and brought to you today by your television provider. up next, university of richmond professor and president emeritus, edward ayers discussed how the expansion of slavery and westward migration displaced native americans throughout the antebellum period. this talk is part of john marshall, the supreme court and the trail of tears. an all-day conference co-hosted by the virginia museum of history and culture, and preservation virginia. if you want more information about the trail of tears, there is a national trail of tears association, it's a partnership with the national parks service. and local communities that are telling this story. so google trail of -- national trail of tears association. and it will get you to the website. is that -- >> yes. >> got that right, okay. so -- well, thank you for your rapt attention this morning, and i think you're in for even more

surprises this afternoon. our first speaker is ed ayers. and i feel like he's a gentleman that needs no introduction to the richmond community. but i'll still introduce him. he's been named national professor of the year, he's received the national humanities medal from president obama at the white house, served as president of the organization of american historians, and won the bancroft prize for distinguished writing in american history. he's served as the founding chair of the board of the american civil war museum, ed hosts the future of america's past, a television series that visits sites of memory, and meets the people who keep those memories alive. he is the executive director of the new american history and of course we all know him from -- when we were driving around in our cars as one of the american

history guys, an online project design that has promoted the student in all of us to divide into history, and to see it in new and unexpected ways. he is a university professor, and president emeritus at the university of richmond. please welcome ed ayers. >> hello, everybody. so i see myself as a kind of hinge for the day. we've had these wonderful talks by my former student lindsey robertson. i wanted to be sure to claim that since he did a good job. and so we're going to go back to the late 18th century and we're going to come up to today in my talk and we're also going to try to cover -- to try to integrate native history, african-american history, and white southern history in a way that is not

usually done. we usually separate our histories out by ethnicity rather than weaving them together. we'll see how this works. it's all an experiment. i've not given this talk before. makes me want to put my glasses on so i can see the words i've written. this is the idea. we're going to cover all of this land. so the one thing that we have in common from -- for millennia is this landscape. these are the different soils of the south. and here's the thing is that the south expanded with a speed and size few could have imagined in 1790 when lindsey and -- started our stories. three migrations created the south over the next 70 years. tens of thousands of indigenous peoples driven from ancestral lands, millions of white farmers filling an enormous expanse larger than continental europe and millions of enslaved people

moved to raw new plantations. the pass of migration as we'll see began for many sources and flowed in many directions at the same time and if we can trace those paths maybe we'll be able to see how these stories wove together. so what we'll see is that slavery defined much of what's happening in this story. slavery concentrated on the richest land, and yet spread everywhere in the south. most white southerners did not own enslaved people, yet slavery went everywhere that white settlers went. slavery benefitted non-slave holders little, and yet the migration of non-slave holders allowed the slave south to expand as fast as the north. this is what we have to try to figure out. is how does the displacement and the survival of native americans fit into the story. so in1790 after centuries of continual conflict and change indigenous peoples maintained a

presence in every part of the southeast of north america from the atlantic to the gulf to the plains, some had been reduced to small and isolated groups, some had bound themselves with other native peoples and refugees from slavery to form new alliances, neighboring towns often spoke different languages, incorporating words from one another, from europeans and from people born in africa. they regularly communicated, traded, cooperated with one another, often across great distances on well defined and heavily traveled routes. that's the purple arrows, native people are waiting for the white people to show up. they have their own history that's living and breathing and moving, and that's going on, all this is still happening as the american revolution is being fought. you've got to keep everything in movement all along. and some of these people, enslaved one another, they found ways to live amid loss and gain and threat from a growing and

relentless population of spanish and english and french and then americans. and with the pressures from the white settlers, the tensions within and among the native peoples grew more urgent, while some indigenous men and women embraced ideas of private property and some became christians, others defiantly embraced older ways, more traditional ways of life. so mobility defined the lives of these folks. and increasingly they defined themselves however in terms of sovereignty, in terms of territory and boundaries. so those are ideas that are created in tandem with the people who are moving under their lands, so the cherokees, the choctaws, chick saws, the seminoles are the main people we'll focus on today.

