Andrew Jackson, I am given to understand, was a patriot and a traitor. He was one of the greatest of generals, and wholly ignorant of the art of war. A writer brilliant, elegant, eloquent, without being able to compose a correct sentence, or spell words of four syllables. The first of statesmen, he never devised, he never framed a measure. He was the most candid of men, and was capable of the profoundest dissimulation. A most law-defying, law-obeying citizen. A stickler for discipline, he never hesitated to disobey his superior. A democratic autocrat. An urbane savage. An atrocious saint.
James Parton from Life of Andrew Jackson
Donald Trump has had such volatile and controversial first hundred days (plus a couple more days) in office that each day sort of runs into the next like the life of a victim of a horrible addiction — from one calamity and/or catastrophe into yet another.
Oftentimes, these major social faux-pas and politically incorrect trainwrecks come and go without even much fanfare, with the more salient disasters creating quite a buzz here, on Daily Kos, and on other progressive media venues, like MSNBC. It’s amazing how quickly some of these events come and go. Maybe it’s because these problems, many of which are actual scandals, are so commonplace and are progressing with such rapidity that it’s impossible to keep up with them all. . . .They seem to be completely forgotten after a week or so.
But I couldn’t help but hold on to Trump’s admiration of “Old Hickory”, the 7th President of the United States, Andrew Jackson. It figures, though, since Andrew Jackson came about as close to being a tyrant of all 45 of our highest leaders of the land, Trump included in the roster. President Andrew Jackson was responsible for the Indian Removal Act of 1830, in which he used strong-arm tactics for Congress to pass, which forced between 15,000 and 16,000 Cherokee Indians from their homelands in the Deep South westward, to “Indian Territory” which turned out to be Oklahoma. Along the way, some 3,000 to 4,000 Cherokee died from disease, malnutrition and exposure to the elements.
This forced relocation was not limited to Cherokee Indians, however, since all of the Five Civilized Tribes (today many prefer the name “Five Tribes”): the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek (Muscogee), and Seminole, in addition to the Cherokee, were forced to walk that deadly trail, with state and local militiamen keeping them in line and moving forward. At the beginning of the 1830s, nearly 125,000 Native Americans lived on millions of acres of land in Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida. It had been their land since long before Christopher Columbus “sailed the ocean blue in 1492”. Thanks to “Old Hickory” and his predecessor, Martin Van Buren, very few Five Tribes American Indians remained in their traditional homelands of the Deep South a decade after Jackson’s Presidency. Jackson and other politicians of the day wanted to move the Natives out so white settlers who wanted to grow cotton and other crops on the Indians’ land could do so, thus began the deadly walk of thousands of miles to a specially designated “Indian territory” across the Mississippi River, “The Trail of Tears”.
The ridiculous nature of Trump’s comments praising Andrew Jackson in an interview during early May are topped off by the fact that Trump said if Jackson was President during the time of the Civil War, there would have never been a Civil War. This is a stupid historical statement since Jackson died in 1845 and he Civil War began in 1861. According to a May 3 article in Patheos, Trump’s own words were: “People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why?” an inarticulate and bumbling Trump squawked in an interview with The Washington Examiner that also aired on Sirius XM radio. “People don’t ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?”
Trump’s comments about the war came after he lauded Jackson, regarded by historians as a populist president, and Trump’s suggestion that if Jackson had been President “a little later, you wouldn’t have had the Civil War. He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War. He said, ‘There’s no reason for this,'” Trump continued in Patheos.
So hypothetically speaking, Donald Trump: How would Jackson know of this historical event — The Civil War — 16 years after his death? No political leader has this sort of ability to look nearly two decades into the future, after all. Did Andrew Jackon have a crystal ball? Did a fortune teller inform him of the horrendous war yet to come? Even the worst historical fiction writers make sure the characters in their books lived within the same timeframe as other characters. Even the worst hack would never include an event as important as The Civil War being honchoed by a President who died nearly two decades before. America deserves better than this — this buffoon is making us all look like idiots. A U.S. President making bold assumptions and claims to national media outlets should at least be aware of the basic major events of American History.
Thompson “Geebon” Gouge, Public Relations Director of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, said, “I don’t think to us, with our history of Andrew Jackson, we’re big fans of Trump making Andrew Jackson such a political hero. And of course, we’re not a big fan of Andrew Jackson. The fact that Donald Trump has made a big deal over Andrew Jackson, well, let’s just say we’re not a big fan of President Trump hanging this portrait in the Oval Office. What we really need is better health care with us and the fight for the betterment of our people.”
