If Andrew Jackson hated the Native Americans then why did he adopt a native American child?

[Messianic_Monk]

I'm just curious on your takes. I'm aware of the trail of tears and how that effected Native Americans. I'm constantly told it was an ethnic cleansing. But it just seems weird to me that Jackson would adopt a kid from the ethnic group he wants to exterminate.

[NamerOfStars]

"Ethnic cleansing" would've been rounding up the Indians and forcibly bathing them. Genocide is genocide; you needn't concern yourself over the hurt feelings of mass murderers.

Which is especially relevant here, since the Trail of Tears, while a brutal atrocity, was an attempt to prevent genocide, which was really the only alternative at that point. Andrew Jackson, while a cold and cruel man, wasn't a monster. He was also an orphan himself, and likely felt sympathy for the boy he adopted, who was in the same situation.

[Messianic_Monk]

Thank you for the charitable response. I know topics like these make people angry very easily.

I kind of thought so too. Yes, Andrew Jackson was probably a racist. But I'm also of the opinion that a racist can actually keep to themselves and not be a genocidal maniac.

Everything is read about the trail of tears was that it was just that: a relocation of the natives gone horribly wrong. I just wondered what proof they had that Jackson wanted genocide on them. But from what you said it doesn't seem like there is proof.

As for feeling sympathy for him I gotta agree that that is the only reason I can think of... and to me it would also logically follow that while Jackson was a racist he couldn't have been a genocidal maniac because how could you feel sympathy on a child of the race you hate... or justify him being soared when he got older?

[NamerOfStars]

Oh, he was definitely a racist- pretty much everybody was, back then. But there's a difference between "these people are my inferiors" and "these people should be exterminated".

[NaultD]

Save the man kill the Indian. My uncle only a year older then my mother got fuck over by these same laws.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/UGqWRyBCHhw

Lot of rape, abuse, brainwashing. Treated like garbage and tossed away far from traditional lands and rights promised by previous presidents. Not as blood soaked as many genocides but just as cruel and ruthless and even more so drastically calculated as any other.

[CAPTAIN-OBVIOUS]

He related to him and felt sympathy being a former orphan himself.