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Lol the rubric says to post it on here

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this is a good source because it tells what the book is about. This is also a direct source from someone who was experiencing these horrible things.

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A New Englander by birth, poet and writer Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885) was an outspoken and eloquent champion of Native American rights. She was moved to research and publicize the plight of the Native American after hearing Chief Standing Bear of the Poncas tribe speak in Boston about the great sufferings of his people as they were forcibly removed from their native land to a reservation in Oklahoma. Jackson's book, A Century of Dishonor, documents the United States government's abuse of treaty rights, their rejection of Indian tribal sovereignty, and details much of the horrific violence committed by white settlers against the native population. In the introduction to her book, a copy of which she sent to every member of Congress, Jackson urged the legislative body to "redeem the name of the United States from the stain of a Century of Dishonor." The book focuses on the history of seven tribes: the Cheyennes, Cherokees, Delawares, Nez Perces, Poncas, Sioux, and Winnebagos. The selection provided here details the sufferings of the Northern Cheyenne as they attempted to hunt on their native land without permission from their Indian Agent. In 1882, President Chester A. Arthur appointed Jackson a commissioner of Indian affairs, but her report about the extreme poverty and deprivation of California's Mission Indians was largely ignored.

The winter of 1877 and summer of 1878 were terrible seasons for the Cheyennes. Their fall hunt had proved unsuccessful. Indians from other reservations had hunted the ground over before them, and driven the buffalo off; and the Cheyennes made their way home again in straggling parties, destitute and hungry. Their agent reports that the result of this hunt has clearly proved that "in the future the Indian must rely on tilling the ground as the principal means of support; and if this conviction can be firmly established, the greatest obstacle to advancement in agriculture will be overcome. With the buffalo gone, and their pony herds being constantly decimated by the inroads of horse-thieves, they must soon adopt, in all its varieties, the way of the white man."

The ration allowed to these Indians is reported as being "reduced and insufficient," and the small sums they have been able to earn by selling buffalo-hides are said to have been "of material assistance" to them in "supplementing" this ration. But in this year there have been sold only $657 worth of skins by the Cheyennes and Arapahoes together. In 1876 they sold $17,600 worth. Here is a failing off enough to cause very great suffering in a little community of five thousand people. But this was only the beginning of their troubles. The summer proved one of unusual heat. Extreme heat, chills and fever, and "a reduced and insufficient ration," all combined, resulted in an amount of sickness heart-rending to read of. "It is no exaggerated estimate," says the agent, "to place the number of sick people on the reservation at two thousand. Many deaths occurred which might have been obviated had there been a proper supply of anti-malarial remedies at hand. Hundreds applying for treatment have been refused medicine."

The Northern Cheyennes grew more and more restless and unhappy. "In council and elsewhere they profess an intense desire to be sent North, where they say they will settle down as the others have done," says the report; adding, with an obtuseness which is inexplicable, that "no difference has been made in the treatment of the Indians," but that the "compliance" of these Northern Cheyennes has been "of an entirely different nature from that of the other Indians," and that it may be "necessary in the future to compel what so far we have been unable to effect by kindness and appeal to their better natures."

If it is "an appeal to men's better natures" to remove them by force from a healthful Northern climate, which they love and thrive in, to a malarial Southern one, where they are struck down by chills and fever-refuse them medicine which can combat chills and fever, and finally starve them-there indeed, might be said to have been most forcible appeals made to the "better natures" of these Northern Cheyennes. What might have been predicted followed.

Early in the autumn, after this terrible summer, a band of some three hundred of these Northern Cheyennes took the desperate step of running off and attempting to make their way back to Dakota. They were pursued, fought desperately, but were finally overpowered, and surrendered. They surrendered, however, only on the condition that they should be taken to Dakota. They were unanimous in declaring that they would rather die than go back to the Indian Territory. This was nothing more, in fact, than saying that they would rather die by bullets than of chills and fever and starvation.

