Summary: Indian Removal movement
The
Indian Removal movement began when two cultures met. In time,
the native Indian people became the immigrant’s society’s (“America”)
external Intimate Enemy.
Among the newly arrived settlers, for
centuries, a complex of cultural and theological notions and values
shifted back
and forth as the native people were accommodated, then negotiated
with, and finally judged to be not able to be assimilated. Religious institutions
were source of the main theories about and developing values
towards the first people.
As the bedrock sacred document whose
writing gave
expression to America as a
Civil Religion, the
Declaration
of Independence is also the seminal document that
initiated the
Indian Removal program.
In its phrasing that “All men are created equal,” its reach
for universality—stating that this equality extends to all—clearly
expresses the visionary and practical omission of the native people
(among others).
As with the demise of the penitentiary
movement, in that same year of 1830, evidence that “all” did not mean
native people once and for all clearly, baldly and boldly surfaced
in President Andrew Jackson’s “Indian Removal” policy
and ensuing laws.
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