The Trail of Tears

The Cherokee people initially inhabited the southern ranges of the Appalachian Mountains, extending into four states: Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama.

In 1828, gold was discovered in Cherokee territory near its eastern boundary with Georgia. Prospectors soon flooded the area and by 1832, a lottery had been organized to redistribute Cherokee land to white settlers.

On May 28, 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act. It required all Native Americans to leave their ancestral lands and migrate to allotted territory west of the Mississippi River.

In December of the same year, the president gave his annual message to Congress "On Indian Removal," outlining the relocation plan and its professed benefits for Native Americans.

Jackson and other advocates for removal argued that Native Americans could not govern themselves in a civilized manner.

Beneath this widely accepted stereotype was a cold economic reality. The nation was expanding westward and the South was growing richer on plantation crops. The desire of settlers to acquire more agricultural land was increasingly in conflict with the desire of Native Americans to retain the land where they had lived for generations.

Known to settlers as "The Ridge," Major Ridge was given the title of major for his exemplary service during the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in the War of 1812.

Like many within the Cherokee Nation, Ridge came to believe that it was futile to resist removal by the United States government.

In 1835, Major Ridge and a small group of Cherokee leaders, including his son John Ridge, signed the Treaty of New Echota, ceding all remaining Cherokee land to the United States. For his part in the negotiations, Major Ridge was executed in 1839.

Andrew Jackson was elected president of the United States in 1828. Born in the Carolina backwoods, he grew up in Tennessee and became a national hero in the War of 1812.

"Old Hickory," as Jackson was known, was a confrontational president. He strongly advocated for removing all Native Americans west of the Mississippi River, ultimately signing the Indian Removal Act in 1830 and condemning the subsequent Supreme Court ruling that the United States had no right to impose laws on the sovereign Cherokee Nation.

In an open letter published in Georgia newspapers, Jackson told the Cherokees that "you and my white children are too near to each other to live in harmony and peace...."

In 1835, a small group of Cherokee leaders known as the Treaty Party signed the Treaty of New Echota. The agreement ceded all remaining Cherokee land in the southeast for five million dollars and seven million acres in modern-day Oklahoma.

Among the signers were Elias Boudinot, Major Ridge, and John Ridge. A few years later, all three were executed by other Cherokees for betraying their people.

In response to the Treaty of New Echota, Principal Chief John Ross wrote to Congress the following year while the treaty was being ratified.

Chief Ross protested that the group comprising the Treaty Party did not represent a majority of the 15,000 Cherokee people and therefore the 1835 treaty was fraudulent.

In his 1836 letter to Congress, John Ross called the Treaty of New Echota the "pretended treaty" and outlined the history of agreements made between the Cherokee Nation and the United States government.

In 1838, President Martin Van Buren, Andrew Jackson's former vice president, ordered the United States Army to remove the Cherokee people from their lands in Georgia.

Members of the Cherokee Nation were rounded up, placed in stockades, and marched to new territory hundreds of miles west of the Mississippi River. Today, this harrowing journey is known as the Trail of Tears.

During the forced removal, more than 400 Cherokees died from sickness, famine, and exposure to harsh conditions.