These Indians were taken to Fort Robinson, Nebraska. Here they were confined as prisoners of war, and held subject to the orders of the Department of the Interior. The department was informed of the Indians' determination never to be taken back alive to Indian Territory. The army officers in charge reiterated these statements, and implored the department to permit them to remain at the North; but it was of no avail. Orders came-explicit, repeated, finally stern-insisting on the return of these Indians to their agency. The commanding officer at Fort Robinson has been censured severely for the course he pursued in his effort to carry out those orders. It is difficult to see what else he could have done, except to have resigned his post. He could not take three hundred Indians by sheer brute force and carry them hundreds of miles, especially when they were so desperate that they had broken up the iron stoves in their quarters, and wrought and twisted them into weapons with which to resist. He thought perhaps he could starve them into submission. He stopped the issue of food; he also stopped the issue of fuel to them. It was midwinter; the mercury froze in that month at Fort Robinson. At the end of two days he asked the Indians to let their women and children come out that he might feed them. Not a woman would come out. On the night of the fourth day-or, according to some accounts, the sixth-these starving, freezing Indians broke prison, overpowered the guards, and fled, carrying their women and children with them. They held the pursuing troops at bay for several days; finally made a last stand in a deep ravine, and were shot down-men, women, and children together. Out of the whole band there were left alive some fifty women and children and seven men, who, having been confined in another part of the fort, had not had the good fortune to share in this outbreak and meet their death in the ravine. These, with their wives and children, were sent to Fort Leavenworth to be put in prison; the men to be tried for murders committed in their skirmishes in Kansas on their way to the north. Red Cloud, a Sioux chief, came to Fort Robinson immediately after this massacre and entreated to be allowed to take the Cheyenne widows and orphans into his tribe to be cared for. The Government, therefore, kindly permitted twenty-two Cheyenne widows and thirty-two Cheyenne children-many of them orphans-to be received into the band of the Ogallalla Sioux.

An attempt was made by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, in his Report for 1879, to show by tables and figures that these Indians were not starving at the time of their flight from Indian Territory. The attempt only redounded to his own disgrace; it being proved, by the testimony given by a former clerk of the Indian Bureau before the Senate committee appointed to investigate the case of the Northern Cheyennes, that the commissioner had been guilty of absolute dishonesty in his estimates, and that the quantity of beef actually issued to the Cheyenne Agency was hundreds of pounds less than he had reported it, and that the Indians were actually, as they had claimed, "starving."

The testimony given before this committee by some of the Cheyenne prisoners themselves is heart-rending. One must have a callous heart who can read it unmoved.

When asked by Senator [John T.] Morgan [of Alabama], "Did you ever really suffer from hunger?" one of the chiefs replied. "We were always hungry; we never had enough. When they that were sick once in awhile felt as though they could eat something, we had nothing to give them."

"Did you not go out on the plains sometimes and hunt buffalo, with the consent of the agent?"

"We went out on a buffalo-hunt, and nearly starved while out; we could not find any buffalo hardly; we could hardly get back with our ponies; we had to kill a good many of our ponies to eat, to save ourselves from starving."

"How many children got sick and died?"

"Between the fall of 1877 and 1878 we lost fifty children. A great many of our finest young men died, as well as many women."

"Old Crow," a chief who served faithfully as Indian scout and ally under General [George] Crook [commander of Far Western troops since 1868] for years, said: "I did not feel like doing anything for awhile, because I had no heart. I did not want to be in this country. I was all the time wanting to get back to the better country where I was born, and where my children are buried, and where my mother and sister yet live. So I have laid in my lodge most of the time with nothing to think about but that, and the affair up north at Fort Robinson, and my relatives and friends who were killed there. But now I feel as though, if I had a wagon and a horse or two, and some land, I would try to work. If I had something, so that I could do something, I might not think so much about these other things. As it is now, I feel as though I would just as soon be asleep with the rest."

The wife of one of the chiefs confined at Fort Leavenworth testified before the committee as follows: "The main thing I complained of was that we didn't get enough to eat; my children nearly starved to death; then sickness came, and there was nothing good for them to eat; for a long time the most they had to eat was cornmeal and salt. Three or four children died every day for awhile, and that frightened us."

When asked if there were anything she would like to say to the committee, the poor woman replied: "I wish you would do what you can to get my husband released. I am very poor here, and do not know what is to become of me. If he were released he would come down here, and we would live together quietly, and do no harm to anybody, and make no trouble. But I should never get over my desire to get back north; I should always want to get back where my children were born, and died, and were buried. That country is better than this in every respect. There is plenty of good, cool water there-pure water-while here the water is not good. It is not hot there, nor so sickly. Are you going where my husband is? Can you tell when he is likely to be released?"...

