Stuff You Should Know - History of the Trail of Tears, Part I

Episode Date: March 7, 2017

In this first of two episodes on the Trail of Tears, learn about the forces that converged to create the series of events that formed the basis of what may be the most brutal decade in American history. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey friends, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba, who got the idea to Airbnb the Backyard Guest House over childhood home. Now the extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at Airbnb.ca slash host. On the podcast, Hey Dude the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back

into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude the 90s called on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry and the air conditioner. So it's Stuff You Should Know. It is a little loud today, isn't it? From the dank vows. Oh, I'm glad you laughed because that's probably going to be the last one that you folks are going to hear. Yeah, this one's heavy. Over the next two episodes, not a lot of great ways to inject humor into the Trail of Tears. If it comes up and it's tasteful, we'll put it in there, sure. Right.

But I mean, you know, come on. Yeah, and I said two parter. You just spoiled it. Well, it's going to be a two parter for Thursday. This is a dense topic. And yeah, so we'll do a Tuesday, Thursday on this, right? Yeah. Not a Thursday, next Tuesday. No, that'd be weird. Because people would sit around all weekend without access to the internet wondering how it all ended. You know, it's funny. It is a very dense topic, Chuck. And I never, I was a history major man. And I didn't realize how dense this topic was. Yeah, background. There was how many things that came together to lead up to it. Because everything I knew about the Trail of Tears was what I think most people know about the Trail of Tears. It was, you know, the Cherokee people were forced onto this trail to move out west.

And it wasn't fun. No, it was very sad. Yeah. And one of the longstanding urban legends or myths, or I don't know what you call it. But falsehoods that I always had heard was that it was called the Trail of Tears. Because despite all the hardships, the Indians were so stoic that it was the white settlers who came out to watch them leave that were crying. I don't think I ever heard that. I heard that for years, starting in grade school, going up to college. Yeah. So it's not called an urban myth. It's called public school in America in the 80s. I guess so. Yeah. But I mean, that was, it, overall though, aside from that big falsehood, like my conception of the Trail of Tears was fairly correct, but it was limited, narrow. Yeah. It was such a much bigger event. It wasn't just one

migration. It was actually multiple migrations. It involved more than just the Cherokee. Sure. It involved even more than just the southeastern tribes. Just about every tribe that was around the west of the Mississippi was, in about the 1830s, forced east of the Mississippi. Yeah. Yeah. Was forced west of the Mississippi against their will. Which, as we'll see, there were other tribes west of the Mississippi were like, what's going on here? Yeah. Well, you didn't invite you. Yeah. And then, you know, and not just Native Americans were affected by this, but this forced migration had a huge impact on the African Americans who had been brought here as slaves and were being forced into slave labor on these lands that the Indians were forced to migrate from.

Yes. Very dense. It was a huge, huge thing that happened. And it all happened in about a decade. Yeah. And I think this is one of those that, you know, you don't know your past. You don't know your future type of thing. That should be a song lyric. There's, you know, you look at stories like this, and you can apply certain aspects of it to modern times even. Sure. You know, that's all I'm going to say. But it's true. I mean, like, it is true. There's probably a different, it's its own reasoning. Yeah. The Trail of Tears, what began and kicked off the Trail of Tears is its own thing that we don't really run into anymore. It's almost like inconceivable in the United States because we have so much land. But at the time, the United

States was the 13 colonies. And it ran from Georgia up to, oh, basically Canada. What was the northernmost 13th colony or colony? Was it Massachusetts? Maine wasn't around, was it? Well, it existed. They were weird Mainers even back then. But it would have been under probably like French control or something in part of Canada, maybe. I would guess. I don't know. Well, at any rate, the colonial America was a, and the early United States was a strip of land along the Eastern seaboard. The west of that, west of the Appalachians, basically, there were a lot of people, a lot of Native Americans, the French were running around, the British were out there as well. But for the most part, there was a lot of land elsewhere. But a lot of it was

under Indian control, Native American control. And so when the United States said, we want to push out, as a matter of fact, let's just take over the whole continent. What they ran into was that this land was already under Indian control and they had two choices, either say, okay, we're going to stay here or go to war with the Indians. And the United States chose the latter at every turn. Yeah, because like, and you put this one together, very nice job. Thank you. But you astutely point out that by the late 18th century, people, white European settlers have been commingling for a couple of centuries. Right. This wasn't like a brand new thing. And there was a big push for more land because, ostensibly, what would happen is white settlers

would eventually say, you know, we think that you people, it's very cute that you're not claiming ownership and you just kind of share and share alike mostly. Right. You don't recognize property rights. Yeah. Louis CK has a very funny old bit about that, by the way. You can look that up on YouTube. But we think we can use this better than you have been using it since the dawn of time. Right. And so we're going to, well, like you said, there's a couple of choices. You can stay here and become more like us. Yeah. Or you can get the heck out. Well, those were the two, those were the two ways of dealing with what came to be termed as the Indian problem in the early United States. And from the beginning, there was this problem where white said, we need more land. Indians had

