Founded in 1810, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions became the largest and most prominent missionary group in the United States. It established a number of missionary stations in Europe, Africa, and Asia by the mid- 1800s while also taking frequently unpopular stances on such controversial political issues as the Jackson administration’s forced relocation of Native American tribes of the South during the 1830s, which it criticized, and the abolition of slavery, which it supported. The American Board of Commissioners initiated missionary activity among the Cherokee people in 1817, later expanding to other groups such as the Choctaw and Chickasaw, with the goal of promulgating the message of Christianity. Although the board did not approve of the tribes’ practice of slaveholding, it did not actively discourage them from continuing it.