It is stated also that there was not sufficient clothing to furnish each Indian with a warm suit of clothing, "as promised by the treaty," and that, "by reference to official correspondence, the fact is established that the Cheyennes and Arapahoes are judged as having no legal rights to any lands, having forfeited their treaty reservation by a failure to settle thereon," and their "present reservation not having been, as yet, confirmed by Congress. Inasmuch as the Indians fully understood, and were assured that this reservation was given to them in lieu of their treaty reservation, and have commenced farming in the belief that there was no uncertainty about the matter it is but common justice that definite action be had at an early day, securing to them what is their right."

It would seem that there could be found nowhere in the melancholy record of the experiences of our Indians a more glaring instance of confused multiplication of injustices than this. The Cheyennes were pursued and slain for venturing to leave this very reservation, which, it appears, is not their reservation at all, and they have no legal right to it. Are there any words to fitly characterize such treatment as this from a great, powerful, rich nation, to a handful of helpless people?

SOURCE: Jackson, Helen Hunt. A Century of Dishonor; A Sketch of the United States Government's Dealings with Some of the Indian Tribes. 2d ed. enlarged by addition of report of the needs of the mission Indians of California. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1888.

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excerpt from a century of dishonor (1881

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excerpt from a century of dishonor (1881

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Excerpt from A Century of Dishonor (1881, by Helen Hunt Jackson) - Dictionary definition of Excerpt from A Century of Dishonor (1881, by Helen Hunt Jackson) | Encyclopedia.com: FREE online dictionary

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Definition of Excerpt from A Century of Dishonor (1881, by Helen Hunt Jackson) - Our online dictionary has Excerpt from A Century of Dishonor (1881, by Helen Hunt Jackson) information from Dictionary of American History dictionary. Encyclopedia.com: English, psychology and medical dictionaries

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This book is a great source because it gives a lot of information before the trail of tears and how it lead up to the government removing the native America so from their sacred land. Also, on page 92 it gives a bibliography and on page 93 it gives sources to further read and learn more Information.

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This is a very trustworthy website because it gives good and accurate information about the Indian removal and how they were kicked off there land and put into camps so they become skaves.

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This book is a good source because in chapter 2 it talks about the arrival of the Europeans. It also talks about the Native Americans relations with the British. Along with that, it also talks about how they were forced to move off their land.

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This is a good source because the person who wrote this researched about the trail of tears and all the way at the bottom you can click on bibliography and it will take you to all the sources she used.

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In the year 1838, 16,000 Native Americans were marched over 1,200 miles of rugged land. Over 4,000 of these Indians died of disease, famine, and warfare. The Indian tribe was called the Cherokee and we call this event the Trail of Tears. As you will soon learn, it is one of the most brutal and racist events to happen in America.

The Trail of Tears happened when Hernando De Soto took his adventures to America. After he came to America more and more Europeans came and began to invade on Indian land. The Indians became lost in bewilderment and anger. Some tribes didn't feel this way until later on, for some helped the new comers win wars during the colonial periods. Often when the Indians' side lost the war, the Indians would have to give up a large portion of their land. So as you can see the greed for Indian Territory started early.

As we get back to the Trail of Tears you will learn that there were many treaties signed between 1684 and 1835. Every treaty was broken, however, because of discoveries of gold on Indian territory.

In 1830 congress passed the Indian Removal Act because gold was discovered on Cherokee land. Whites wanted the Indians out of the way. President Andrew Jackson said, "The Indian Removal Act will place a dense population in large tracts of the country now occupied by a few savage hunters." This era was popular with voters. However, not everyone agreed. Davy Crockette was a very strong opponent. He once said, " I would sooner be honestly damned than hypocritically immortalized." The act passed regardless. Once passed, President Jackson signed the bill into action.

While the white people thought this idea was just great, the Indians thought otherwise. They didn't like the idea that they had to give up their lands when they had been living on them for so long. Aitoweyah, a Cherokee Indian , wrote a letter to John Ross saying, " We the people think only of the love we have for our land for... we do love the land where we were brought up. We will never let our hold to this land go... to let it go would be like throwing away our mother that gave us birth."

