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In 1803, the Lewis and Clark expedition set off down the Ohio River, beginning a three-year journey to the West.
In 1808, American Indian Pocahontas was depicted in the play The Indian Princess or La Belle Sauvage. That same year, the Osage, a Sioux tribe, signed a treaty ceding their lands in what is now Missouri and Arkansas.
Between 1809-1811, Shawnee Indian leader Tecumseh led a group of Indians against Andrew Jackson’s U.S. forces who were intent on forcing Indian tribes to give up their land. In the end, thousands of Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks and Seminoles were forced to move west of the Mississippi River.
In the War of 1812 between the U.S. and Britain, a faction of the Creek Indians sided with the British and fought against Andrew Jackson and his soldiers in the Battle of New Orleans. Some slaves, who had been promised manumission by both the British and the U.S. if they agreed to fight, were freed. Others who fought with the British managed to flee to the Caribbean.
After the War of 1812, a faction of the Creek Indians known as the Red Sticks (because of the color of their war clubs) attacked Fort Mims in the Mississippi Territory on August 30, 1813, killing between 300 and 400 people. Andrew Jackson avenged the attack in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend on March 27, 1814, when the Red Sticks were trapped and slaughtered, ending the Creek War. The Creek lost 20 million acres of land, half of all the land they had claimed. Fugitive slaves and Seminole Indians joined together to fight Andrew Jackson's forces in the First Seminole War between 1817 and 1819. The U.S eventually annexed east Florida, which had served as a refuge for runaways.
The Santa Fe Trail opened in 1821.
In 1828, the Cherokee Phoenix was published, the first American newspaper in a Native language.
The Indian Removal Act passed by Congress in 1830 under Andrew Jackson's urging was designed to appease white settlers who wanted the 25 million acres of land in the southeast owned by Indians. The removal involved all of the five "civilized tribes" as they were called—Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw and some Seminoles—who had previously owned land and were working their farms much like white men.
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Resisting Slavery
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