DescriptionThis dissertation is about the use of the rhetoric of inevitability to justify the Jacksonian policy of “Indian Removal” and attempts of participants to grapple with the extent of their responsibility for the tragedies, like the infamous “Trail of Tears,” that resulted from this policy. Many participants in Indian Removal struggled with their moral responsibility, but ultimately decided that Indian removal was an inevitable historical development. Some Cherokee and Seneca chiefs embraced the same logic in order to justify their decisions to sign removal treaties against the overwhelming opposition of their own nations. Because of the overwhelming trend of colonial expansion and native land loss, claims of inevitability had a great deal of plausibility to them. However, the victory of the Senecas over determined attempts to remove them reveals that removal was not “inevitable” across the board. This project locates the points at which human beings took concrete actions in this struggle—making laws and treaties, voting for candidates, mustering troops, organizing resistance—to demonstrate that historical determinist thinking played a major role in justifying Indian removal, and in attempts to convince the wavering to drop their qualms and cooperate in its implementation. Further, this dissertation shows that a conscious rejection of such logic was an important ingredient in (at times successful) resistance to removal.