Free Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party by Dinesh D'Souza Page B

much more pliant.
    Remarkably Jackson after his victory demanded land concessions not only from the Creeks but also from the Indian tribes allied with him. They had little choice but to submit. Altogether, his “prize” amounted to twenty-two million acres of saleable real estate in southern Georgia and central Alabama. Those sales, Jackson remarked to one of his cronies, John Coffee, would someday yield him a whole lot of votes.
    While Jackson had few qualms about using force, he preferred, like his successor Democrats today, to rely on intimidation and deceit if he could thereby get the results he wanted. One might expect that the Choctaw would receive decent treatment from Jackson, given that they fought alongside him in the War of 1812. The Cherokee, headed by John Ross, felt sure Jackson would be their advocate, since Ross and others were part of Jackson’s expeditionary campaign against the British and the Creek. Soon these tribes realized that Jackson was just as intent on stealing from them as he was from tribes that he fought against.
    A PRETENDED FRIEND AND ALLY
    Jackson cheated his native Indian allies by pretending to be their friend. He would often write them and refer to himself as their Father or their Great Father. Whenever he proposed a measure that harmed them, he usually insisted, doing his best to imitate Indian language, “Beyond the great river Mississippi, where a part of your nation has gone, your father has provided a country large enough for all of you, and advises you to remove to it.” Or, on another occasion: “It is for your nation’s good, and your father requests you to hear his counsel.” 25
    Biographer Jon Meacham accepts this at face value; he speculates that Jackson saw himself in this paternal way because he was orphanedat fifteen and never knew his own father. 26 But if Jackson was acting as a parent to the Indians, he was certainly an abusive parent.
    Contrary to what he said, Jackson wasn’t offering any counsel to the Indians; he was offering them a fait accompli . The Indians could either surrender or be crushed. Inskeep wryly notes that “Jackson defined his parental duty to natives in a way that matched his desire to clear land for white settlement.” 27
    John Ross, the Cherokee leader, was a shrewd politician who understood treaties and legal documents. What he could not fathom was the bottomless cunning and trickery of the man he was dealing with. Jackson read the Indian treaties in much the same way that Democrats and progressives today read the U.S. Constitution. They care little about what it says; they interpret it to mean what they want it to mean. Jackson didn’t have any judicial authority but he usually didn’t need it. He had troops to enforce his view of the documents and that was sufficient.
    Ross did score one big, though temporary, victory over Jackson. In 1814, in the aftermath of Horseshoe Bend, Jackson imposed a treaty on the Indians—both his Creek enemies and his Chickasaw allies—which effectively turned the south bank of the Tennessee River over to the federal government. In this case Jackson intended the land to benefit someone near and dear to him, namely, himself.
    Jackson had a whole system worked out for how to benefit personally from federal land acquisitions from the Indians. First, he appointed surveyors at government expense to mark the boundaries of the property, thus establishing its title and availability for sale. Jackson’s favorite surveyor was his own business associate John Coffee.
    Sometimes, though, he used other agents. In a typical correspondence, one agent, in a letter marked “Private,” informed Jackson, “My Dear General, We have succeeded in acquiring an accurate knowledge of all the sections of good lands to be sold.” He drew Jackson’s attention to four sections of land that “would form a most desirable establishment for your old age.” 28
    Knowing that the presence of surveyors might upset the Indians who