based on experience with Americas’ unwritten removal policy and his engagements with the Indians to date.Lewis Cass was the governor and Superintendent of Indian Affairs of the Michigan Territory in the 1820’s. As "the foremost authority in the United States on the languages and cultures of the northern tribes," Cass argued that Indian emigration west of the Mississippi was morally necessary for Native Americans to survive and civilize without extreme pressure from Americans living near and among them. This standpoint was not originally his, but his experience with Indians and his writing skills helped his credibility. In his study of Indian languages, he claimed that Indians were "unable to distinguish the abstract from the concrete and thus were incapable of logical reasoning." This claim led to his proposal that Indians, though constitutionally equal, were inferior to whites on a linguistic level. Cass also addressed that issue that the Indians were still in a "hunter state" of civilization; a point in time that the European settlers had surpassed centuries ago. He led to point out that although this alone was not a valid reason for removal, but the path that it was taking was changing for the worse. He stated that the Indians were stable in their hunter state when whites arrived, but after decades of depleting valuable game to dangerous levels, trading for alcohol, fighting among other tribes and settlers, the Indians were eventually ending up in poverty on reservations. Cass proceeded to state that even though Indians could "learn to plow and keep domestic animals," they "were incapable of reason and they were irredeemably attached to the pleasures of the chase and the warpath." In Cass’ writing in the North American Review in 1827, he stated that force and bribery should not be used to move the Indians, and that persuasion would be all that was necessary for them to emigrate. In his writings, Cass de...
