The Dark Parts of America’s History: Trail of Tears Research Paper Outline

In a world that is commonly perceived as black and white, society tends to forget that not everything is split between good and evil, but that the world’s history is written in gray. Each and every country out of the 195 found in the world today, is guilty of the elimination of history. This includes the United States of America, a country that quickly rose to global power in the 200 years of its existence, but has the tendency to ignore why it became so powerful. From slavery to imperialism, the United States is no fool when it comes to horrible acts. The country’s ruthless past was riddled with violence, concordant to the violence found within today’s society. America’s violent streak lead to the genocide of Native Americans, but there is a clear-cut avoidance of the topic, and its time that America acknowledges the effacing of its brutal past. This topic we will research in the 'The Dark Parts of America’s History: Trail of Tears Research Paper Outline'.

While heavily debated among historians and anthropologists alike, what the United States did to the Native Americans was not only ethnic cleansing but also genocide. Right away with their arrival, settlers from Europe saw the Native Americans as inferior to them. They saw these sovereign nations as savage and thought that the extermination of the indigenous peoples was essential to forming colonies there. The expulsion of the Native Americans was effective immediately, with European settlers killing any indigenous people that got in their way of the land that they sought. This was only the beginning though as later during Andrew Jackson's presidency, the Indian Removal Act was put into place. The very act that lead to the atrocity that was the Trail of Tears, where thousands of Cherokee people died due to hunger, the cold, or disease, but like with many other tribes if the Cherokee refused to give up their land they would have been murdered. While it is not called such, the forced relocation of the Native Americans was ethnic cleansing. However, talking about ethnic cleansing is difficult because “... ethnic cleansing is remembered and written about by the societies that perpetrated it.” There are always two parts of a story and we only hear from the survivors but we can hear from the victims because, “... we all have the capacity to invite the dead to speak, to engage them in the rewording of time, and to arbitrate the pasts they lived ..” and from there we can choose what side is remembered and what side is forgotten. Writing history is difficult and there is no denying that. Society teaches about the survivors and forgets the victims, but it is the job of historians to speak for everyone. History books are altered when one side is overlooked and it is important to try and understand both sides of the story because one story is dangerous. Ethnic cleansing is often overlooked because survivors do not write it as what it is. In society, ethnic cleansing became as controversial as a subject as genocide because if someone calls either genocide or ethnic cleansing by what they are that means someone would have to intervene. That is why Americans choose to forget, but it is society's job to remember the ethnic cleansing that they caused and the genocide that is ignored. Let’s look at the Jewish Holocaust for example. In the 12 years Hitler was in power the Jewish population was almost completely eradicated with about 35 percent remaining. This would make the rate of attrition for the Jewish 65 percent. Comparing this to the rate of attrition for the indigenous people of America, there was about a 27 percent difference between the two. The Native Americans being the ones with the higher rate of attrition. This would mean that two-thirds of the world's Jewish population survived the holocaust while only two percent of Native Americans survived their Genocide. To debate a near extinction of a group of people as false is unethical because, “The murder of 96 percent of any given population does not occur ‘inadvertently,’ especially when members of that group are viewed by their assassins as belonging to a separate (and inferior) national, ethnic, racial and religious order”. The population of a group of people does not deplete 96 percent without reason. What happened to the Native Americans is clear-cut genocide and it is not just defined by events like Wounded Knee or Sand Creek. The exposure to diseases like smallpox that indigenous tribes faced was just as deadly as if someone was shooting them. What America did proves how violent the country could be. The country cannot try to rid itself of its dark past anymore. The United States of America cannot get away with the traumatization and genocide of an entire group of people. The ethnic cleansing and massacres that happened will forever be there. The United States of America’s past is stained by the spilled blood of the Native Americans.

In the United States of America hides from its past and refuses to accept that they have done any harm, but it is time it talks about what it has done wrong, including the genocide of the Native Americans. There’s censorship that surrounds controversial topics and it helps no one. The censoring of the American Genocide needs to stop because all it does is cause harm. For example, in some textbooks, the expulsion of the Native Americans was said to be willing when it was not. The Indian Removal Act that caused the Trail of Tears was not wanted nor accepted by the indigenous people of America. To the Trail to be called willing is one thing, but also calling it removal is another. By calling the Trail removal it is censoring how dehumanizing it was to Native Americans because, “To call their expulsion a removal is to sanitize it, to banalize it, to avoid confronting it, for what the citizens … undertook was nothing less than the complete dismemberment, the ethnic cleansing, of the society and the place they inhabited”. This censorship extends to not calling what happened to Native Americans genocide but rather an act of depopulation because it was hard to accept a genocide that was “...caused by microbes, not militia...”. It was easier for America to accept the American Genocide as depopulation than it was to accept the intentional eradication of a group of people. The tiptoeing around difficult topics and the extensive censoring is done might not be direct erasure but it leads to it. This refusal to talk about the dark parts of America’s history is trying to make it seem like the country is just all white, but this ends up inadvertently harming America because it piles on more of that black into the country’s history. The actual gray that should be there is disappearing in the public's eyes which will cause more erasure. Once the United States of America talks and comes to terms with its dark past the gray that should be there will return, but that will not be anytime soon. America was built on violence and it will take a while before the country forgets its habit of violence. The violence found in this country will forever be ingrained in its history, it is what defines the very country because

The United States was born in a revolution, torn asunder by the Civil War, made dominant through global wars, and reborn through a tumultuous civil rights era. Violence has played a role in some of the most progressive events, such as the emancipation of slaves, as well as the most troubling, such as the decimation of indigenous populations. 

When looking back at history, the very event that birthed the nation’s freedom was the Revolutionary War. The first war country would ever fight was a time of violence that actually helped America, but that might be one of the very few times. Violence has damaged this country and America has done very little to fix it. The freedom of the slaves led to Jim Crow laws and then the civil rights era because half of America could not accept a black person as human. Imperialism harmed other countries and the United States' involvement in foreign wars and affairs tended to do more harm than good. Then there is the debate over the genocide of the Native Americans. The difference between how Germany and America handled the genocides they caused is strong. Germany accepted what they did and has been trying to make it better. Things like the swastika, nazism, the confederate flag, and any other symbols of hate have been banned and made illegal in the country. Meanwhile, Americans feel the need to rewrite our history books because the country cannot accept the fact that the world is not black and white. America was built on violence and all that needs to be done right now is for society as a whole to acknowledge the horrific actions of its country.

The United States of America is a leading global superpower with a history painted by violence. From genocide to slavery, to imperialism, there is no escaping the country’s ruthless past. The ethnic cleansing of the Native Americans was traumatizing in itself, but then Americans nearly eradicated an entire group of people. Yet, Americans still refuse to call it genocide because if they do not admit to it then they do not have to do anything to fix what they had done. This then leads to the censorship that surrounds the topic and the erasure of what truly happened. The country’s history books are altered to appease the fact that they believe they did not do wrong when places like Germany do everything they can to fix what they did. One can choose to forget or chose to remember, but history can only be fully erased when there is one side of the story remaining. Two sides of the story persist to this day. There are indigenous tribes that survived and they will not be silenced anymore. The world is not written in black and white. The world is not balanced or split between the yin and the yang. The truth is the world is full of different shades of gray, and nothing any country does is going to change that.