Justice Enforcement Quotes
This quotation is interesting in that the Madison Administration was being very careful to not alienate the Indians in Federal land purchases. Although there are many who believe the whites never should have enticed Indians to sell land at all, there were many cases where the land sales were fraudulent and gross—The Cherokee Indians in Georgia. At this time, the Federal government would negotiate an amount for some land and pay the Indian tribe the agreed upon sum. Then another tribe might claim that the land was really theirs, they had also been hunting or living there. In some cases there were Indian wars and one tribe had banished another. Madison’s policy which he reported in this speech was to negotiate with BOTH tribes separately and pay them each the agreed upon amount—he tells the public that it is worth paying double to avoid bad feelings among the Indians. Jefferson and Madison in particular had relatively liberal Indian policies. It was President Jackson who had the worst Indian policy and produced a large proportion of immoral actions, atrocities and subsequent bad feeling.
