternalistic and threatening language to urge the Cherokee to accept removal from Georgia and relocate to the west peacefully, “Circumstances that cannot be controlled, and which are beyond the reach of human laws, render it impossible that you can flourish in the midst of a civilized community… You have but one remedy within your reach. And that is, to remove to the west" (Jackson, 1835). In the speech the president implied that that there was no other way to solve the conflict other than the natives relocating and gave no indication to work on any other solution, “As certain as the sun shines to guide you in your path, so certai...