The law, as described by Congress, provided "for an exchange of lands with the Indians residing in any of the states or territories, and for their removal east of the river Mississippi".

[a][2][3] During the presidency of Jackson (1829–1837) and his successor Martin Van Buren (1837–1841), more than 60,000 Native Americans[4] from at least 18 tribes[5] were forced to move west of the Mississippi River where they were allocated new lands.

With a few exceptions, the United States east of the Mississippi and south of the Great Lakes was emptied of its Native American population.

The Indian Removal Act was supported by President Jackson and the Democratic Party,[7] southern and white settlers, and several state governments, especially that of Georgia.

Indigenous tribes and the Whig Party opposed the bill, as did other groups within white American society (e.g., some Christian missionaries and clergy).

Most famously, the Cherokee (excluding the Treaty Party) challenged their relocation, but were unsuccessful in the courts; they were forcibly removed by the United States government in a march to the west that later became known as the Trail of Tears.

Since the 21st century, scholars have cited the act and subsequent removals as an early example of state-sanctioned ethnic cleansing or genocide or settler colonialism; some view it as all three.

However, the belief in European cultural and racial superiority was generally widespread among high ranking colonial officials and clergymen in this period.

Colonial and frontier encroachers inflicted a practice of cultural assimilation, meaning that tribes such as the Cherokee were forced to adopt aspects of white civilization.

[20] The Indian Removal Act was put in place to annex Native land and then transfer that ownership to Southern states, especially Georgia.

[23][24][non-primary source needed] The Removal Act was strongly supported in the South, especially in Georgia, which was the largest state in 1802 and was involved in a jurisdictional dispute with the Cherokee.

"[29] Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this country and philanthropy has long been busily employed in devising means to avert it, but its progress never has for a moment been arrested, and one by one have many powerful tribes disappeared from the earth...

In the monuments and fortresses of an unknown people, spread over the extensive regions of the West, we behold the memorials of a once powerful race, which was exterminated or has disappeared to make room for the existing savage tribes… Philanthropy could not wish to see this continent restored to the condition in which it was found by our forefathers.

What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and religion?

[30][31][32]According to historian H. W. Brands, Jackson sincerely believed that his population transfer was a "wise and humane policy" that would save the Native Americans from "utter annihilation".

Historian Garry Wills has speculated that without the additional slave state votes in the House of Representatives due to the Three-Fifths Compromise, "slavery would have been excluded from Missouri ... Jackson's Indian removal policy would have failed ... the Wilmot Proviso would have banned slavery in territories won from Mexico ... the Kansas-Nebraska bill would have failed.

[42] In the 21st century, scholars have cited the act and subsequent removals as an early example of state sanctioned ethnic cleansing or genocide or settler colonialism or as all three Forms of these.