“The way we feel is Trump needs to do a little more research on American history. Our people were forcefully removed from our homelands and there are some very hard feelings among our tribal citizens in general about Trump making a hero out of Andrew Jackson. And of course, our tribal leaders are very much against all of this,” Gouge said.
Joelle Clark, leader of the Florida United Urban Warrior Society chapter and a mixed-blood Native American with Oglala Lakota roots on her mother’s side of the family and with Cherokee blood on her father’s side, said of Trump’s action placing Andrew Jackson’s portrait into the Oval Office: “I think this is just ridiculous. With all the things Trump has done so far, anyone who has studied history knows this is absolutely preposterous. It figures that he’d move Andrew Jackson’s portrait into the Oval Office. Their politics, in many ways, are very similar, like making money on industry at any cost. Both Trump and Jackson view Native Americans as expendable and don’t care about us at all.”
“We are responsible for our children and our grandchildren,” Clark told me in a telephone interview on Tuesday, May 9. “It is our land and we are the protectors of this land. Our people have known nothing but suffering for more than 500 years. But we remain free. We are not owned,” she said.
Clark said that although she considers herself to be an Oglala Lakota Native, she still remains in contact with friends and family who are Creek, Cherokee, and Seminole Indians. The U.U.W.S. leader told this writer, “None of our tribes anywhere have had an easy time. I don’t think Jackson would have prevented the Civil War. Trump’s comments on this are so dumb. Jackson was a slave owner himself and a lot of Jackson’s actions were responsible for the Civil War. Donald Trump has never studied American History. He has no interest or knowledge of American History, and we’re talking about an individual who comes up with the most ignorant and stupid comments any American can make. And I’m not just talking about Presidents now, I’m talking about anyone. Some people are fine with these ludicrous comments Trump always makes, but I don’t know how they can even support someone like him.”
What’s the pits, even as bad as the Trail of Tears, though, is the fact that Andrew Jackson was a slave owner. He reportedly owned, at one time, over 100 slaves and slavery accounted for how Jackson created his great wealth at his self-sustaining plantation, The Hermitage, which capitalized on a bountiful cash-crop of cotton at this plantation in Nashville, Tenn., which today offers a museum and guided tours. As a military leader, Jackson also invaded Spanish Florida, chasing fugitive slaves who had escaped with the intent of returning them to their “owners, and sparked the First Seminole War.”
Donald Trump, who idolizes Russian President Vladimir Putin, and who has said some very flattering things about other mass-murdering leaders like Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and North Korea Dictator Kim Jong-un, seems to love despotic tyrants. So why would him placing a portrait of “Old Hickory” in the Oval Office not be out of character for him? Yes, he is a racist of the first water. Ditto for being a white supremist. Donald Trump apparently hates Native Americans and has made this very small group of Americans a target. During the same time Trump moved the portrait of “Old Hickory” into the Oval Office, Trump was snapping off a number of insults to Elizabeth Warren, Democratic U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, calling her "Pocahontas" at an NRA conference in late-April, complaining that Elizabeth Warren may be in the run on the Democratic ticket for President.
Yes, Sen. Warren was told by her parents and grandparents that she was of Cherokee and Delaware Native American heritage. Her brothers have confirmed this story, meaning that Warren is of the honest belief that she is part Native American. And if Warren’s own family have passed down their family history in this wonderful tapestry, why should we not believe this? After all, there are many people in the USA who are mixed-blood Natives who don’t even know they are — race mixing, after all, was the greatest threat to genocide of the Red Race, and nowhere was it more prevalent than with the Five Tribes. And by Warren’s family history placing her smack dab in the middle of the Five Tribes, well, go figure. . . .
Sen. Warren looks like a Caucasian woman and to Donald Trump, this apparently is all it takes to write her off as “a poser” or “a wannabe Indian” but Natives know, more than any other race, that many who look Caucasian or Black have red, Red, blood flowing through their veins, too. Maybe not much of it as true tribal Natives, but to a few Indians who are egalitarian and open-minded, any amount of Indian blood flowing through someone’s bloodstream makes them NDN, too.
Of course, a large number of Natives hate this fact. Race mixing is living proof of hegemony and genocide, after all, and it’s long been a joke about the white person who claims to be Native American with 1/256th percent Indian heritage in their family tree. These sort of knuckleheaded comments make the last real Indians either roar with laughter or scream with anger and angst.
