Empty the Land · Episode 2 of 12 · 24 min
The Highland Clearances and the Trail of Tears: Removal by Law
Between roughly 1810 and 1840, two admired legal systems emptied two countrysides in the name of progress. In Scotland, landlords cleared Gaelic-speaking tenants from the Sutherland straths for sheep. In the United States, the Indian Removal Act of 1830 moved some 60,000 people of the Five Tribes west, and the Cherokee removal killed on the order of four thousand. Neither was illegal, and that is the point.
Who's who
- Patrick SellarSutherland estate factor tried and acquitted of culpable homicide in 1816
- James LochEstate commissioner who wrote the era's defense of removal-as-progress
- Elizabeth Gordon, Countess of SutherlandHeiress behind the Sutherland estate's clearance scheme
- Donald MacleodStrathnaver stonemason whose Gloomy Memories recorded the clearances
- Andrew Jackson+7 more episodesPresident who made Indian removal his signature policy
- John Ross+2 more episodesPrincipal Chief of the Cherokee Nation who fought removal
- John Marshall+7 more episodesChief Justice whose Worcester v. Georgia opinion sided with the Cherokee
- Winfield Scott+4 more episodesGeneral who commanded the 1838 Cherokee roundup
Where it happens
- Strathnaver, Sutherland, ScotlandStraths cleared of tenants, including the 1814 Badinloskin evictions
- Sutherland, ScotlandEstate that moved thousands to coastal crofts
- Georgia, United States+1 more episodeState that extended its laws over the Cherokee Nation
- New Echota, Georgia+2 more episodesSite of the 1835 removal treaty
Timeline
- June 1814Evictions in Strathnaver burn homes over tenants
- April 1816Sellar acquitted at Inverness
- May 1830Indian Removal Act signed
- March 1832Worcester v. Georgia sides with the Cherokee; Georgia ignores it
- December 1835Treaty of New Echota signed by an unauthorized minority
- 1838-1839Cherokee removal marches to present-day Oklahoma
Still debated
No reliable aggregate exists for Highland clearance totals. Cherokee deaths are put between 2,000 and 8,000, a dispute about method rather than about whether the marches killed.
← PreviousThe Empire That Invented Mass DeportationNext →Circassians, Armenians, and Deportation as a Weapon
Connected episodes in other series
The Fraudulent Treaty Behind the Trail of TearsAs Long as the Grass Grows · Episode 6Also features Andrew Jackson, John Marshall
The Courts of the Conqueror: How the Marshall Trilogy Legalized the Taking of Native LandThe Least Dangerous Branch? · Episode 13Also features Andrew Jackson, John Marshall
The Supremacy Clause: Why Every Nullification Theory Has Lost in Court for 200 YearsHomemade Sovereignty · Episode 7Also features Andrew Jackson, John Marshall
The Training Ground: The Officers Who Would Break the UnionTake the Land, Not the People · Episode 2Also features Winfield Scott