the land. So the whites wanted it. And so there were those two ways of doing it. It was either you can stay and become one of us or you can move. And George Washington was actually a proponent of the first one called enculturation. Yeah, which, you know, depending on what tribe you were in and even within the tribe, it varied greatly on how much you were encultured. But a lot of Native Americans really kind of jumped on board that. And, you know, and this is something I didn't really know to what degree it got to. But, you know, some of them gained great wealth and changed their names to Anglo names and had kids and gave them Anglo names. Some of them married white settlers. Right. They formed, I think, was it the Cherokee who established their own alphabet?

Yeah. And had a bilingual newspaper by 1828. Yeah, the Cherokee Phoenix. Yeah, they owned, they were slave owners. I didn't even know that. So a lot of them, well, a portion of them really took to this enculturation aspect and said, you know what, I'm on board. This sure beats the alternative, which is getting the heck out of dodge. Right. Plus, check out the steamship I just bought, you know? Yeah. And I guess I shouldn't say get the heck out of dodge because it means dodge city, right? I think so. Okay. So there was the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, the Seminole, and the Creek. And they were considered, there were many more tribes, obviously, around the

United States than that. But those five were considered what were known to white people as the five civilized tribes. They were the ones who had enculturated the most. And from what I understand out of all of them, the Cherokee was the most enculturated of even the five civilized tribes, right? Inculturated or encultured? I don't know. I have a thing, I've noticed people, instead of saying like oriented, they're adding like an aided there, so orientated. Yeah, there's a lot of words like that I've noticed lately. I don't know where this is coming from. Why? It's oriented is fine. Yeah. Well, you gotta add a syllable. Yeah, it's not just oriented. We're losing our language.

Well, that's prescriptivist thinking. No, I'm not like that. I've long championed the other, which is language evolves. That's descriptivist. Yeah, but I also don't think you should say orientated. I agree. So that's just specific. That's just having something stick in your craw. So what comes along with enculturation is adopting this European materialism and said, hey, I like having this nice stuff. Right. And not only that, it shows other people that I'm wealthy, that I mean something. Yeah, I've got some status here. And once these Native Americans bought into that, these European settlers like, well, now we've got them.

Yeah. This is kind of just what we hope for. Not that it was some evil plan, but it kind of worked in their favor basically. Yeah, because if you were a leader in a Native American tribe, most of the Native American tribes, one way to consolidate your power and basically turn your position into an official chief to become an actual chief of your tribe was to basically be a patron to a large group of people. Right. And especially among the five civilized tribes, the demand for white produced, European produced goods was pretty high. So if you get your hands on a lot of those and turn around and redistribute them like a patron to your folks. Yeah. They were going to say, hey,

man, we'll follow you into battle. We'll go up against your political enemies on your side. You're our chief. And if you could do that with enough people, you could become chief of the whole tribe. Right. So early on, the Native Americans who were undertaking this process of becoming chief through distribution of wealth, they were just trading like pelts and stuff at trading posts. Yeah. It was supply and demand that the European settlers had these fancy new things that the Native Americans had never seen. They wanted a piece of that. And the European settlers said, boy, you folks are really good at hunting and skinning animals. And the fur trade is lucrative. And so why don't we scratch each other's backs here? We set up these officially

sanctioned trading posts. And you can come, I would say buy, but I guess it was trade swapping stuff. Swapping. The swapping post. Right. And it sort of worked out for a little while until the fur trade started to decline because they wanted so much fur. Right. These animal populations started to dwindle a bit. Right. So the Europeans still had all the stuff that the Native Americans wanted. The Native Americans were having a harder and harder time getting their hands on pelts to trade. Yes. What they found was that at the trading post, which by the way was the only place that they were legally allowed to trade. I think you have to say trade and post though. The trade and post. Yeah. They found that they could be extended lines of credit there. Yeah. And that was kind

of the beginning of the trouble. Right. So if you were a Native American leader who was trading at a trading post and you went into debt from the understanding, the customary understanding between Anglos and Native Americans, was that you were in debt on behalf of your whole tribe. It wasn't just you. Yeah. It wasn't just your family. Your whole tribe was. The people who didn't like you, people who would follow you into battle didn't matter. Everybody was in debt now because of you. So all of a sudden, the Native American leaders who had gotten into this credit trap would say, you know, how can I repay you? And they tried every way they could. Yeah. The first thing they didn't, they basically went to work, started growing crops, just did everything

they could to pay it back. What they found was that the government at the trading post said, we don't want any of that. We don't want any money. We don't want any pelts anymore. We want your land. That's how you repay this debt. That's the only way. Yeah. That was kind of a general thing I picked up on throughout this whole thing that those either was probably both a lack of understanding generally and a lack of caring about how these tribes functioned and worked before they got there. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, these tribes were huge groups of people over wide swaths of land and they weren't all like one huge nation with one central leader. Like it was very regional. Right. Many times. And like you said, when they went to make these trades,