No matter how much they fought it with letters and statements they couldn't stop it physically and so General Winfield Scott took six hundred wagons, k No matter how much they fought it with letters and statements they couldn't stop it physically and so General Winfield Scott took six hundred wagons, keelboats, and steamers to Cherokee Land and forcefully moved 16,000 Cherokee from their homes to make shift forts until they could be moved to their reservation in Oklahoma. Keelboats, and steamers to Cherokee Land and forcefully moved 16,000 Cherokee from their homes to make shift forts until they could be moved to their reservation in Oklahoma.

The Cherokee Removal Forts are not as well known in the aspect of the Trail of Tears, They are overshadowed by the long journey itself. Over fifteen of the of these forts were located in Georgia alone.

The camps were filled with human waste and many women and children were raped. To make things worse on top of all that, the round up took over five months to complete; which was quite a bit longer than expected. Approximately one third of the deaths attributed to the trail of tears are a result of these forts. Many of these diseased camps have been lost to our history books.

A Georgia soldier once wrote in his journal, " I fought in many wars between the states and have seen many men killed, some by my own hands, but the Cherokee Removal was the cruelest work I ever knew."

Before the journey was over 4,000 innocent men, women, and children were stolen from the Cherokee existence.
Will Thomas, an adopted Cherokee, purchased 56,000 acres of land, which eventually became known as the Qualla Boundary where the Eastern band of Cherokees now reside peacefully.

A startling story captured my heart as I was searching through my information and I would like to share it with you. It is called The Cherokee Rose.

When the Trail of Tears started in 1838, the mothers of the Cherokee tribes were grieving so much that they were unable to help their children survive the journey. The elders prayed for a sign that would lift the mothers' spirits and give them strength. The next day a beautiful rose began to grow where each of the mothers' tears had fallen. The rose is white for the tears that were shed, it has a gold center that shows the gold stolen form the Cherokee, and seven leaves that represent the seven Cherokee clans. The wild Cherokee Rose grows along the route of the Trail of Tears into Eastern Oklahoma to this day.

The Brave Cherokee By John Howard Payne

O' soft fills the dew on the twilight descending
And night over the distant forest is bending
Like the storm spirit, dark o'er the tremulous rain

But midnight enshrouded my lone heart in it's dwelling
A tumult of woe in my bosom is swelling
And tear unbefitting the warrior is telling
That hope has abandoned the brave Cherokee

Can a tree that is torn from its root by the fountain
The pride of the valley; green spreading and fair
Can it flourish, removed to the rock of the mountain
Unwarmed by the sun and unwatered by care?

Though vesper be kind, her sweet dews in bestowing
No life giving Brook in its shadows is flowing
And when the chill winds of the desert are blowing
So droops the transplanted and lone Cherokee

Sacred graves pf my sires, and I left you forever
How melted my heart when I bade you adieu
Shall joy light the face of the Indian? Ah, never
While memory sad has the power to renew.

As flies the fleet deer when the bloodhound has started
So fled the winged hope from the poor broken hearted
Oh, could she have turned ere forever departing
And beckons with smiles to her sad Cherokee

Is it the low wind through the wet willows rushing
That fills with wild numbers my listening ear?
Or is it some hermit rill in the solitude gushing
The strange playing minstrel, whose music I hear?

Tis the voice of my father, slow, solemnly stealing
I see his dim form by yon meteor kneeling
To the God of the White man, the Christian appealing
He prays for the foe of the dark Cherokee

Great spirit of good, whose abode is in Heaven,
Whose wampum of peace is the bow in the sky
Wilt though give to the wants of the calmorous ravens,
Yet turn a deaf ear to my piteous cry?

O'er the ruins of home, o'er my heart's desolation
No more shalt though hear my unblest lamentation
For death's dark encounter, I make preperation
He hears the last groan of the wild Cherokee

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In the year 1838, 16,000 Native Americans were marched over 1,200 miles of rugged land. Over 4,000 of these Indians died of disease, famine, and warfare. The Indian tribe was called the Cherokee and we call this event the Trail of Tears.

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This goes with the history.com article. That source is reliable because the people that wrote the article are historians and there is alot of rich good information in it. Also in the article there are names of people from the westward expansion and there are quotes.