now, what we'll see is that the first settlement of the south began in kentucky and here too -- let me tell you how to read these. they're new kinds of maps. i can't move away from the microphone. i will gesture over there, your eyes are travel. areas with various shades of blue is where people are decreasing. areas of varying shades of brown is where people are increasing. the brighter the blue, the more people are leaving. the brighter the brown, the more people are going. and you'll see that we have these broken down in by different racial groups. so this is white population change, the first decade of the american nation, between american census and what you see is that poor old virginia, you'll see virginia is blue from the beginning to end here, people are fleeing virginia, and most of the white people are going to the north. but here in the first decade they go down the shenandoah

valley into east tennessee, hang a hard right up the road, to central kentucky. so this is the first frontier of the south. at the same time this is the first decade of the cottons of expansion, moving into the up country of south carolina and you will recognize from the earlier talks we've had that this is land as occupied by the cherokee, you can see but all the lands that have a diagonal lands on them are lands still in native possession in 1790. so this is the black population change at the same time. we'll toggle back and forth. you'll see white people are not moving to the same places that they are taking enslaved people. enslaved people here are moving into the pe-- of virginia and georgia and south carolina, at the same time that they are moving into enslaved people to the bluegrass region of kentucky. in the next decade what you'll see is that how rapidly this is growing. this is where andrew jackson

would be moving into, as a part of this bright line, bright pattern because he moves from western north carolina into central tennessee, central tennessee, like bluegrass of kentucky, is rapidly growing. now look at georgia. you were -- lindsey was telling us about georgia. what you're seeing there is that white people are moving up to the very boundary of cherokee land. and they are pushing into it as hard as they can. but you'll also see in this first decade they're moving to the mississippi river. to louisiana. and so we sometimes think of this, especially those of us from virginia as westward migration but migration is moving in multiple directions at once. this is black population change at the same time. so what you'll see is that black people are being -- as to white people. the trade of enslaved people is

relent less and it is very efficient. in natch es, mississippi, a french town, beginning to grow and this is the beginning of the sugar trade in louisiana. we'll see later this has enormous consequences but you'll also see up country, south carolina and this helps explain, too, some of the pressure on the cherokee, because they are living where the cotton kingdom is expanding. this is 1810, 1820, the black population change, you can see already that no sooner do white people take black people into areas, then they start moving them. and you can also see now, look at southern alabama, so we know this is occupied by native peoples, but already white people are taking black people into that area. so here's the thing to understand about all of this, is that even while the laws that lindsey is telling us about are being framed, white people are not waiting. they're pushing.

they're infiltrating lands that are owned by native peoples. and they are taking slavery with them wherever they go. # in 1820 we're seeing the decade that embraces the war of 1812, when andrew jackson first surges into prominence, of course, by freeing new orleans, but by taking millions and millions of acres of land from indigenous people as a result of that war. so some of the native people ally with the british, or the spanish, as ways to protect themselves when the americans win what they find is that they are forced treaties, you heard about the treaty of dancing rabbit creek, it's sort of a consequence of all this. you're seeing white people are still moving into the upper south.

black population is far more concentrated in the plantation districts. so you've got -- picture all of that. what we're talking about here, this is something that's happening globally. this is -- the creation of what's called a settler society. these are english speaking colonies and former colonies around the world. and the idea is that white people claim the right to take land from the indigenous people as a destined path towards civilization. it's settler society because they are displacing native peoples through forced migration or deaths rather than incorporating them, as you might find in other colonial societies as you think of england and india, for example. so these settler societies, australia, new zealand, south africa, canada and the united states depend on break neck demographic growth. one reason i'm showing these maps, this is what underlies everything else. we talked in the very first lecture from dr. butterfield

about the enormous doubling, natural growth of the white population, but it's also the case of the african-american population. this is the only enslaved society, the western hemisphere where the enslaved population biologically reproduces itself. by 1808 the international slave trade is closed but an enormous enslaved population of african-american people is within the south. now, this -- the united states is unusual as a settler society because you don't have to come from england to australia, or new zealand. these are people generally moving within the south. you've got cheap land, valuable commodities, high profits, assumed racial and cultural superiority, drove and justified the migration of millions of english speaking people in every hemisphere. the united states is an example of this. but here's the main difference for the south, this is the only

place where the white settler society possessed control over a third ethnicity to use in their expansion. all those other places white people come and displace indigenous people, in the american south they displace indigenous people and bring enslaved people with them. it feeds this feverish growth and expansion, and a lot of the legal cases that you heard about this morning. the american south is not the only slave society in the hemisphere, of course, jamaica, brazil, cuba. but unlike those places, where white settlers stayed on big plantations here this the the only ruling class, and virginia is a great example of this that uproots itself and moves and recreates the society over this again. kentucky and tennessee, most of the south is, it's that other white southerners, with or without enslaved people, moving across the south and recreating