the Indian chief might have thought, and by the way, I did look up like Indian Native American, American Indian. Right. And in terms of discussing history, they say it's kind of okay to use all three. Yeah. So I just wanted to see away there. That's a good one. Thanks. But like the Native American chief might come in and in his mind, he's thinking, I'm just sort of making this deal for our little regional section of the Cherokee. Right. But to the white settlers, they were like, I can't tell the difference. You're all one big tribe to me. Right. You all got feathers on. Yeah, exactly. That was sort of the attitude. Right. So when they went to debt and when they couldn't repay the debt, the tribe would be forced to cede land to the government to repay

that debt. So that is one way that massive amounts of land were ceded from Native Americans in the southeast and the east, ceded land to the federal government because the government, again, was in the business of collecting land from Native Americans and redistributing it to white settlers. Yeah. And some of them kind of smartly and naively at the same time said, you know what, they're coming for our land. So maybe we can give them some of this land in exchange to be able to keep some of it ourselves. Right. And so they tried this process at first. And like an accommodation, basically. Yeah. Like you let us keep some, you can have this. We got some swamp land we don't care about. We're not going to tell you that. Right. You can have the swamp land. You got to

protect this. And the settler said, sure, that sounds great. Well, the federal government would say that. But what the problem was is the white settlers who would encroach on that land were like, we didn't sign any treaty with you. And who's going to stop us? The federal government? No, you're not going to lift a finger. They may tell you one thing, but nobody's stopping me from coming on your land and hunting, growing crops, building a barn, killing your livestock, maybe killing you. They were squatters with basic. Yeah. But with impunity. Yeah. And they either didn't get the message or they didn't care or both. Yeah. It was probably both. So then what happens and throughout this whole process, it's very cyclical. It happened over and over again in

regions all over the original, well, basically everywhere east of the Mississippi River. So this would happen. These people would spot encroach, didn't care what deal they had made with the federal government. And so then there would be retaliation by the Native American tribes. Yeah. And they would, they would fight each other. They would go, you know, into battle, not huge wars yet. Right. You know, these skirmishes basically would take place. Skirmishes and massacres on both sides for sure. I mean, you got to, you have to say it, like it was very bloody and very brutal on both sides. Yeah. So when white blood was spilled, the federal government would arrive and say, probably shouldn't have done that. Yeah. Maybe there would be a battle

with the, with the tribe that was being subdued at the time. Maybe, maybe not. But either way, the treaty that the government hadn't been enforcing before now was officially out the door. A new treaty had to be established that would include ceding even more lands to the federal government, which would in turn be given to white settlers who would come in and would then further encroach on the Indian land and the cycle would start over again. All right. So let's take a break. That was sort of the, uh, the setup for enculturation. We're going to come back and talk about the other side of the coin, uh, separation proposed by one Thomas Jefferson right after this. Hey friends, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me

wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba, who got the idea to Airbnb, the backyard guest house over childhood home. Now the extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at air bnb.ca slash host. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cold classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co stars, friends and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, so you got George Washington saying, assimilate into our society. Maybe we can work this all out. It'll be great. There won't be any problems. Did you have Thomas Jefferson? George Washington was a used car salesman by the way. Then Thomas Jefferson comes along and said, you know what? Here's what we should do. It's pretty clear that what will become our United States, he didn't use those words, is like the western border is going to be the Mississippi River. Who needs anything west of the Mississippi? What's out there? So here we have this Louisiana purchase. We just bought 827,000 square miles. That's a lot of square miles. That's a lot of square. We should do one

on that by the way at some point. Okay. We did one on the Lewis and Clark expedition. They had a lot to do with the Lewis and Clark purchase. Yeah, that was one of my favorites too. So he said, you know, here's what we'll do. Why don't we just relocate you folks west of the Mississippi. That way we've got our little country over here. You're out there where we, you know, you won't be bothered by us anymore. Trust me. I'm Thomas Jefferson. Yeah. And it'll, it'll work out for everyone. And then the Plains Indians were going, oh, what about us? We're already out here. Yeah. And they went, what? Yeah. Who are you? We don't recognize you. And like you point out, there were some real problems. One of which was,

it wasn't theirs to resettle or to resettle other people. Right. Because what would become in the Americans mind, the Indian territory was already Indian territory. It was just different Indians. Yeah. But it also, I mean, it displays not like a lack of comprehension on the part of the federal government. It displays a lack of caring about what happened. It was like, there's already Indians out here. There's not white people out here. We're probably never going to want to go out here. So get off of this land and go out here. And how about this? We'll say that the war department will protect you. Yeah. And another big problem was these, these Eastern Native Americans were like, well, we don't want to go out there. We're used to the lush South and I don't know how to succeed