Anyhow, whether or not Elizabeth Warren is an actual Indian is not really that important. I’ve not taken a poll on the subject, but I would say it’s a safe guess that most American Indians find her and her own political views more popular than the leader of the Great Orange Race. And underneath it all, Trump came out of all of this — along with his admiration of The Great Indian Killer, a big loser. Of course, Trump has in the past bashed Sen. Warren for fabricating her Native American heritage, and even called her a “racist” for doing so. . . .But does Trump not know that one of the things the Bureau of Indian Affairs strongly considers when deciding whether a person qualifies as a member of a particular Indian tribe their family oral histories and other family records? He should be informed that Sen. Warren’s own family tales, throughout the generations, can be seen as valid proof that Elizabeth Warren has valid proof of her family’s own Native American ancestry? Even though many families have similar histories, though, it does not normally lead to making the high blood quantum of most nations, tribes and bands of American Indians.
Look who is calling the kettle black, using that horrid “racist” word — some very white man who is forcing the deportation of other Indians whose families have been on Turtle Island for eons now, out of this country. and even building a wall between the USA, Mexico, and the rest of Latin America! The lunacy and phoniness of this venomous serpent has no boundaries. He’s getting more arrogant and obnoxious with each passing day. And the whole thing about building that stupid wall and deporting those from Mexico and other countries south of our border is the most glaring proof that yes, Donald Trump hates anyone of the Great Red Race; and yes, Donald Trump is a undeniable, consummate racist and white supremist who is persecuting Indians. African-Americans who have had slaves in their family histories should also be upset that Trump placed President #7’s portrait in the Oval Office. It’s a simple thing, a minor thing, sure — but everything a President does, including the simple placement of a picture of a “chosen” political leader in the Big Office of the Land, in such prominent and salient display, sends messages and signals out worldwide.
Nowhere is Andrew Jackson’s nefarious nature more evident as in the advertisements he took out in the newspapers and publications of his day to hunt down and capture runaway slaves that had escaped his plantation in Tennessee. “`Stop the Runaway,’ Andrew Jackson urged in an ad placed in the Tennessee Gazette in October 1804. The politician, military man, and plantation magnate gave this detailed description: A “Mulatto Man Slave, about thirty years old, six feet and an inch high, stout made and active, talks sensible, stoops in his walk, and has a remarkable large foot, broad across the root of the toes — will pass for a free man.…,” according to a May 1 feature that ran in The Washington Post, titled “Hunting down runaway slaves: The cruel ads of Andrew Jackson and ‘the master class’” by writer DaNeen L. Brown.
Brown goes on to write, “Jackson, who would become the country’s seventh commander in chief in 1829, promised anyone who captured this `Mulatto Man Slave’ a reward of $50, plus `reasonable’ expenses paid. Jackson added a line that some historians find particularly cruel. It offered `ten dollars extra, for every hundred lashes any person will give him, to the amount of three hundred.’
The ad was signed, “ANDREW JACKSON, Near Nashville, State of Tennessee.”
So with this uninformed fool, this bully and blowhard and his “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” theme resounding still, is this the way Donald Trump plans to make America great, with more blatant and outrageous acts of blatant hatred and racism? To some, placing Andrew Jackson’s portrait in the Oval Office could be considered a hate crime, after all. . . .
High Plains Indians in the Oglala Lakota tribe in South Dakota are looking at Trump’s placing Andrew Jackson’s portrait in the Oval Office with a quizzical eye, if not complete disfavor. James Giago Davies, an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe and a South Dakota News Association Award Winning Columnist and sportswriter, who is managing editor of Native Sun News, in Rapid City, S.D., said, “He was a scrappy military man. He’s misbelieved in history as being a populist. He had no respect for the separation of powers of the government. I think he was a solid military commander but as a President, he was not a good President. He was corrupt. He had no fear of Indians because he had no reason to be afraid of us — he played the system and gained the system the way he did things. It was against the law what he did to the Five Tribes. Today you could not get away with it because of the media.”
“Jackson was the first President who showed that power, no matter what system you set up, is ruled by those in power. I don't think there is any system in place that can keep a President in control who wants to stay in complete control,” Giago Davies explained. “Jackson had absolute power in the Army, if he wanted to shoot you, he’d do it with impunity. The thing that disappoints me the most, once these Natives forced from their homelands were there in Oklahoma Territory, they didn’t coalesce together as a cohesive whole. The government took this Indian Territory back piece by piece by piece, over time.”
