[228] It gave the president the right to negotiate treaties to buy tribal lands in the eastern part of the United States in exchange for lands set aside for Native Americans west of the Mississippi,[229] as well as broad discretion on how to use the federal funds allocated to the negotiations.[230] The law was supposed to be a voluntary relocation program, but it was not implemented as one. Jackson's administration often achieved agreement to relocate through bribes, fraud and intimidation,[231] and the leaders who signed the treaties often did not represent the entire tribe.[232] The relocations could be a source of misery too: the Choctaw relocation was rife with corruption, theft, and mismanagement that brought great suffering to that people.[233]

Portrait of Jackson by Ralph E. W. Earl (c. 1830, North Carolina Museum of Art)
In 1830, Jackson personally negotiated with the Chickasaw, who quickly agreed to move.[234] In the same year, Choctaw leaders signed the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek; the majority did not want the treaty but complied with its terms.