As Long as Grass Grows or Water Runs
The proper tactic had now been found. The Indians would not be “forced” to go West. But if they chose to stay they would have to abide by state laws, which destroyed their tribal and personal rights and made them subject to endless harassment and invasion by white settlers coveting their land. If they left, however, the federal government would give them financial support and promise them lands beyond the Mississipi. Jackson’s instructions to an army major sent to talk to the Chocktaws and Cherokees put it this way:
Say to my red Choctaw children, and my Chickasaw children to listen — my white children of Mississippi have extended their law over their country….Where they now are, say to them, their father cannot prevent them from being subject to the laws of the state of Mississippi….The general government will be obliged to sustain the States in the exercise of their right. Say to the chiefs and warriors that I am their friend, that I wish to act as their friend but they must, by removing from the limits of the States of Mississippi and Alabama and by being settled on the lands I offer them, put it in my power to be such — There, beyond the limits of any State, in possession of land of their own, which they shall possess as long as Grass grows or water runs. I am and will protect them and be their friend and father.
That phrase “as long as Grass grows or water runs” was to be recalled with bitterness by generations of Indians. (An Indian GI, veteran of Vietnam, testifying publicly in 1970 not only about the horror of the war but about his own maltreatment as an Indian, repeated that phrase and began to weep.)
excerpt from A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