“Imagine what would Indian Country would be like if those great Oklahoma Territory reservations still existed today. All that’s left of all those reservations, mostly, are just the boundaries. I try to stress over and over again, any idea of getting your land back once the state or federal government has jurisdiction within your boundaries, you never get it back. Never. The state can do whatever they want to do to those tribes in Oklahoma. It’s very sad: There is no reservation in Oklahoma, really, except on paper,” the managing editor of Native Sun News told me in a telephone interview.
“People don't realize that these treaties are based on whatever happened before, not what happens later. That’s the way the land was taken away was little breaches of these treaties. After the treaties are already in place, the ruling elite chips away at a treaty a little at a time until there is not much of a treaty left.”
“Oh, they don’t really do much with the casinos owned and managed by the tribes in Oklahoma, but there are hardly sovereign Indian nations there. The reservations in Oklahoma are all broken up and mostly, white people live on them, not Five Tribes Indians. It’s what (Native American Attorney) Mario Gonzales calls ‘a system of legalized theft’. The federal government has no honor,” he said.
“We need to create a political climate that forces the government to yield to us and not the other way around,” Giago Davies said. “Even with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Roosevelt determined on his own with progressives-of-conscience that the (Bureau of Indian Affair’s) BIA’s 1934 Reorganization Act that set within boundaries of reservations, Indian tribes should run the reservation along legal guidelines that they set on their own, like it is their own town or city. The idea that really smart Indians got together to change the way things were going is false. It was white progressives of conscience that changed things. No Indians have the power to force change on white people. All we can do is network with white people of conscience. The idea that Aim (American Indian Movement) can come in here and burn down some buildings is just BS. All the positive changes that have come about can be directly attributed to the same sort of thinking that was behind the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. Not only do some Indians give no credit to whites, like white people of conscience, but they don't realize that without these white people of conscious, mainly progressive, we really need these people on our side if anything positive will come about at all.”
“A change is the way a program is run or a law is written or how a treaty is understood and implemented by the government. All these activists groups working in Indian Land have not really done anything but help little changes within the reservations and tribes - they haven’t created anything that is really big. Those that fight with other Indians and all the time, are also fighting with white people, those that have the feeling like a boxer, ‘I’’ll just get in a ring and slug this thing out’ well, it just doesn’t work. The Natives that get into a room and conscientiously talk things over with powerful political leaders are those that can bring about change,” he said.
“Whatever we think of him, as bad as Andrew Jackson was, it cannot be said that we established as a society that he was another Hitler. I’d like to see if we can do what we can to get Trump out of the Oval Office, though, too. It’s not just a question of getting Andrew Jackson’s portrait out of the Oval Office. I think Donald Trump needs to get out of there, too,” Giago Davies said.
Canupa Gluha Mani, founder and leader of the Strong Heart Warrior Society in South Dakota, said, “Andrew Jackson, the twenty dollar bill man, was the type who believed nothing more than exterminating policies. This is why he took all the Creeks and Cherokees and the other Five Tribes Natives into Indian Territory in Oklahoma. He was heavily introduced by Quaker values. Let’s face it, Andrew Jackson wanted to remove Indians from the south and create businesses there. The Indians who were removed from there through eliminating federal Indian policies caused many of our people to die along the Trail of Tears.”
“As far as Donald Trump goes, he wants to have bully power. You can see this with his bombing of Syria. Trump is a tyrant. The federal Indian policy — he’s trying to eliminate all these reservations. I was on a Blackfeet Nation reservation near Browning, Mont., not long ago, and some of their leaders sold out their people’s interests for corporate interests, not tribal interests. Of course Donald Trump will put a real tyrant in the Oval Office and think it’s good. Andrew Jackson was a slave owner. Get real,” Gluha Mani said.
“Trump has the same interests as Andrew Jackson, only he’s not interested in oats and agriculture like Jackson, his interests are in modern industries, like oil. As soon as he took office, he okayed the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Keystone XL continuation. We, the Lakota people, are not oil people. We are landowners. We take care of the Earth and do not believe in harvesting oil. Even the name of the pipeline, including ‘Dakota’ in the name of that pipeline, is a misleading way to sway things. Neither the Lakota or the Nakota have paid any attention to the capitalistic control of stripping the land of oil. I got a call from people down in iowa just today, asking me if I can help fight this pipeline. They’ve already got people selling water. See, Trump wants to have both oil and water, but he wants to have all water coming with a price tag attached to it — just like all this bottled water. Our people, especially elders, should be getting this free,” Gluha Mani said.