[...] Indian Removal, as it has been politely called, cleared the land for white occupancy between the Appalachians and the Mississippi, cleared it for cotton in the South and grain in teh North, for expansion, immigration, canals, railroads, new cities, and the building of a huge continental empire clear across to the Pacific Ocean. The cost in human life cannot be accurately measured, in suffering not even roughly measured. Most of the history books given to children pass quickly over it.

Statistics tell the story. We find these in Michael Rogin's Fathers and Children: In 1790, there were 3.9 million Americans, and most of them lived within 100 kilometers of the Atlantic Ocean. By 1830, there were 13 million Americans, and by 1840, 4.5 million had crossed the Appalachian Mountains into the Mississippi Valley—that huge expanse of land criss-crossed by rivers flowing into the Mississippi from east and West. In 1820, 120,000 Indians lived east of the Mississippi. By 1844, fewer than 30,000 were left. Most of them had been forced to migrate westward. [...]

In the Revolutionary War, almost every important Indian nation fought on the side of the British. The British signed for peace and went home; the Indians were already home, and so they continued fighting the Americans on the frontier, in a set of desperate holding operations. Washington's war-enfeebled militia could not drive them back. [...]

[...]

When Jefferson doubled the size of the nation by purchasing the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803—thus extending the western frontier from the Appalchians across the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains—he thought the Indians could move there. He proposed to Congress that Indians should be encouraged to settle down on smaller tracts and do farming; also, they should be encouraged to trade with whites, to incur debts, and to pay off these debts with tracts of land.

... Two measures are deemed expedient. First to encourage them to abandon hunting. ... Secondly, To Multiply trading houses among them ... leading them thus to agriculture, to manufactures, and civilization. ...

Jefferson's talk of "agriculture ... manufactures ... civilization" is crucial. Indian removal was necessary for the opening of the American lands to agriculture, to commerce, to markets, to money, to the development of the modern capitalist economy. Land was indispensable for all this, and after the Revolution, huge sections of land belonging to the Chickasaw Indians were put on sale, although the Chickasaws were among the few Indian tribes who had fought on the side of the Revolution, and a treaty had been signed with them guaranteeing their land. John Donelson, a state surveyor, ended up with 20,000 acres of land near what is now Chattanooga. His son-in-law made twenty-two trips out of Nashville in 1795 for land deals. This son-in-law was Andrew Jackson.