Home > Westward Expansion > Indian Removal Act of 1830

Legislation passed by the United States Congress in 1830

The War of 1812 marked the end of organized Indian resistance to white settlement of the area known as the Old Northwest (the area of land surrounding the Great Lakes and between the Ohio River and the Mississippi River; it included the present-day states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota). White pioneers poured into the trans-Appalachian West, settling in the area that now includes the states of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, and other Midwestern states. These settlers discovered, however, that many Indians hoped to remain on the lands that had been occupied by the Indians' ancestors. Though open warfare had ceased, whites and Indians continued to clash over who would occupy the fertile lands that the United States had claimed as the spoils of war. By 1830 many former territories had become states,...