"The genocidal removal of Native Americans from their ancestral homelands is one of the most shameful episodes in American history. Over and over, A.J. Langguth reports in his unfocused but nonetheless scarifying account, U.S. presidents proclaimed that it would be terribly wrong to force entire tribes to move simply because white settlers wanted their territory — but added that it would be nice if the Indians would voluntarily relocate west of the Mississippi. Once Andrew Jackson became president in 1829, pretense about resettlement being voluntary quickly faded. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 didn't directly authorize seizing land, but the Southern states hungrily eyeing autonomous Indian nations on their borders took it as license to do just that. Georgia's Cherokee Code annexed almost all Cherokee lands and declared that any Indian who resisted Jackson's removal policy would be subject to arrest.

The Cherokees were one of the "Five Civilized Tribes," so-called because they tried to coexist with white society and adopted some of its practices. Their leaders pursued their cause within the U.S. legal system, winning a Supreme Court decision in 1832 that struck down Georgia's Cherokee Code. As the subtitle of Langguth's book notes, conflict between the federal and state governments over Indian policy involved opposing principles whose collision ultimately led to the Civil War. It's grimly ironic that Jackson, so opposed to Southern states' assertion of the right to nullify federal laws that he threatened to hang South Carolina's John C. Calhoun for treason, colluded with their defiance of the Supreme Court in the case of the Cherokees. He was willing to let the states have their way when it suited his purposes.

Despairingly aware that the government had no intention of enforcing court decisions in their favor, some Cherokee leaders concluded it was wisest to accept removal as inevitable and cut the best deal they could. In 1835, a faction signed the Treaty of New Echota, which promised $5 million to the tribe in recompense for their Southern lands, new territory west of the Mississippi and subsidies to make the move. The majority of the tribe, Langguth makes clear, rejected the treaty and resisted to the end. Forcibly removed from Georgia by the Army in 1838, the Cherokees "saw their houses stripped bare and set on fire," writes Langguth."

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Book review: 'Driven West' (The Los Angeles Times 12/14)