out there really. Yeah. Have you read our newspaper? We've been talking about this for years now. We don't want to move. What was it called? The Cherokee Phoenix, which is kind of confusing. It wasn't at the time because Phoenix didn't exist yet, but now Cherokee or Phoenix make up your mind. What town? I don't think they meant the town. I know because it didn't exist yet. Gotcha. I get the joke. And did Phoenix burn or something? Is that why it's called Phoenix? That I don't know. Someone will tell us from Phoenix and then say, why haven't you toured Phoenix yet? We'll come to Phoenix at some point, right? Probably. Or Tucson. That might be more parallel. Or Yuma. Didn't you used to do time in Yuma? Yeah, I did some hard time in Yuma. I don't

know if we could fill a small restaurant in Yuma. Okay. This is not a lot of people there. That's fine. Maybe you never know. We'll do an intimate storyteller's show. An evening with Josh and Charlie at my former restaurant, Juliana's patio cafe. Nice. That's some buzz marketing right there. Yeah, I assume they're still around. So I think ultimately we were talking about before I threw us off track was the plains tribes were like, we're here. Please don't send anyone out here. Yes. And the eastern tribes were like, we don't want to move. What are you guys not getting about this? And so the federal government said, oh, this is a real pickle. What are we going to do? Oh, we'll just ignore both. Well, yeah. And also they were, I don't know how aware they were of

this, but what was going on where these factions were being created. And within tribes, they were being split into people who wanted to kind of stay and defend their homeland and people that were like, oh, maybe we should just pack up and go and try and resettle somewhere else. Right. And this factionalism, it was kind of a recurring thing. It part of this big cycle and would end up in many ways being there undoing, I think. Yeah. And a lot of tribes basically split in two, like in 1817, a group of Cherokees said, you know what, forget it, we're just going to move to Indian territory. Yeah. And they did. They were called the old settlers. We'll move from Indian territory to Indian territory. Right. And why are you calling us Indians? Right, exactly. They ended up in

Arkansas and then Oklahoma. Yeah. And basically, the factionalism was already deep enough, but the separation then following that factionalism effectively split the Cherokee into two separate tribes, the Eastern and the Western. Yeah. They were no longer like, it wasn't like the Eastern was the satellite division or the Western was the satellite division of the whole tribe. They were like two different tribes as a result of that. And that happened with more than just the Cherokee as well. This whole idea of should we stay and fight or should we just say forget it and move, it was a big problem. It was a big discussion that had a tough solution because if you said we need to move, well, then you needed to negotiate a treaty so you could get as much land as possible

out west. Yeah. But if you wanted to stay, you needed as many people as possible to stay because there's strength and safety in numbers. Yeah. So the fact that it was split was a real problem for the tribes themselves. I wonder if the tribes had not split up. And in fact, if the tribes, all the different tribes had banded together. Well, they tried that. Well, I guess what I'm asking is what was the total population east of the Mississippi River of Native Americans compared to white people? I don't know, but I think it was significantly less. Okay. So they probably wouldn't have mattered. No, but if you want to get into alternate histories, if Native Americans that had an immunity to smallpox, there may not have been a United States. Right. Because

many more people. Yeah. Something like a hundred million or something like that as much as Europe, all of Europe. Yeah. So had small bands of European colonists come, even if they'd sent like armies and stuff, they would have had a much harder time. But the fact that the North American continent had been effectively decimated by smallpox meant that there were far fewer people and that their cultures had been hit in large part already by this breaking up of these epidemics. All right. So I gave the world or Hollywood Sharknado a TV show on the alternate history where smallpox never happened and Native Americans ended up enslaving the white man, make that into a show, kind of like a man in the high castle. Right. But, you know,

rewrite it for Native Americans coming out. That'd be pretty good. Yeah. The white sellers are like, well, okay, we get it. We've upset you. We're just going to leave and the Native Americans are like, you're not going anywhere. You see that boat? It's on fire. That's our boat. We need that to escape. All right. So for the people that said, you know, we're going to stay here. We're going to resist. One, there was a big thing that happened. Well, a couple of things that happened that kind of set the course of history in one direction that would never return. Yeah. Right here in Georgia, particularly in North Georgia, and particularly Delana, Georgia and other places, there was gold discovered. And whenever there's gold discovered, triggers a gold rush. Yeah. A

lot of people move there, which means you need, you know, sort of a supporting economy. You need guys named Cookie to come out and cook the beans. Sure. Right. See, I knew there would be humor in this. Everyone likes a cookie. So that coupled with the invention and widespread availability of the cotton gin from one Eli Whitney, it lowered the barrier to getting into cotton farming. And so you have these people moving south to get in the gold rush. Then you have people moving south for this land that was now super, super valuable. Right. Yeah, it went from like just being coveted to being like it's done, like playtime is over. Like if you thought we were being nice before, yeah, we're going to war with you guys now. Yeah. And violence really kind of ramped up at this

