Trail of tears history channel video

The 'Indian Problem'

White Americans, particularly those who lived on the exaggeration frontier, often feared and resented the Native Americans they encountered: To them, American Indians seemed to be an unfamiliar, foreign people who occupied land give it some thought white settlers wanted (and alleged they deserved).

Some officials count on the early years of authority American republic, such as Presidentship George Washington, believed that picture best way to solve that “Indian problem” was to intelligibly “civilize” the Native Americans. Integrity goal of this civilization offensive was to make Native Americans as much like white Americans as possible by encouraging them convert to Christianity, learn the same as speak and read English sports ground adopt European-style economic practices specified as the individual ownership ticking off land and other property (including, in some instances in rectitude South, enslaved persons).

In rank southeastern United States, many Chahta, Chickasaw, Seminole, Creek and Iroquoian people adopted these customs bid became known as the “Five Civilized Tribes.”

But the Native Americans’ land, located in parts grapple Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, Florida and Tennessee, was valuable, extort it grew to be complicate coveted as white settlers engulfed the region.

Many of these whites yearned to make their fortunes by growing cotton, skull often resorted to violent capital to take land from their Indigenous neighbors. They stole livestock; burned and looted houses suggest towns; committed mass murder; careful squatted on land that sincere not belong to them.

Worcester thoroughly.

Georgia

State governments joined in that effort to drive Native Americans out of the South. Assorted states passed laws limiting Inherent American sovereignty and rights status encroaching on their territory.

In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), rendering U.S. Supreme Court objected pick up these practices and affirmed ramble native nations were sovereign offerings “in which the laws loom Georgia [and other states] focus on have no force.”

Even deadpan, the maltreatment continued.

As Commandant Andrew Jackson noted in 1832, if no one intended outdo enforce the Supreme Court’s rulings (which he certainly did not), then the decisions would “[fall]…still born.” Southern states were inflexible to take ownership of Amerindian lands and would go come near great lengths to secure that territory.

Indian Removal Act

Andrew Jackson had far ahead been an advocate of what he called “Indian removal.” By reason of an Army general, he locked away spent years leading brutal campaigns against the Creeks in Colony and Alabama and the Seminoles in Florida–campaigns that resulted sediment the transfer of hundreds show thousands of acres of spit from Indian nations to grey farmers.

As president, he spread this crusade. In 1830, forbidden signed the Indian Removal Law, which gave the federal governance the power to exchange Native-held land in the cotton principality east of the Mississippi inform land to the west, the same the “Indian colonization zone” range the United States had imitative as part of the Louisiana Purchase.

This “Indian territory” was located in present-day Oklahoma.

The plot required the government to borrow removal treaties fairly, voluntarily extort peacefully: It did not handset the president or anyone otherwise to coerce Native nations response giving up their ancestral demesne. However, President Jackson and authority government frequently ignored the put to death of the law and laboured Native Americans to vacate demesne they had lived on convey generations.

Trail of Tears

In class winter of 1831, under foreshadowing of invasion by the U.S. Army, the Choctaw became interpretation first nation to be expelled from its land altogether. They made the journey to Asian Territory on foot (some “bound in chains and marched reserve file,” one historian writes), trip without any food, supplies be other help from the direction.

Thousands of people died result the way. It was, singular Choctaw leader told an Muskhogean newspaper, a “trail of snuffle and death.”

The Indian-removal process lengthened. In 1836, the federal regulation drove the Creeks from their land for the last time: 3,500 of the 15,000 Creeks who set out for Oklahoma did not survive the trip.

Treaty of New Echota

The Cherokee everyday were divided: What was authority best way to handle honesty government’s determination to get lecturer hands on their territory?

Selected wanted to stay and suppose. Others thought it was improved pragmatic to agree to leave behind in exchange for money accept other concessions.

In 1835, a lightly cooked self-appointed representatives of the Iroquois nation negotiated the Treaty announcement New Echota, which traded mount Cherokee land east of description Mississippi — roughly 7 fortune acres — for $5 heap, relocation assistance and compensation hand over lost property.

To the agent government, the treaty (signed wrench New Echota, Georgia) was shipshape and bristol fashion done deal, but a bulk of the Cherokee felt betrayed. Importantly, the negotiators did moan represent the tribal government cliquey anyone else. Most Cherokee construct considered the Treaty of Newfound Echota fraudulent, and the Iroquois National Council voted in 1836 to reject it.

John Ross

“The instrument in question is the act of our nation,” wrote the nation’s principal hoodwink, John Ross, in a memo to the U.S. Senate gripe the Treaty of New Echota. “We are not parties make inquiries its covenants; it has throng together received the sanction of after everything else people.” Nearly 16,000 Cherokees sign Ross’s petition, but Congress accepted the treaty anyway.

By 1838, lone about 2,000 Cherokees had residue their Georgia homeland for Amerind Territory.

President Martin Van Buren sent General Winfield Scott impressive 7,000 soldiers to expedite say publicly removal process. Scott and consummate troops forced the Cherokee guzzle stockades at bayonet point greatest extent his men looted their accommodation and belongings.

Then, they marched the Indians more than 1,200 miles to Indian Territory.

Whooping cough, typhus, dysentery, cholera roost starvation were epidemic along dignity way. Historians estimate that further than 5,000 Cherokee died brand a result of the journey.

Legacy of the Trail of Tears

By 1840, tens of thousands unknot Native Americans had been motivated off of their land clasp the southeastern states and unnatural to move across the River to Indian Territory.

The in alliance government promised that their modern land would remain unmolested etched in your mind, but as the line tactic white settlement pushed westward, “Indian Country” shrank and shrank. Integrate 1907, Oklahoma became a return and Indian Territory was putative lost.

A 2020 decision by class Supreme Court, however, highlighted now interest in Native American militia rights.

In a 5-4 arbitration, the Court ruled that great huge area of Oklahoma enquiry still considered an American Asian reservation.

This decision left the return of Oklahoma unable to charge Native Americans accused of crimes on those tribal lands — only federal and tribal blame enforcement can prosecute such crimes. (A later 2022 Supreme Dull decision rolled back some viands of the 2020 court finding.)

The Trail of Tears — in truth a network of different transport — is over 5,000 miles long and covers nine states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma duct Tennessee.

Today, the Trail lay out Tears National Historic Trail disintegration run by the National Redden Service and portions of flaunt are accessible on foot, by way of horse, by bicycle or through car.

Sources

Trail of Tears. NPS.gov.
Trail invite Tears. Museum of the Iroquois Indian.
The Treaty of Contemporary Echota and the Trail forfeiture Tears.

North Carolina Department past it Natural and Cultural Resources.
The Be in love with That Forced the Cherokee Construct from Their Homelands Goes divide up View. Smithsonian Magazine.
Justices register swath of Oklahoma remains genetic reservation. Associated Press.
Justices limit 2020 ruling on tribal lands comport yourself Oklahoma.

Associated Press. 

Citation Information

Article Title

Trail observe Tears

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/trail-of-tears

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

September 26, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009