The years preceding the Civil War were appallingly difficult for Native Americans. White man wanted their land. In spite of a Supreme Court ruling that treaties signed with The Five Nations were legal and binding, President Andrew Jackson ordered that the Indian lands be taken from them, and the Indians removed-or killed.
Andrew Jackson considered Indians to be savages, yet their culture was as civilized, if not more so, than the White man who wanted them removed.
Servants on Horses is the story of one family's struggle to survive and come to terms with the annihilation of their culture and the assimilation of generations into White man's culture.
Toward the aborigines of the country no one can indulge a more friendly feeling than myself, or would go further in attempting to reclaim them
from their wandering habits and make them a happy, prosperous people. ...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 lled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and
religion?...
-President Andrew Jackson, Second Inaugural Address, May 28, 1830