the south. so the south is completely unique element, a different kind of combination. it has all the energy of the american north, but the power of the enslaved population that it controls. as we've seen, and think about how short a period this is, sometimes people talk about the old south. we need to remember at the time of the civil war most of the south is about as old as subdivisions in chesterfield county, this is 1820, 40 years from the war and look how little mississippi has been settled by white or black people. not to mention texas or arkansas. so this idea of the old south, we can say it here, 1831, you heard from jamie about just how ho old we are, but most of the south is not old at all, but this is the product of this vast expansion. what you're seeing took into consideration, is that this is not just the result of the cotton gin, which all our textbooks act like descends and

causes american history. these white people who owned enslaved people are going to find something to do with the slaves they control, whether it's sugar in louisiana or raising cattle in southern alabama, along near natch es. the main crop of kentucky and tennessee is livestock. okay, and hemp. so this is not the cotton south. the cotton south is barely beginning here. this idea that it's cotton that causes it, no, it's people. who are causing it. all fired up. so -- so what we see is that as this cotton frontier expands this gives us a clear idea, again look at georgia, look how -- what heat white people have brought black people to the very edge of a land that they can claim. so there are treaties with the cherokee in georgia almost every four or five years as this pressure and they take more and

more and more of the land. a lot of times it's before it's taken it's infiltrated. people are coming in, trying tofy nagle their way into the lands, sometimes inter marrying with people. this enormous demographic pressure is building of white settlers and enslaved population. now you've seen this map, versions of it. so as you go back to 1790 and remember how much of that land was occupied by native people, how rapidly it is that this map, which is now, i think, in every presentation so far, and will be later, is what the situation is by 1830. sets up a lot of the scenes of the dramas that lindsey has told us about. and starting in about 1830. this does not slow down.

the cherokee are surrounded by every direction by the enslaved population, from the south and coming from the east. but look at mississippi and alabama beginning. so it's the choctaw and the chick saw are also -- you can see western tennessee is being infiltrated by slavery as well. so at the same time that all the things that we're talking about are happening to native peoples, is slavery that's driving this relentless push. this is white population change, and this shows you something else, you can see the moving in georgia. look at them already leaving up country south carolina, why? they've already used up the land. look how fast this is happening. and so that white people are no sooner are they settling in a place, look at bluegrass of

kentucky, remember that was just 30 years ago that they were settling that and now they're leaving and moving to places that are new. you've got to picture, this is -- we're living in the least mobile time in american history right now. our population is moving less, right now, than it ever has. in american history. this is moving as fast as it ever does. and we think about western migration but look how the south is being defined during all this time. but you can see that white people are moving, and then the richest of them are taking enslaved people with them. so you've seen this map before, a version of it. and you know the story, the 1830s, of how these folks are being driven from their homes. give some sense of the total numbers of all of this. so in 1830, the native people still occupy about 25 million acres of ancestral lands. about 60,000 cherokees, chick saw, and creeks live between the

appalachian mountains in the mississippi river and they would not move willingly. the cherokee who occupied north georgia, western north carolina and tennessee, fought as we heard against white settlers and office holders through legal means, through inventing printed languages in newspapers, they also often converted to christianity. or turned communal lands into private property or instituted gender roles more like european and native families and cash crops and purchased african-american enslaved people. every strategy failed. white settlers in georgia repeatedly infringed on cherokee land in 1806, 1809, 1817, 1828, 1829. each step the cherokees seeded land, losing 7 million acres in those years in addition to the 14 million they lost between the american revolution and 1800. now, faced with such relentless pressure some cherokees decided they would do better farther west, before removal.

some moved to arkansas, missouri and texas in the 1820s. but most held on in the 1820s. and andrew jackson, i'm assuming this is accurate, lindsey, tell me later, build a fire under them, he told white georgians in 1830. when he gets hot enough, they'll move. settlers did not wait for land issues to be determined by law before they moved in. so the 1830s culminated the displacement of the indigenous people, taking 100 million acres from them in the south. most of the native people lived directly in the path of the richest cotton lands. why? because they knew where the rich land was. they'd been having their own farms. they're along the rivers that are necessary for the transportation of cotton. so you see this is the growth of slavery in the 1830s. now look at virginia.

