The United States wanted to settle The People on reservations to extinguish their title to other lands and encourage them to adopt the western model of subsistence farming to assimilate to majority culture. The federal government believed that separating The People from the rest of its citizens would solve land disputes and reduce tensions between cultures. The development of reservations was a campaign promise of U.S. President Andrew Jackson. His administration set aside Indian Territory in lands west of the Mississippi River, far from the traditional homelands of the American Southeast and other areas from which they forced tribes.