point because of the value of the land all of a sudden because of cotton and white settlers were basically like, we're taking this land. Yeah. They were provoking the Native Americans harassing them, just basically undertaking a terrorist campaign against the Native Americans on their land. Yeah. And then the federal government was being called the task for not doing more about the Indian problem. Yeah. So for a lot of the Native Americans east of the Mississippi, they basically saw this writing on the wall like this is never going to stop. Right. And we're going to have to go to war or we're going to have to leave. And so that factionalism started to lean a lot more toward people who were prepared to leave. Right. There was still plenty who were

prepared to stay as well. Yeah. It just made that wedge even deeper, this understanding that like whites were never going to let up. Yeah. Like we'd given them some land and asked to keep some of it. Right. And they say, sure. But then they don't let us keep that land. Right. So this is not going to end well for us. Yeah. I mean, plus a lot of us are dying. They're killing our livestock. Yeah. They're burning our farms and houses. It was just a pretty horrible situation. Yeah. I think early on in this piece you wrote, you called it possibly the darkest decade in American history. Yeah. Which is what, like 1830 to 1840? About, yeah. Yeah. All right. So the federal government does get involved. And their first go at this was saying in 1824, officially, like how about

we have this voluntary relocation thing. Yeah. And it's up to you. It's pretty nice out west. You know, they're, you know, in Indian territory. And again, they said, but we're in Indian territory. And they said, well, we don't know what you're talking about. It's pretty nice. So why don't you just pack your bags and get out there. And then along came a man who is fairly controversial through the lens of history. Still today. Yeah. Well, more than ever, probably today. Yeah. Name Andrew Jackson. Yeah. From South Carolina. Yeah. He was born in South Carolina. He made his name as a frontiersman lawyer. Yeah. You know. Which is, what does that even mean? I defend people for like squirrel related charges, I think. And he, he also was a wealthy planter

slave owner. But more than anything, he was elected president because he was the people's candidate. And he was the people's candidate because he was a war hero and very famous Indian fighter is what he was known as. Yeah. And weirdly, an Indian fighter, but also had, which was at the Choctaw that fought with him alongside him at the Battle of New Orleans. Yeah. So this, which he kind of forgot or didn't forget, but didn't care much about. Right. This is the factionalism also resulted in tribes splitting and actually going to civil war with one another. Yeah. And so some that were in favor of accommodating the whites or the federal government would actually fight alongside them against the other members of

their tribe. Yeah. And some of them did fight directly under Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans. So weird. Yeah. He was like, that was years ago. Right. Who cares? So he had a nickname, the sharp knife or the long knife, because one of the things that he advocated for was genocide, basically. Kill all the women and children once we're done and we've had our victory. And that'll really kind of take care of this area. Yeah. Which is, it's really surprising that I looked all over. I didn't find any specific like this incident or this incident really characterizes that mentality. Right. He seemed to advocate it rhetorically. Okay. And he was, he was a vicious commander. Yeah. Military commander as far as fighting Indians went,

but I didn't run across anything where he actually did just exterminate a whole village. Right. And he had plenty of opportunities too. So I guess he thought it was a good idea, but never really pulled the trigger or something like that. But I was really surprised because I'd always heard he was basically genocidal, but I never found any specific instance of him carrying out what amounted to genocide. He just advocated it. Well, they didn't have cell phone cameras. That's true. Who knows what would have happened. So you also bring up a good point, which is that this, this practice of massacre was happening on both sides when the American Indians would win a battle. Many times they would also have a massacre of women and

children burned down an entire fort, perhaps. What was it for the massacre at Fort Mems in Alabama or what would be Alabama in 1813 is one of the prime examples. Yeah. So the creeks became a very deeply divided tribe with accommodationists fighting with the federal government against the resistance groups, which basically came to be known as the Red Sticks. And the Red Sticks were basically an Indian army in the War of 1812. Prior to the War of 1812, some of the northern frontier tribes had kind of come down, led by Tecumseh, I think, had come down and basically rallied everybody they could and said, we need to like stop this white encroachment once and for all and go to war and all just come

together, forget our differences and come together and beat back the federal government and these white settlers. And when the War of 1812 broke out, these groups sided with the British and this gave the federal government license to basically declare war on the frontier tribes, including the Red Sticks. And at the Battle of Fort Mems, the Red Sticks surrounded Fort Mems and inside were a bunch of white settlers, some African-American slaves, some accommodationist creeks, and then some federal troops. And they set the fort on fire and killed almost everybody, including women and children. Yeah, but interestingly, they spared the lives of most of the slaves and took them hostage. So I like how you kind of brought in the how slaves factored into this whole thing

because I think a lot of that is sort of brushed aside. Pretty interesting stuff. Yeah, it is. And then you said, Chuck, that Jackson kind of forgot any alliance with Indians that fought with them. This is a great example of that. After this war with the creeks, there was a second war with the creeks shortly after. And after that, the creeks as a whole were forced to cede their land and 15,000 of them were forced to move out west after this battle, despite the fact that that included plenty of them who had fought alongside Jackson's federal troops. I mean, no allotment whatsoever. From what I understand to Jackson, you're an Indian. That was that. It didn't matter what you did. You're an Indian. You needed to go.

