The Shakopee tribe today is related to their ancestors in the reading of Zinn. They were victims of unjust people in the United States. It happened in the early part of American history.
Our government officials are now repaying the Shakopee tribe for the sufferings of their ancestors. Our government officials have verified and traced the Shakopee Tribe ancestry to one or more of the many Indian Tribes. They used to live east of the Mississippi and they were forced to leave their place of residence. New White immigrants from Europe could own and occupy the lands of the Shakopee Tribe. The Indian Tribes who were victimized by the government’s policy of “Indian Removal” were the Shawnee, the Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaw, Chickasaw and the Seminoles in Florida. The Shakopee tribe is the true descendants of the Indian Tribes. It is right that they should be compensated and repaid. Our government is obligated to pay back to the American Indians, for the policy mistakes of our forefathers.
As a nation, we owe an apology to all the American Indians for their sufferings as a people in our past history. As a group of people, they have suffered more than we can ever imagine. “In the long record of man's inhumanity exile has wrung moans of anguish from many different peoples. Upon no people could it ever have fallen with a more shattering impact than upon the eastern Indians. The Indian was peculiarly susceptible to every sensory attribute of every natural feature of his surroundings. He lived in the open. He knew every marsh, glade, hill top, rock, spring, creek, as only the hunter can know them.” (Zinn pp.# 134)
During the Revolutionary War, it was understandable that almost every Indian nation supported and sided with the British. When the British decided to sign for peace and went home, the Indians continued to fight the Americans on the frontier. General Washington’s very weak militia could not drive them back. But after the Indian forces were demolished and destroyed one after the other, George Washington displayed nobility and goodness in victory. He followed a policy of conciliation to the Indians. His Secretary of War, Henry Knox said that "the Indians being the prior occupants, possess the right of the soil. His Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, said in 1791 that where Indians lived within state boundaries they-should not be interfered with, and that the government should remove white settlers who tried to encroach on them.” (Zinn pp. #125) During the presidency of George Washington, the Indians were not molested and free from harm. That was in the year of 1791.
By the time Jefferson became President in the 1800, the white settlers continued to move westward. The pressure on the government to resettle and relocate the Indians increased. The Indian removal was necessary for the opening of the vast American lands to agriculture, commerce, markets, and the development of the modern capitalist economy.
There was a man by the name of Andrew Jackson. He was a land speculator, merchant, slave trader, and the most aggressive enemy of the Indians in early American history. He became a hero of the War of 1812. It was not just a war against England for survival. It was a war for the expansion of the new nation into Florida, Canada, and Indian territory. This is usually not described in American textbooks. Again in 1814 Jackson became a national hero, when he fought the battle of Horseshoe Bend against a thousand Creeds. He also killed eight hundred of them with a little bit of casualties and accidents on his side. He successfully convinced the Cherokees to fight with him. He promised governmental friendship, if they joined him in the war against the Creeks. There were also some Creeks who fought with Jackson, with the hope that they could keep their land after the war.
When the war ended, Jackson and his friends began buying up the seized and confiscated Creed lands. He got himself appointed as treaty commissioner. He dictated a treaty which took away half the land of the Creek nation. It included the land of the Creeks who had fought with Jackson.
After Jackson got elected as President in 1828, the “Indian Removal” bill became the leading action of the Jackson administration. Under Jackson and Martin Van Buren, 70,000 Indians east of the Mississippi were forced westward. Martin Van Buren was the man he chose to succeed him. The Indians tried everything possible to keep their lands. They fought long and hard, but there was no use or advantage. Their warriors were no match to government forces.
When Chief Black Hawk was defeated and captured in 1832, he made a surrender speech. “I fought hard. But your guns were well aimed. The bullets flew like birds in the air, and whizzed by our ears like the wind through the trees in the winter. My warriors fell around me. . . . The sun rose dim on us in the morning, and at night it sunk in a dark cloud, and looked like a ball of fire. That was the last sun that shone on Black Hawk. . . . He is now a prisoner to the white men. . . .” (Zinn pp.# 129)
Their ancestors suffered a lot. Even though there were previous wrong with their ancestors, I disagree with the American policy of financially compensating groups based on previous wrong. Giving $84,000 to each adult member of the Shakopee Tribe each month, removes from them the incentive and motivation to work. It is bad for them psychologically and it promotes indolence and laziness. If I had their money, I would start caring less about working hard. That would make me worse, because I would start to realise that I would start to be more lazy. If they get the compensated money, they should still be really active and hardworking. In the future, this policy will produce a new generation of very rich Indians that are inactive, unproductive, and useless to the American society.