"In the War of 1812, Andrew Jackson had vanquished those Creek Indians who sided with the British. Jackson was not generous in victory. Not only did he strip the tribe of much of its territory, he didn't spare those Creeks who had fought at his side for the United States.

Elected president in 1828, Jackson decreed that the Creeks' neighbors, the Cherokees, must also surrender their ancestral lands in Georgia and move west across the Mississippi River.

From George Washington's time, the United States had signed treaties promising the Cherokees friendship and federal protection. To violate those agreements required painting the Cherokees as savages unfit to live near civilized men. Jackson was not swayed by evidence that the Cherokees were something quite different. They had developed a written language, published their own newspaper and adopted a constitution based on that of the United States.

In fact, Europeans often found them more impressive than their white neighbors, and religious leaders, especially Quakers, and Northern abolitionists, rose to the Cherokees' defense. Even those allies, however, tended to patronize the Indians as simple children. From Concord, Massachusetts, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote an angry open letter denouncing the forced removal, but he, too, described the Cherokees as "savage."

Georgia's politicians, coveting the rich Cherokee cotton land, were more brutal: They claimed that the tribe consisted of "barbarians," and if the government in Washington did not force the Indians out of Georgia, they would take up arms and do the job themselves."

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A.J. Langguth: Why U.S. apologized to the Cherokees (CNN 11/15)