Yeah, and it's important to point out like you did here that there were massacres on both sides, and while you can never justify the killing of families and women and children in such a vicious way, the white people were the invading force here. That's kind of a pretty big factor here. It is. I mean, I think it is. Yeah. All right, well, let's take another break, and we're going to come back and talk about Florida. Hey, everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren and Nova Scotia, who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse and the

extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca slash host. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember

Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Florida. 18. Florida. 17. The Sunshine State. Boy, I used to love when I would go to Florida as a kid. I imagine they still do this. You would get free orange juice at the state line.

Did they still do that? Yeah. That's great. I just thought, oh my gosh, anything free. I still have that mentality. They have state prisoners lined up. They just pull over on their shoulder and they hit a cup of orange juice and you drive off. I used to love the official, I still do, I just don't take a ton of road trips, the official rest stations instead of just hitting the gas station. Sure. Go to like the official, what are they called? Rest areas? Yeah, rest area. Oh man. It's like a gas station without gas. Yeah. And I had no idea how many crimes were being committed. Sure. Like behind the outhouse. Yeah, there's, what was it? What was the movie where that, was it, there's something about Mary? Oh yeah, where Ben Stiller was. He went to

take a leak in the woods and he got caught up in somebody. Doing a raid or something. Yeah, some sting operation. All right, so it's 1817. Jackson says, you know what, Florida's kind of nice. I might like to take it for my own. Sure. I hear they have orange juice down there. Yeah, it's a state line. But there was a problem. It was under Spanish rule at the time and Florida was kind of a crazy place back then. It was a safe haven for militant Indians, runaway slaves, anyone who basically was an enemy of Americans. Yeah, the Seminole tribe was like, you hate America too? Come join us. Right. And there were, yeah, there were maroons is what they were called, but runaway slaves who'd found safety living amongst the Seminoles. Yeah, and Spain would arm them.

Right, because they would harass the United States and the federal army and the plantations along the border. So the fact that there were runaway slaves down there with the Seminoles gave Jackson just enough of a reason to invade. Not a legal reason. No. He basically waged an illegal guerrilla war in Florida, Spanish Florida, against the Seminole. And then whenever he came across the Spanish Fort, he'd just take that out and then he'd claim that land as American. Yeah, and this was under the order, the secret order of President James Monroe, meaning Jackson went to Monroe and said, hey, we should stage a guerrilla war down there in Florida so we can grab some land. And Monroe said, are you crazy? And he said, crazy like a fox. And Monroe basically said,

yeah, go do your thing. And it's illegal, but who cares? Right. Just don't implicate me if you get caught. Congress knew it was going on. There are people calling for him to be recalled to... Jackson, that is right. Right. Yeah, no one. You still run across historical documents. Not first primary sources or anything, but analysis of this era. And Monroe does not get mentioned. You only find them like here or there. Interesting. So he kept his cover pretty well. But Jackson was more than happy to take the fall. And when he came back finally after the first Seminole war, he came back a hero. He carved out large portions of Florida for the United States. He'd fought the Seminole. He'd lost. Yeah. But he still had gained enough ground

against the Spanish, at least, that he was considered a hero. Yeah. Boy, this... I mean, this was the first Seminole war we'll get to the others, but they were they were a tenacious group. Oh, yeah. You don't mess with the Seminole. I think that was their motto. I think so, too. So Jackson was a hero such that he was elected president in 1828. And how do you call his followers? You say Beckwoods Frontiersman. Yeah, that's a good way to say it. But his inauguration party was so wild that these visitors that came to see the inauguration trashed the White House and they said, move this party outside. You folks are out of hand. Right. And so depending on what who you read,

either it was great that Jackson opened the White House up to the American people for his inauguration party and the Washington elite got the vapors and fainted, or it was just a bunch of brutes just trashing the White House who didn't know how to conduct themselves because they were all drunk on whiskey and wearing raccoons on their heads, some of which were still alive. Really? So Jackson, needless to say, was a divisive figure in American history so much so that that his party was split during his candidacy in 1828. Yeah, think about that. Yeah. The candidate for the Democrats was so divisive that the Democrats party split in two during the election year. Imagine such a thing. That's crazy. It is. And this also made me want to do a show on the history

of political parties in the United States and how they have changed. Which sides a lot. Yeah, two major times. That's a lot. Which is why when you, I don't know, if you do too much social media stuff. So at all. Yeah. And you see people harping about like, well, the Democrats were in favor of this and the Republicans were in favor of this. It's like, we'll do a little research. These are names that can't be applied as, you know, for 300 years as one single solitary set of values. No, they switched sides a couple of times. Yeah. Switched hats. So what were the two, the Democrats and the Whigs? Yeah, the Whigs. So, one of my favorites. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Afghan Whigs. No, no, no, the Whigs.