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This is a good source because it comes form a good site with trustworthy information from historians that know a lot about Thisbe topic and have resreached this topic for years and then partnered with writers to bring this articles to us. This is helpful to us because it gives lots of  beneficial information to our topic.

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this is a good and helpful website because it gave a lot of good and trust worthy information about the Native American tribes and how they were useful in the Westward expansion.

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http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h1567.html

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this is a good source because it tells more about why they made the Indian Removal Act. It also gives more information about President Andrew Jackson, who is the one that approved and signed the act, along with led the treaty against them. Along with that, it tells the reader about why and how the Native Americans got kicked out of their land.

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The U.S. Government used treaties as one means to displace Indians from their tribal lands, a mechanism that was strengthened with the Removal Act of 1830. In cases where this failed, the government sometimes violated both treaties and Supreme Court rulings to facilitate the spread of European Americans westward across the continent.

As the 19th century began, land-hungry Americans poured into the backcountry of the coastal South and began moving toward and into what would later become the states of Alabama and Mississippi. Since Indian tribes living there appeared to be the main obstacle to westward expansion, white settlers petitioned the federal government to remove them. Although Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe argued that the Indian tribes in the Southeast should exchange their land for lands west of the Mississippi River, they did not take steps to make this happen. Indeed, the first major transfer of land occurred only as the result of war.

In 1814, Major General Andrew Jackson led an expedition against the Creek Indians climaxing in the Battle of Horse Shoe Bend (in present day Alabama near the Georgia border), where Jackson's force soundly defeated the Creeks and destroyed their military power. He then forced upon the Indians a treaty whereby they surrendered to the United States over twenty-million acres of their traditional land-about one-half of present day Alabama and one-fifth of Georgia. Over the next decade, Jackson led the way in the Indian removal campaign, helping to negotiate nine of the eleven major treaties to remove Indians.

Under this kind of pressure, Native American tribes-specifically the Creek, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw-realized that they could not defeat the Americans in war. The appetite of the settlers for land would not abate, so the Indians adopted a strategy of appeasement. They hoped that if they gave up a good deal of their land, they could keep at least some a part of it. The Seminole tribe in Florida resisted, in the Second Seminole War (1835-1842) and the Third Seminole War (1855-1858), however, neither appeasement nor resistance worked.

From a legal standpoint, the United States Constitution empowered Congress to "regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes." In early treaties negotiated between the federal government and the Indian tribes, the latter typically acknowledged themselves "to be under the protection of the United States of America, and of no other sovereign whosoever." When Andrew Jackson became president (1829-1837), he decided to build a systematic approach to Indian removal on the basis of these legal precedents.

To achieve his purpose, Jackson encouraged Congress to adopt the Removal Act of 1830. The Act established a process whereby the President could grant land west of the Mississippi River to Indian tribes that agreed to give up their homelands. As incentives, the law allowed the Indians financial and material assistance to travel to their new locations and start new lives and guaranteed that the Indians would live on their new property under the protection of the United States Government forever. With the Act in place, Jackson and his followers were free to persuade, bribe, and threaten tribes into signing removal treaties and leaving the Southeast.

In general terms, Jackson's government succeeded. By the end of his presidency, he had signed into law almost seventy removal treaties, the result of which was to move nearly 50,000 eastern Indians to Indian Territory-defined as the region belonging to the United States west of the Mississippi River but excluding the states of Missouri and Iowa as well as the Territory of Arkansas-and open millions of acres of rich land east of the Mississippi to white settlers. Despite the vastness of the Indian Territory, the government intended that the Indians' destination would be a more confined area-what later became eastern Oklahoma.

The Cherokee Nation resisted, however, challenging in court the Georgia laws that restricted their freedoms on tribal lands. In his 1831 ruling on Cherokee Nation v. the State of Georgia, Chief Justice John Marshall declared that "the Indian territory is admitted to compose a part of the United States," and affirmed that the tribes were "domestic dependent nations" and "their relation to the United States resembles that of a ward to his guardian." However, the following year the Supreme Court reversed itself and ruled that Indian tribes were indeed sovereign and immune from Georgia laws. President Jackson nonetheless refused to heed the Court's decision. He obtained the signature of a Cherokee chief agreeing to relocation in the Treaty of New Echota, which Congress ratified against the protests of Daniel Webster and Henry Clay in 1835. The Cherokee signing party represented only a faction of the Cherokee, and the majority followed Principal Chief John Ross in a desperate attempt to hold onto their land. This attempt faltered in 1838, when, under the guns of federal troops and Georgia state militia, the Cherokee tribe were forced to the dry plains across the Mississippi. The best evidence indicates that between three and four thousand out of the fifteen to sixteen thousand Cherokees died en route from the brutal conditions of the "Trail of Tears."

