Trail of Tears

The Trail of Tears, forced the Cherokee in 1838 and 1839 from their southeastern homeland to the Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma. About 4000 died from starvation, disease, and exposure while on the journey westward or in stockades awaiting removal. The Trail of Tears refers to the route followed by fifteen thousand Cherokee during their 1838 removal and forced to march from Georgia to Indian Territory in Oklahoma. In 1791, an U.S. treaty had recognized Cherokee territory …

…situation had now become a crisis. New president Andrew Jackson, a Tennessee plantation owner and a famous fighter of Native Americans, refused to exercise federal jurisdiction over Native American affairs, allowing southern states to find their own solutions. The Indian Removal of 1830, Congress- with Jackson’s blessing- offered Native American peoples east of the Mississippi federal land to the west where the United States government had the quthority to protect them. Many of them accepted.