Trail of Tears

Cherokee Indian Nation - The Trail Of Tears

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Abstract

The events associated with the Trail of Tears, in the 1830s, the Andrew Jackson administration forced the Cherokee Nation of Georgia to give up their ancestral land and resettle at present-day Oklahoma. At the time a few people in America seemed to care about their plight, because popular opinion in the 1830s was that Indians were uncivilized and savage. Cherokee people had appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, and Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the removal of Cherokee people from their ancestral land was unjust. Yet President Jackson persisted and carried out his plan. Thus thousands of Cherokee people were forced to go to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears.

"In leading [the Indians] to agriculture, to manufactures, and civilizations; in bringing together their and our sentiments, and in preparing them ultimately to participate in the benefits of our Government, I trust and believe we are acting for their greatest good." Thomas Jefferson, 1803 (Lindneux, 2012)

[Image credit:  The Granger Collection, Ltd. NY - Trail of Tears, Robert Lindneux, 1942.]

The rapid expansion of the United States population, in the early nineteenth century led to tensions with American Indian tribes located within several states. While state governments did not want independent indigenous enclaves within their state borders, the tribes did not want to be relocated, nor relinquish their identities. With the Covenant of 1802, the state of Georgia withdrew its claims to the national government for the territories to the west, known today as the states of Alabama and Mississippi. In its turn, the government finally promised to relocate all the tribes located inside Georgia, and thus giving the latter control of the territory within their borders. However, the Cherokee, whose ancestral tribal lands overlapped the boundaries of the...