With the exception of a small number of Seminoles still resisting removal in Florida, by the 1840s, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, no Indian tribes resided in the American South. Through a combination of coerced treaties and the contravention of treaties and judicial determination, the United States Government succeeded in paving the way for the westward expansion and the incorporation of new territories as part of the United States.

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Milestones: 1830-1860 - Office of the Historian

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At the beginning of the 1830s, nearly 125,000 Native Americans lived on millions of acres of land in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida-land their ancestors had occupied and cultivated for generations. But 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 on the Indians' land, the federal government forced them to leave their homelands and walk hundreds of miles to a specially designated "Indian Territory" across the Mississippi River. This difficult and oftentimes deadly journey is known as the Trail of Tears.
WATCH: Native American History Documentaries on HISTORY Vault
The 'Indian Problem'

White Americans, particularly those who lived on the western frontier, often feared and resented the Native Americans they encountered: To them, American Indians seemed to be an unfamiliar, alien people who occupied land that white settlers wanted (and believed they deserved).

Some officials in the early years of the American republic, such as President George Washington, believed that the best way to solve this "Indian problem" was to simply "civilize" the Native Americans. The goal of this civilization campaign was to make Native Americans as much like white Americans as possible by encouraging them convert to Christianity, learn to speak and read English and adopt European-style economic practices such as the individual ownership of land and other property (including, in some instances in the South, enslaved persons).

In the southeastern United States, many Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Creek and Cherokee people embraced these customs and became known as the "Five Civilized Tribes."

Did you know? Indian removal took place in the Northern states as well. In Illinois and Wisconsin, for example, the bloody Black Hawk War in 1832 opened to white settlement millions of acres of land that had belonged to the Sauk, Fox and other native nations.

But the Native Americans' land, located in parts of Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, Florida and Tennessee, was valuable, and it grew to be more coveted as white settlers flooded the region. Many of these whites yearned to make their fortunes by growing cotton, and often resorted to violent means to take land from their Indigenous neighbors. They stole livestock; burned and looted houses and towns; committed mass murder; and squatted on land that did not belong to them.

Worcester v. Georgia

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

In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the U.S. Supreme Court objected to these practices and affirmed that native nations were sovereign nations "in which the laws of Georgia [and other states] can have no force."

Even so, the maltreatment continued. As President Andrew Jackson noted in 1832, if no one intended to enforce the Supreme Court's rulings (which he certainly did not), then the decisions would "[fall]...still born." Southern states were determined to take ownership of Indian lands and would go to great lengths to secure this territory.

Indian Removal Act

Andrew Jackson had long been an advocate of what he called "Indian removal." As an Army general, he had spent years leading brutal campaigns against the Creeks in Georgia and Alabama and the Seminoles in Florida-campaigns that resulted in the transfer of hundreds of thousands of acres of land from Indian nations to white farmers.

As president, he continued this crusade. In 1830, he signed the Indian Removal Act, which gave the federal government the power to exchange Native-held land in the cotton kingdom east of the Mississippi for land to the west, in the "Indian colonization zone" that the United States had acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase. This "Indian territory" was located in present-day Oklahoma.

The law required the government to negotiate removal treaties fairly, voluntarily and peacefully: It did not permit the president or anyone else to coerce Native nations into giving up their ancestral lands. However, President Jackson and his government frequently ignored the letter of the law and forced Native Americans to vacate lands they had lived on for generations.

Trail of Tears

In the winter of 1831, under threat of invasion by the U.S. Army, the Choctaw became the first nation to be expelled from its land altogether. They made the journey to Indian Territory on foot (some "bound in chains and marched double file," one historian writes), and without any food, supplies or other help from the government.

Thousands of people died along the way. It was, one Choctaw leader told an Alabama newspaper, a "trail of tears and death."