Inspiral Carpets. No. Primal Scream. Primal Scream is good. But the Whigs. Athens Own. Atlanta's Own. Oh, hey, Whigs. With an H? Yeah. We, the old man band covers a few of their songs. Okay. Probably too many. Okay. I'd just be like, oh, I guess this is an original of El Chippos if I heard it. Well, there are no originals. Well, then I'd have to correct myself. That's right. So, Jackson had this belief, if you haven't picked up on it by now, that the right of discovery was more important than the right of occupancy. Right. And by discovery meaning, oh, hey, look, there's some Indian land we would like. Get off. Yes. That was basically the view that Jackson held. The thing was, it wasn't just Jackson. Again,

he was a very popular, considered the people's president who came into power against the entrenched elite who were considered corrupt. And he had a lot of public support behind him. Yeah. Like we said earlier, we can use this land better than you can, and you're getting in the way of our ultimate prosperity. Right. So, he gave a State of the Union address in 1830 that really sums that up, his views on that. He said, what good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive republic, studied with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or

industry execute, occupied by more than 12 million happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and religion. And every American Indian raised their hand and said, me, and he went, well, not you. Right. I mean, what white person would prefer a country? I should have qualified that, I see now. But like you said, that was sort of the popular opinion at the time as we came over here, fought for our independence, and so, let's really grow this country. Right. We've got technology. That's right. So, let's put it to use with the land. It wasn't everyone, though. There was one Henry Clay. Yeah. Shout out to our old friends, Joe and Andy Ciara, of the great band, the Henry Clay people, which is no more.

They did the theme for the Stuff You Should Know TV show. That's right. So, Henry Clay was a candidate for the National Democratic Party. They were the Whigs. Right. Just before they were called the Whigs. That's right. They said, what's a better name for a band? Actually, National Democratic Party, pretty good band name. It's okay. Not bad. There are quite a few good band names in here, but I didn't say any of them, because it would just be a bunch of like white hipster dudes kind of ripping off some cool Native American name. Right. So, I'm not going to mention them. Ladies and gentlemen, Indian Territory. There probably is a band called that. Sure. So, Henry Clay was running for the National

Democratic Party of the Whigs. And in 1832, he said, you know, a big part of my platform is to respect the Native American claim to their own land. And to oppose Jackson's Indian removal policies. Yeah. And everyone, well, not everyone, he lost pretty big. Bad. Yeah. But he basically dedicated his campaign to opposing Jackson. Yeah. So, go Henry Clay. Yeah. There's a guy, a Senator from New Jersey named Theodore Freyling Eusen. He probably wasn't a German immigrant at all, was he? He gave a six hour speech in opposition to Indian removal. He had a pretty good quote. You want to take that one? Yeah. No argument can shake the political maxim that where the Indian always has been, he enjoys the absolute right to still be in the free exercise of his own modes of

thought, government, and conduct. Not bad. And the populace was like, no, screw that. We want to farm cotton and get gold. Have you ever been gold mining up there in Delanaga? No. But you know that's where that, there's gold in them, our hills, that's where it comes from, is the mayor of Delanaga. Oh, really? I should say gold panning. They don't let you do gold mining in there. No. But you can go up there and gold pan. They cut your arms off if you tried to gold mine up there. They take it seriously. Another big critic of Indian removal, and we should totally do a podcast. We have. David Crockett. We did? Yeah. No. Yes, we did. Why was David Crockett king of the wild frontier? Wow. Remember that was an old one then, huh? He said, you may go to hell and I will go to

Texas. Yeah, I do remember that. We talked about, yeah, just in the last couple years. No. I swear. All right, I'm going to look that up. I will right now. You keep talking. All right, so David Crockett, who I completely forgot that we podcasted on, was against this Indian removal, and he actually, like you said, he threatened to leave the US for Texas if Martin. Yeah, he was the first one to do that. If Martin Van Buren was elected and he was basically Jackson's successor that was going to kind of keep up this notion that Indian removal was the best path forward. And Van Buren was elected, so Crockett said, all right, I'm going to Texas and he did so. Yeah, he did. He lost his Senate bid and he said, you may go to hell and I will go to Texas. Which was Tennessee, correct? His

