President Andrew Jackson’s Native American policy favored their removal to the west. The idea for Indian removal was not new—President Thomas Jefferson proposed an exchange of Indian lands east of the Mississippi for land in western territory—but Jackson was the first President to act on it. He pushed the Indian Removal Act through Congress in 1830, giving the President power to negotiate removal treaties with tribes living east of the Mississippi.

Initially, emigration was voluntary, but many tribes resisted leaving their homelands. The United States ultimately used the military to relocate many Native Americans living east of the Mississippi to Indian Territory in Oklahoma.