DEVELOPMENT BETWEEN 1820 AND 1840 247 
larged in 1836 by the admission of Arkansas. What is now 
Arkansas formed a part of Louisiana Territory till 1812 and a 
part of Missouri Territory till 1819, when Arkansas Territory 
was organized. The population of the Territory in 1820 was 
less than 15,000. It received, however, an overflow of popula- 
tion from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, and its growth 
was rapid. Its soil was adapted to the raising of cotton, and 
slaves were employed in the cultivation of its fields. In 1835 
Arkansas Territory had a population sufficient for statehood. 
and the next year it was admitted into 
the Union. Its admission as a slave 
State was regarded as an offset to the 
admission of Michigan, which was 
about to come in as a free State, 
186. The Removal of the Indians. — 
Between 1820 and 1840 the cotton king- 
dom was also greatly enlarged and 
strengthened by the removal of the In- 
dians from the South. When the red 
men of the South had been subdued by Jackson (p. 217), they 
had for the most part been allowed to remain on their lands. In 
1820 over 50,000 Indians—(Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws, 
Choctaws, and others— were living in Georgia, Alabama, Mis- 
sissippi, and Tennessee, and were occupying upward of 30,000,- 
000 acres of land. Much of this was the best land of the South, 
and the white man of course longed to become its possessor. 
By a series of treaties with the national government, the Indians 
consented to surrender their lands east of the Mississippi to the 
United States, and to receive in return grants of land west of 
the Mississippi, in the country known as the Indian Territory. 
In accordance with these treaties the Indians were gradually 
removed across the Mississippi, and by 1840 but few of them 
were left in their old homes in the South. The vacant Indian 
lands were filled up by planters with their slaves and given over 
to the cultivation of cotton. 
187. Growth in Population between 1820 and 1840; the 
Frontier Line in 1840.— Although our growth between 1820 
and 1840 was not so striking as it was between 1800 and 1820 
al