The Indian-removal process continued. In 1836, the federal government 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.
READ MORE: How Native Americans Struggled to Survive on the Trail of Tears
Treaty of New Echota

The Cherokee people were divided: What was the best way to handle the government's determination to get its hands on their territory? Some wanted to stay and fight. Others thought it was more pragmatic to agree to leave in exchange for money and other concessions.

In 1835, a few self-appointed representatives of the Cherokee nation negotiated the Treaty of New Echota, which traded all Cherokee land east of the Mississippi - roughly 7 million acres - for $5 million, relocation assistance and compensation for lost property.

To the federal government, the treaty (signed in New Echota, Georgia) was a done deal, but a majority of the Cherokee felt betrayed. Importantly, the negotiators did not represent the tribal government or anyone else. Most Cherokee people considered the Treaty of New Echota fraudulent, and the Cherokee National Council voted in 1836 to reject it.

John Ross

"The instrument in question is not the act of our nation," wrote the nation's principal chief, John Ross, in a letter to the U.S. Senate protesting the Treaty of New Echota. "We are not parties to its covenants; it has not received the sanction of our people." Nearly 16,000 Cherokees signed Ross's petition, but Congress approved the treaty anyway.

By 1838, only about 2,000 Cherokees had left their Georgia homeland for Indian Territory. President Martin Van Buren sent General Winfield Scott and 7,000 soldiers to expedite the removal process. Scott and his troops forced the Cherokee into stockades at bayonet point while his men looted their homes and belongings.

Then, they marched the Indians more than 1,200 miles to Indian Territory. Whooping cough, typhus, dysentery, cholera and starvation were epidemic along the way. Historians estimate that more than 5,000 Cherokee died as a result of the journey.

Legacy of the Trail of Tears

By 1840, tens of thousands of Native Americans had been driven off of their land in the southeastern states and forced to move across the Mississippi to Indian Territory. The federal government promised that their new land would remain unmolested forever, but as the line of white settlement pushed westward, "Indian Country" shrank and shrank. In 1907, Oklahoma became a state and Indian Territory was considered lost.

A 2020 decision by the Supreme Court, however, highlighted ongoing interest in Native American territorial rights. In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that a huge area of Oklahoma is still considered an American Indian reservation.

This decision left the state of Oklahoma unable to prosecute Native Americans accused of crimes on those tribal lands - only federal and tribal law enforcement can prosecute such crimes. (A later 2022 Supreme Court decision rolled back some provisions of the 2020 court finding.)

The Trail of Tears - actually a network of different routes - is over 5,000 miles long and covers nine states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Today, the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail is run by the National Park Service and portions of it are accessible on foot, by horse, by bicycle or by car.

Sources

Trail of Tears. NPS.gov.
Trail of Tears. Museum of the Cherokee Indian.
The Treaty of New Echota and the Trail of Tears. North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
The Treaty That Forced the Cherokee People from Their Homelands Goes on View. Smithsonian Magazine.
Justices rule swath of Oklahoma remains tribal reservation. Associated Press.
Justices limit 2020 ruling on tribal lands in Oklahoma. Associated Press.

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At the beginning of the 1830s, nearly 125,000 Native Americans lived on millions of acres of land in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida-land their ancestors had occupied and cultivated for generations. But by the end of the decade, very few natives remained anywhere in the southeastern United States.

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This is a good source because history.com is a good and trust worthy site. These are real historians who have resreached this topic for many many years. This is help for this project because it gives facets about the trail of tears in a video form.

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This source is good because it gives information on the act and who signed it. It also has specific dates that were important to this act coming to life.

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The Library of Congress is home to many of the most important documents in American history. This Web site provides links to materials digitized from the collections of the Library of Congress that supplement and enhance the study of these crucial documents.

The links at right highlight eras of American History. Each of these sections link to a list of important documents from that era. For each item on these lists there is a page with background information about the document, a list of links to digital materials concerning that document from the Library's site and elsewhere, and bibliographies both for general readers and for younger readers.

Sections and Topics:

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The Library of Congress is home to many of the most important documents in American history. This Web site provides links to materials digitized from the collections of the Library of Congress that supplement and enhance the study of these crucial documents. Each section of this site links to a list of important documents from that era.