Senate bid? Yeah. We did the episode on August 2013. Wow. Yeah. It's getting bad. Well, that was almost like 10 years ago. Yeah, big shout out to Jill Hurley, by the way, our official stat keeper. Yeah, thanks, Jill. She has really done a good job with a spreadsheet that keeps track of how many episodes we've done. She's basically the only person on the planet who knows for sure how many original episodes we've released. Yeah, we have her locked away at the Seed Vault in Norway. It is Norway, right? But Jill just wrote us and she said that, I believe, is it this November? November 2nd. It will be 1,000 episodes. Yeah. Crazy. That is crazy. They won't let us leave. And all that is to say, please forgive me if I forget that we did Davey Crockett just three

years ago. Yeah. If he was a three months ago, I would have just got up and left. This August, it'll be four years ago. So you're fine. Yeah, because I don't remember anything after one year. So there were also a lot of missionaries who had worked with especially the Five Civilized Tribes. Yeah, very interesting story there. They saw it to oppose Indian removal as well. They're like, we're trying to make these people Christians. Right. You're messing up our bag. And the federal government is like, well, that's a really great point, but we don't care. Yeah. And at first we should say, we keep saying the federal government. The federal government was trying to figure out the best way forward. What they finally settled on was Jefferson's plan for

separation, but that that removal, that separation should be through a voluntary peaceful removal. Right. The white settlers and then the states themselves were harassing the Indians on the ground. Yeah. Right. Whereas the federal government was like, okay, let's let's just try this or let's do that or something like that. That wasn't the reality of what was really going on. No. And a good example of that is Georgia passed a law that said that if you are white, you have to apply for a license to live with Native Americans, missionaries. Yeah. And then if you were a missionary, they'd be like approval denied. Right. Or application denied. Yes. Either way. Right. So things were kind of going along like this for a little while. And then finally,

in 1830, the official stance was made into law with the Indian Removal Act. Right. And this is what really set into motion what would become known as the Trail of Tears. Right. And all of that harassment, all of the illegal activity, all the encroachment and mistreatment by white settlers and the states was now enshrined in federal law. It was now official policy under the Jackson administration. Yeah. And that policy said broadly that the president can come in, they can negotiate these treaties with tribes, these land deals, and we could grant land in Indian territory west of the Mississippi and relocate you. We have legal claim to do so. Right. Now, some of, if any of your people want to stay, they can stay. They will become

citizens of the state they live in. Yeah. Not full citizens, but kind of citizens will call them. Yeah. You can get a little bit of land too. Yep. They'll be given a parcel of land, but it's not going to be their ancestral land. We'll decide what land it turns out to be. Right. But they're basically just going to be acclimated and assimilated. And then what's more, if you choose to move, the War Department will enforce the treaties that we have with you. They'll keep people off of your land native, white, or otherwise. Yeah. And they'll also help you relocate, to help you get settled out there on the plains, and make sure you're all taken care of. Right. So as we've seen, the creeks and the Seminoles have both said, we're not leaving and we're going to fight you. Right?

Yes. The Cherokee tried a different tack. They tried the courts, actually. It was very smart, actually. Yeah. Because what they did was they went back and used the federal government's own declaration against them. Right. Because they said, hey, you know, a while back, in order to make these deals, you had to official, you made us sovereign people. Right. We made our land sovereign land. The federal government recognized them as a sovereign nation in order to carry out these treaties where they ceded land to the federal government. Yeah. So you remember when you did that? Well, you said it yourself. We're sovereign people. Yeah. And we just drummed up this Constitution. We're a sovereign nation with sovereign soil within the borders of the US. And the Supreme

Court actually affirmed that and said, you know what? Sorry, guys. The Cherokees, at least, are a sovereign nation and you can't remove them. Yeah. They said, you really didn't think this through. And in 1831, they ruled against Georgia in favor of that sovereignty. And you point out that's all well and fine, but that requires a president that says, oh, well, the Supreme Court said so. So I guess that's the deal. Yeah. Andrew Jackson was not that way. There's actually a quote he was talking about Justice John Marshall, who wrote the majority opinion siding with the Cherokees. He said, Mr. Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it. So-called judge. Right. So the idea that you have to have an executive branch willing to uphold or respect the

decisions of the judicial branch in order for those judgments to be carried out, if you don't have that and you don't have a Congress that will check an executive that's not doing that or a public that will, then things like the Indian removal process are allowed to happen. And on paper, Indian Removal Act was supposed to be beneficial to Native Americans. It was supposed to be something that could be carried out peacefully. In actuality, under the administration of Andrew Jackson, it was a humanitarian travesty. That's right. So that's the end of part one. I have no listener mail in our tradition of two-parters. And in the tradition of those serious different stroke two-parters is where we got it, if you'll remember. That's right. So yeah, we'll hold off

on listener mail, but you can send us out traditionally. Oh yeah, okay. Well, stay tuned for part two coming out on Thursday. And in the meantime, if you want to get in touch with us, tweet to us at syskpodcast. Join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. It's all good again there, by the way. Sorry about the hacking. And I know technically it's not hacking. Send us an email to, wow, that is really somebody said that? Oh yeah. Send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, hey dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor,

stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band or each week to guide you through

life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.