sometimes we talk about choko bottom. look how many black people are being taken from throughout virginia and yet virginia remains the largest slave state all the way until the civil war. more people held in bondage here than anywhere else but also more people sold out of virginia than anywhere else. one way to think about this is this would have been one of the most dangerous places to have lived in slavery because any day your children could be sold from you. this voracious hunger of alabama and mississippi and now look at up and down the mississippi river, going over to louisiana. we also know that in louisiana they would -- and you can see, look how densely it's burning down there. the sugar regions. they wanted young men, and so 90% of the men they would buy here in virginia, 90% of the

people they would buy would be males and the women they bought were actually girls, as soon as they can possibly have babies. and they would have children until they could have children no longer, infant mortality was horrific. as we picture all this, what do these dots mean, it means that 2 million enslaved people were moved within the south in these decades, 2 million, americans moving other americans. okay, so you can see now how the displacement of the american indians is tied to this voracious expansion of slavery and of the south. this is white population change in the same decades. one thing you'll notice they're not the same. most white people don't own slaves. you can't afford the land where the big slave holders move from hinraco county down to alabama and they take their 12 enslaved people and get the best land. you'll go somewhere else, go in the up country, or northern

mississippi. look at what the result of all this is, as soon as the native americans are driven away white people are rushing in. but you can also see the abandonment of land that they had occupied just a few decades earlier. the patterns continue. you can see now expanding into texas, after the war with mexico, into arkansas. now south carolina is kind of picking back up again. 1850s, this is slavery at its full peak, look how fast texas has filled in with enslaved people. so as we put all these pictures together, and look how the upper south is being depleted of enslaved people. why? because they're being shipped to the south. so as we picture all of these

histories in motion and interaction we have to see how the relentless pressure against native peoples is a part of the creation of the very south. and of the united states. this is not a marginal story. this is not just a couple of pages. this is central to the creation of the united states. and here is something that is interesting to think about. the thousands of people removed in the 1830s, thousands remained. most lost their land and others managed to hold on to theirs. the white people claimed their superiority many intermarried with those with american indian ancest ancestry. black people were held in bonds of long surveillance and they, too, found come panno companion.

the cherokee, the seminoles of florida, showed generation one after another of the flexibility and fluidity. the identity of those with one another. i can't make these kinds of maps for american indians because this is all from the census and the census did not count them in the same way. they are throughout this history. after oklahoma, you heard

earlier about horrific losses, once they arrived in indian territory, devastating contagious disease have moved to a third. each of the nation's settled in the eastern part of the territory, the three largest nations, the cherokee, choctaw, and here of them -- the registered to 2300 respectively or about 15% of their total population. enslaved people accounted for an even larger their with a third of total seminoles. so after this the white house

south says it's clear what we have to have. the right to keep expanding. and the self-war is a direct result. they go into yet more territory to be taken from more native peoples. they gambled everything on that vision of the future. a vision based on generations of migration, and the end of slavery transformed the south to a new society. one without a blueprint or example to follow. oklahoma witnessed the new south. after the civil war the federal government punished the native peoples who aligned with the confederacy. the members of the five tribes

shifted from a focus on the land that people occupied to their membership in a particular native people. this alienated american indians of the land. this is particularly dangerous in the south at a time when legal segregation is gripping the nation. anyone with native identity has

suspicious suspecting they were colored people. claiming membership in a crime granted some security as a citizen as well as claims to triable identity. american indians found strong incentives to maintain their identity as american indians. they kept their roles to practice generated conflict within tribes, white officials, and claimants. the lives of american indians, you can see where most people live in the south in 1860 welcome and it is where slavery is strong. now we're witswitching from 191o 1920. you see oklahoma now, you see that the south is actually growing pretty well among white people.

that same decade, what is this? this is the great migration, okay? this is when african-american people finally have a chance to make lives in the north. and you can see where they're leaving. they're leaving the very places they have been held in slavery. it is very interesting to think about today the political future of the nation will be determined in south carolina which is a direct consequence of all of this migration and the fact that the other southern states are going to come and determine who can win the vote to become president of the united states. a lot of it will determine on the demographic patterns that are created. under slavery and the jim crowe south. in this period, the lives of american indians, with roots in the south, change in dramatic ways in these decades as well.

