The lands south of Virginia were to be the Americans and the Indians would have to simply get out of the way. The first real successful effort at accomplishing the goal of removing Native Americans from their homes came in 1830 with the signing of the Indian Removal Act (McLean, 27)
One of the loudest and most eloquent voices on this matter was John Ross, a 1/8 Cherokee who was perhaps the only person who understood the nature of the problem well before it would result in the massive and total relocations. Ross urged his people to stay as one nation, and to resist Jackson's efforts (Meyers, 60)
Whites had expanded to the edges of their territory and were bursting at the seams in the attempt to accommodate all of the European immigrants. Jackson, continuing to sting from the defeat in 1788, took up the most vilely racist approaches to dealing with these "American" needs - by enforcing the Indian Removal Act (Prater, 9)
Instead, they pushed and pushed, treated the Cherokee with little regard and with less respect then they would give to cattle. The Cherokee were hounded and constantly being victimized by various contractors, agents, lawyers and police along the way (Zimmer, 4)