History Report on Race Week 5

Historical Report

ETH/125

10/20/2013

Jennifer Henderson

Historical Report

Hello Dear Friend,

My Native American name is CYNTᎯᎠ TᎭRP in English language. I am writing to you to explain what my Native American ancestors have gone through. I am the fourth great granddaughter of ᎠNDᎴW ᎷCᎠᏍ (Andrew Lucas) my full blooded Cherokee Native American grandfather. If you noticed my name is written in Cherokee Language to show how it looks like in written Cherokee. My Native American ancestors went through harsh times in history, in the beginning of the 1830’s there were nearly 125,000 Native American Indians living on millions of acres land that their ancestors have occupied and farmed for generations. There were very few American Natives that remained in any place of the southeastern United States by the end of the decade. The federal government forced them from their homelands and have them walk thousands of miles to a designated “Indian Territory” across the Mississippi River, due to white settlers who wanted to grow cotton on their land. This has become known as the “Trail of Tears”, a most difficult and at times a deadly journey for them. It is estimated that 5,000 Cherokee Indians died during this journey.

Their land was valuable to the white settlers and it grew to be more coveted as more white settlers began to populate the lands. The white settlers did not care if their Native Americans were civilized or not, they wanted their land anyway they could get it. In fact they would steal livestock, houses and towns were burned or looted, and they would even become squatters on the land that did not belong to them. Even state governments joined in an effort to drive the Native Americans out the South. Some laws were passed so as to limiting the Native American sovereignty and rights on them moving onto their territory. For example: Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) and Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the U.S. Supreme Court was against and objective...