Indian Removal was a nineteenth century policy of the government of the United States that sought to relocate American Indian (or "Native American") tribes living east of the Mississippi River to lands west of the river.Americans' hunger for land stemming from Andrew Jackson’s talk of “agriculture, manufacture, and civilization” was the reasoning for the removal of Native Americans, though not all Americans supported the policy as many poor white frontiersmen were neighbors and often friends to the Native Americans. Principally, it was the result of Americans who envisioned a cultivated and organized nation of prospering cities and productive communities which fueled the forces of removal.The growth of populations, cities, transportation systems, and commerce in the decades following the American Revolution created demand for agricultural development. President Jackson and his followers, recognizing the Indians were in their way, set out to civilly and gently move them out of the way. This resulted in numerous treaties in which lands were purchased from Native Americans. Eventually, the U.S. government began encouraging Native American tribes to sell their land by offering them land in the West, outside the boundaries of the then-existing U.S. states, where the tribes could resettle.This brand of "final solution" was accelerated with the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which provided funds for President Andrew Jackson to conduct land-exchange ("removal") treaties. An estimated 100,000 American Indians eventually relocated in the West as a result of this policy, most of them emigrating during the 1830s, settling in what was known as the, "Indian territory" or the present state of Oklahoma. Those native Americans who chose to produce and prosper were, of course, free to purchase as much of the land as they wished.However, the Removal Act didn’t directly force Native Americans from their land. Many Native Americans didn’t have the food or means of transportation to make a journey west of the Mississippi, so the Removal Act was a way to enable Native Americans to move west. According to the federal laws that were put in place to oversee the expedition, the government was to provide food and transportation for the Native Americans, and if they stayed, then they would no longer be protected or given funds.To most Native Americans, the problems with leaving their land were more than just lack of resources. Native Americans’ land was their heritage and their history. The Native Americans’ way of life was already greatly disrupted by the white society, with its formal government, ideas of private property ownership, and their notions that a man's mind was the source of his power and his productivity its expression. What little the Native Americans could retain of their past, and the very meaning of their lives was now being taken away..The Jackson administration put great pressure on tribal leaders to sign removal treaties. This pressure, plus the added shame of seeing themselves reduced to obstacles for men of great achievement, created bitter divisions within American Indian nations, as different tribal leaders advocated different responses to the question of removal. Sometimes, U.S. government officials ignored tribal leaders who resisted signing removal treaties and dealt with those who favored removal. The Treaty of New Echota, for example, was signed by a faction of prominent Cherokee leaders, but not by the elected tribal leadership. The terms of the treaty were enforced by President Martin Van Buren, which resulted in the deaths of an estimated 4,000 Cherokees (mostly from disease) on the Trail of Tears.Regrettably, the mass exodus of Native Americans were unable to provide themselves with proper provisions of food and transportation, and were reduced to limping off the land which they once proudly occupied. The Choctaw tribe also suffered greatly from disease during removal, and were unable to keep themselves clean and fed enough to prevent the decimation of their numbers due to these illnesses. The Choctaws were very against removal, but their fifty delegates were easily bribed with money and land to sign the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, which ceded their land east of the Mississippi to the United States. The army that led the thirteen thousand Choctaws on their journey was dis-organized, and because of their ineptitude, but through no fault of the Native Americans, their food quickly ran out and their children began to starve. Many died of pneumonia in the winter, and of cholera in the summer. The seven thousand Choctaws left behind saw the conditions of the trek and refused to go, choosing to accept the subjugation that had become their nature, over the certain death of vacating, while left to their own devices. .The suffering which resulted from Indian Removal was aggravated by poor administration on the part of the American Government, inadequate measures taken to provide for the emigrants (because contracts for transport and provisions were often awarded to the lowest bidder, costs and services were cut), and failure to protect Native American legal rights before and after emigration. Most American Indians reluctantly but peacefully complied with the terms of the removal treaties, often with bitter resignation at being forced to acknowledge the low condition into which their failure to prosper had led them.Some groups, however, went to war to resist the implementation of removal treaties. This resulted in two short wars (the Black Hawk War of 1832 and the Second Creek War of 1836), as well as the long and costly Second Seminole War (1835–1842). Other Native Americans decided to make something of themselves, and enjoyed long and prosperous lives on the very land that their less prosperous brothers had abandoned.