and you can see more black people are leaving, you see the small powerful dots of all of the cities of the north. that is the population that we recognize today. that is black people leaving large parts of the united states for the cities of the south and also the cities of the north. >> the new deal saw more than 25,000 native people night for the united states. and laws in the 1950s pushed american indians all of triable lands and into cities. about half of all native people lived in urban places. as the diet became increasingly disconnected, american indians including those with ancestral ties to the south became more determines to maintain their ties to one another. the civil rights act inspires

activism. a law in 1988 gave some tribes the ability to open casinos on their lands. also declaring their pride in their ancestors. tribes in the south turned to a bride deals. depending on their own histories and situations. southeasterners became more visible and active in places where their ancestors lived. we have seen this in virginia. people, 400 years ago, the objects and attempts at displacement are still here, they still have an identity. american indians edge registering an increase. growing twice as fast as the

population as a whole. the apparent resurgence was partly a product of definition. in 250 they were first presented the opportunity to self identify. that tells you a lot that you could not do that before then. half of them claimed it along with another racial identity. two thirds of the race other than native was right. followed by equal proportions that game black ancestries for those that game the south tied with the west at about a third of the population. about twice as many with the midwest. so the history that we're talking about today is continuing to echo. the southeast share of the

population grew in the first decade relative to the rest of the country advancing at 28%. the tripe with the largest population identified is the cherokee. so let's look at the maps from today that reflect this siflt iechgs. this is showing white people leaving. this is self identified people in 2000. you see not surprising both anchors in florida and also in oklahoma. the creek. self identified choctaw people.

i look forward to people talking about this better than i do. so it is a hard -- you know, but what is not surprising is that the anchors and the choctaw in oklahoma, but the places they were before removal. you're seeing some of the same patterns. people not moved in north carolina. so what you are seeing is that even even though people are still there. it reminds us that the arrows from the green boxes are missing part of the history from people. they found ways to maintain their ways to maintain connections in the south.

they have white mobility. what do we make of this. this is a strange turn in history. especially as people who are recognized as white are eager for a connection to the people they persecutes and drove from their homes. and they have standards in their own nations. they would seek to leverage that identity for material social gain. there is no understanding, this is my main point. the history of the law is very important. these are histories of millions of people acting on what that law is saying.

it is a census for which they are trying to force them and left to themselves people recognizing that americans have more connections among themselves than we might have realized. it suggests that american history is native american history. is african-american history. without understanding all of this you can't understand any of us. that is my message for today. so it looks like that pace through all of american history who would like to ask me an easy question?

yes, the microphone is coming your way. it's coming, both directions. >> do you have a map of the populations of the self identified cherokee people. >> i do, it didn't make it in. i wish i will tell you it shows. there is more identified people across the country than any other people. this will be in my book out this fall, and you can -- it is a wonderful gift for any holiday occasion. but when you see this you see a pattern of it being anchored in oklahoma. it is group that is understanding people belonging

through blood or connection. right? so it is more than any other native groups i found. i was hoping no one noticed that, especially there on c-span. do we have another question? i don't think that is a good way of thinking about it. if we look back on, you know, are where all of this is being first created -- the first slides i'm showing the people moving up, from kingsport, tennessee, from long island, they're trying to fight them off.

there is nowhere in the south it was all created by displacement. >> if the areas hunting grounds, which were not as deeply occupied, but yeah kentucky is the first place that the pattern of the south recreating itself as fast as it possibly can. so you think about this, they are basically people making small versions of virginia all across the south. when you get enough money to build a house, you mimic eastern virginia. i don't know if that is what you're getting at or not. >> from here, which -- >> that is a reason that i -- if i said that word, i regret it. i don't actually -- >> you should.

>> the white man has yeah, that is the reason we started with all of the indigenous people that lived here 10 tho,000 year. white people were late and scattered arrivals, but relentless. if you think about how many millions of people all of these dots represent, what it suggests is that it is a demographic tidal wave. and you see that the accomplishment of many people is to hold that at bay as long as they did. that is what the story tells me. is there another question? if not -- >> is there one? >> yes, and all of the way back. i just read recently in a local paper is that there is a cherokee tribe that is local. there are people that know more

about such things than i do. >> the end of virginia. talking about kingsport, long island. never lived in virginia and they don't live here now. >> one more question since i didn't have to answer that one. >> that question, off of the turnpike, having a museum out there. a drumming here on a thursday night. they are trying to get some recognition. >> i know nothing about it, so i hate to end. learning about a lot of this to write this book, the

completionty of the histories of these peoples. and the -- trying to wrap your mind, saying anything that is true about all of them is really challenging except that what is amazing to me is their determination to endure. and i think we're all richer as a result. thank you. >> you can watch tours of historic sites, and see our upcoming channel. >> up next only "american

history kf." "john marshall, the cherokee nation after the trail of tears." they talk about their removal from the southeast he scribes o out. >> it is now as is mentioned today, he serves on the board of trustees, and it was at his urging that this game to be. he served as a strong advocate of the upper in the lead up to 2007, chief amends actively participated in the steering