The correct answer to the question: Why might Andrew Jackson have chosen to use the word "savage" in his message to Congress "on Indian removal", would be, that it justified the actions that were being taken by the government authorities to remove the Indian tribes from their ancestral lands, by force, even though treaties had been signed before to prevent this from happening. By using the word "savage", Jackson gave the impression to Americans that Natives were lesser beings, inferior, whose rights could never supersede those of the white, and educated, settlers. Thus, with this, Jackson was able to pass into law the Indial Removal Act in 1830, and a massive deportation of Native Americans ensued towards the lands west of the Mississippi River. This Removal Act, and the way that Jackson´s government acted towards the Native Americans, have long been considered one of the greatest acts of discrimination, and genocide, in American history.
