May be reproduced for classroom use.

Toolkit Texts: Short Nonfiction for American History, Westward Expansion, by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis, ©2016 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann).
Woolaroc Museum, Bartlesville, Oklahoma

Forced Removal
or many, the West represented a chance The Cherokees were left with only a small
F for a wonderful new life. But for America’s
native people, the push westward resulted in
section of northwestern Georgia. When gold was
discovered there in 1828, the U.S. government
quite the opposite experience. The story of the wanted this land, too. Under a law passed by
Cherokee Indians, the single largest Native Congress called the Indian Removal Act of 1830,
American group in the Southeast, is just one President Andrew Jackson ordered the Cherokees
example of the mistreatment of Indians during to leave.
this time. Centuries of contact with white settlers
Before the arrival of the first Europeans, already had decimated many native populations.
Cherokee country included most of present-day Tens of thousands of Indians had died after
Kentucky and Tennessee, as well as parts of exposure to diseases against which they had no
western Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, immunity. In addition, as the number of settlers
and northern Georgia and Alabama. By the had increased in the 1700s, American Indian
1800s, settlers had taken most of this land. tribes had been pushed from their lands east of
the Mississippi River. Now the Indian Removal
Act decreed that all native people be resettled
Forced from their homes (above), the Cherokee on land west of the river, which was seen as the
Indians suffered on the Trail of Tears, which took American desert.
its name from the Cherokee phrase Nunna daul In May 1838, army troops began rounding up
Tsuny, meaning “The Trail Where They Cried.” the Cherokees, removing them from their homes

66 By Christine Graf and Andrew Matthews, Cobblestone, © by Carus Publishing Company. Reproduced with permission.
 and imprisoning them in stockaded forts. In the group from its lands. By the late 1800s, even
fall, the Indians began a forced walk of almost those Indians who lived west of the Mississippi
1,200 miles from Georgia to Oklahoma. The came into conflict with the growing presence of
sick, the young, and the elderly rode in wagons, permanent settlers. In many parts of the West,
May be reproduced for classroom use. Toolkit Texts: Short Nonfiction for American History, Westward Expansion, by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis, ©2016 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann).

while the others trudged on foot through difficult traditional Indian hunting and farming lands
weather. At night, exhausted, they slept on the were taken. Most of the bison that the Indians
frozen ground, covered only by thin blankets. had relied on for food (meat), tools (bones), and
Hunger, exposure, and disease took their toll. shelter and clothing (hides) were killed.
At each stopping point, at least 15 shallow graves Some, such as the Sioux and the Apaches,
were dug in the frozen earth. This terrible forced fought back and resisted efforts by the U.S.
migration became known as the “Trail of Tears.” government to keep them on reservations. But
Four thousand Cherokees, about one quarter of they ultimately were no match for the U.S. Army.
the population, died as a result. Unable to save their land or their way of life
The Trail of Tears would not be the last time through either peaceful or violent methods, most
that broken promises and treaties resulted in the Native Americans found themselves forced to live
U.S. government pushing a Native American on reservations by the end of the 1800s.

© Mark Gilliland/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/HIP

A Trail of Tears sign in Alabama
(above) marks the path of the
Cherokees’ forced march.

The Cherokees’ homeland once

included a large area of today’s Maps: Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division
southeastern United States (above).
Most Cherokee villages were in the
southern Appalachian Mountains.

After the Indian Removal Act, the

Cherokee Indians were relocated to a
reservation in Oklahoma (right).

By Christine Graf and Andrew Matthews, Cobblestone, © by Carus Publishing Company. Reproduced with permission. 67
 PRIMARY SOURCE

The Trail of Tears: A Native of Maine

May be reproduced for classroom use. Toolkit Texts: Short Nonfiction for American History, Westward Expansion, by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis, ©2016 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann).
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,
the land their ancestors had lived on for generations. Sadly, as part of Andrew
Jackson’s Indian removal policy, the federal government forced them to leave
their homelands and walk thousands of miles to a specially designated “Indian
Territory” across the Mississippi River. The Cherokee people faced hunger and
disease on this difficult journey, known as the “Trail of Tears.” About 4,000 of
the 16,000 Cherokee people died on this forced march. A Maine newspaper
correspondent wrote the following account after watching the Cherokee people
pass through Kentucky in 1838.

On Tuesday evening we fell in with a detachment of the poor Cherokee

Indians. . . . That poor despised people are now on their long and tedious
march to their place of destination beyond the Mississippi River. In the
first detachment which we met, were about eleven hundred Indians—sixty
wagons—six hundred horses, and perhaps forty pairs of oxen. We found them
in the forest camped for the night by the road side, comfortable—if comfortable
they might be in a December night, and under a severe fall of rain accompanied
with heavy wind. With their canvass for a shield from the inclemency of the
weather, and the cold wet ground for a resting place, after the fatigue of the
day, they spent the night with probably as little of the reality as the appearance
of comfort. We learned from the officers and overseers of the detachment in
the morning, that many of the aged Indians were suffering extremely from the
fatigue of the journey, and the ill health consequent upon it. Several were then
quite ill, and one aged man we were informed was then in the last struggles
of death. There were about ten officers and overseers in each detachment
whose business it was to provide supplies for the journey, and attend to the
general wants of the company. The cost of the journey is paid by the American
Government as one of the conditions of the pretended treaty which many of the
Indians still call fraudulent.

The officers informed us that the Indians were very unwilling to go—so
much so that some two hundred had escaped, in collecting them together,
and secreted themselves in the mountains in Georgia and the eastern part of
Tennessee, and those who were on the way were so unwilling to pursue their

68
 journey, that it was some days quite late in the evening before they could get
May be reproduced for classroom use. Toolkit Texts: Short Nonfiction for American History, Westward Expansion, by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis, ©2016 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann).

them under way—and even then they went reluctantly. I know it is said that
“only a few were unwilling to go”—“the most go willingly and think the remove
on the whole, an advantage to the nation.” The testimony of the officers and
observation have both tended to confirm the belief, however, in my mind
that the great majority of the nation feel that they are wronged—grievously
wronged, and nothing but arbitrary power compels them to remove . . .

The last detachment which we passed on the 7th, embraced rising two
thousand Indians with horses and mules in proportion. The forward part of the
train we found just pitching their tents for the night, and notwithstanding some
thirty or forty wagons were already stationed, we found the road literally filled
with the procession for about three miles in length. The sick and feeble were
carried in wagons—about as comfortable for travelling as a New England ox
cart with a covering over it—a great many ride on horseback and multitudes go
on foot—even aged females, apparently, nearly ready to drop into the grave—
were travelling with heavy burdens attached to the back—on the sometimes
frozen ground, and sometimes muddy streets, with no covering for the feet
except what nature had given them. We were some hours making our way
through the crowd, which brought us in close contact with the wagons and the
multitude, so much that we felt fortunate to find ourselves freed from the crowd
without leaving any part of our carriage. We learned from the inhabitants on
the road where the Indians passed that they buried fourteen to fifteen at every
stopping place—and they make a journey of ten miles per day only on an
average. . . . One aged Indian, who was commander of the friendly Creeks and
Seminoles in a very important engagement in company with General Jackson,
was accosted on arriving in a little village in Kentucky by an aged man residing
there, and who was one of Jackson’s men in the engagement referred to, and
asked if he (the Indian) recollected him? The aged Chieftain looked him in the
face and recognised him, and with a down-cast look and heavy sigh, referring
to the engagement, he said, “Ah! My life and the lives of my people were then at
stake for you and your country. I then thought Jackson my best friend. But, ah!
Jackson no serve me right. Your country no do me justice now.”

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