Trail of Tears

my topic is important because it is about one of the most remembered times in our history to this day; its about the trail of tears. i will talk about the greediness of the us soldiers. then i'll move on about how the indians were forced out. next i will explain how the us soldiers and the calvary were inhumanein their treatment to the native americans during the long journey. finally i am going to tell you about the great amount of loss that the native americans had to expierence. The Cherokee people called this journey the "Trail of Tears," because of its devastating effects.

In 1838 and 1839, as part of Andrew Jackson's Indian removal policy, the Cherokee nation was forced to give up its lands east of the Mississippi River and to migrate to an area in present-day Oklahoma. The migrants faced hunger, disease, and exhaustion on the forced march. Over 4,000 out of 15,000 of the Cherokees died. in the early 1830s, thousands of Native Americans populated land in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida.it was the same land that their ancestors had occupied for generations. By the end of the decade, very few natives remained anywhere in the southeastern United States. Working on behalf of white settlers, who wanted to grow cotton, the federal government forced the indians to leave their homelands and walk thousands of miles to a specially designated Indian territory across the Mississippi River. This is now known as the Trail of Tears.

the us soldiers were greedy about wanting the indian lands. the indians didnt want anyone on their land and had mixed feelings about when people were on their land. The roots of forced relocation lay in greed, in 1829 a gold rush occurred on Cherokee land in Georgia. Vast amounts of wealth were at stake. at their peak, Georgia mines produced approximately 300 ounces of gold a day. Land speculators soon demanded that the U.S. Congress devolve to the states the control of all real property owned by tribes and their members. That position was supported by Pres. Andrew Jackson, who was himself an avid speculator. Congress complied by passing the Indian Removal Act in 1830. The act entitled the president to negotiate with the eastern nations to effect their removal to tracts of land west of the Mississippi and provided nearly 500,000 dollars just for transportation and for compensation to native landowners. Jackson reiterated his support for the act in various messages to Congress, notably On the Indian Removal of 1830 and A Permanent Habitation for the American Indians in 1835, which illuminated his political justifications for removal and described some of the outcomes he expected would derive from the relocation process. the real main reactions to the Indian Removal Act varied. The Southeast Indians were for the most part tightly organized and heavily invested in agriculture.

The farms of the most populous tribes, the Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, Seminole, and Cherokee, were particularly taken by outsiders because they were located in prime agricultural areas and were very well developed. This meant that speculators who purchased such properties could immediately turn a profit: fields had already been cleared, pastures fenced, barns and houses built, and the like. thus meaning, the Southeast tribes approached federal negotiations with the goal of either reimbursement for or protection of their members’ investments. the cherokees complained bitterly about the white people moving onto their land, mining their gold, stealing their livestock, and evicting them from their houses and farms. the united states government sent soldiers to eject the intruders and offer protection the the cherokees but the small force had no effect, except perhaps in the gold countrywere the soldiers were concentrated. while some intruders claimed that they had nothing to do with te cherokee lands, others were less clear-cut in their responces.

the indians were wrongfully forced from their homelands. the indians were to be killed if they refused. John Ross, the tribe’s principal chief in 1828, strongly opposed to giving up the ancestral lands, as were the majority of the Cherokee people. However, a small group within the tribe believed it was inevitable that white settlers would keep encroaching on their lands and therefore the only way to preserve Cherokee culture and survive as a tribe was to move west. In 1835, while Ross was away, this minority faction signed a treaty at New Echota, the Cherokee Nation capital located in Georgia, agreeing to sell the U.S. government all tribal lands in the East in exchange for $5 million and new land in the West. As part of the agreement, the government was supposed help cover the Cherokees’ moving costs and pay to support them during their first year in Indian Territory. When Ross found out about the treaty, he argued it had been made illegally. Nevertheless, in 1836 it was ratified by a