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Trail of tears essay
Trail of tears the rise and fall of the cherokee nation
Essay of trail of tears
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When the population thinks of the first people in America, they may think of Christopher Columbus or the European colonists, when actually the first people here were the Indians. The Trail of Tears was a relocation process forced by the whites onto the Indians. Native Americans then had to move from their homelands to the west and onto what is now called Oklahoma. This document forced them to agree to removal so that they could preserve their identity as tribes. The Indian’s land was held hostage by the states and the federal government. To understand the Trail of Tears, one must look at the unfairness and prejudice, the impact on the Native American lives during the journey, and the lasting effects. The Indians were treated with prejudice …show more content…
Also the state of Georgia and the citizens did not want Indians to stay on the land. “In 1820, pressure from the government and the people of Georgia made it exceedingly hard for the Cherokees to stay in the state of Georgia”, (Rozema 42). Therefore that is to say the Indians chose to do everything and anything to stay together as a tribe even if it meant they had to move across the country for that. This then led to the Indian Removal Act. This was the first major legislature that said the U.S. would no longer respect the legal and political rights of the Indians. The Act gave President Andrew Jackson a grant to acquire the Indian tribe’s unsettled western lands in exchange for their territories within the state borders in the Southeast, where they would be removed from. The Indians were forced to accept the land exchange and the removal …show more content…
Not only was there not enough food to go around but also it meant many died of starvation as some natives slowly began to recover this tragic removal. With recovery finally taking its place, the Cherokee repopulated, established homes for their people and a nation as a matter of fact once again. However the tragic experience they lived still takes a toll on them today. In effect it reproduced a massive distrust of outsiders such as the whites and the government to be specific and therefore the tension with the whites between the natives is still evident today (Trail
Andrew Jackson signed the indian removal act in 1830. This act allowed him to make treaties with the natives and steal their lands. The Trail of Tears was a forced relocation of more than 15,000 cherokee Indians. The white men/people gave the natives 2 options: 1. Leave or 2. Stay and Assimilate (learn our culture). The natives couldn’t have their own government. There were 5 civilized tribes including the cherokees. They learned english and went to american schools and when the cherokees went to court they won.
The tragedy of the Cherokee nation has haunted the legacy of Andrew Jackson"'"s Presidency. The events that transpired after the implementation of his Indian policy are indeed heinous and continually pose questions of morality for all generations. Ancient Native American tribes were forced from their ancestral homes in an effort to increase the aggressive expansion of white settlers during the early years of the United States. The most notable removal came after the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The Cherokee, whose journey was known as the '"'Trail of Tears'"', and the four other civilized tribes, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole, were forced to emigrate to lands west of the Mississippi River, to what is now day Oklahoma, against their will. During the journey westward, over 60,000 Indians were forced from their homelands. Approximately 4000 Cherokee Indians perished during the journey due to famine, disease, and negligence. The Cherokees to traveled a vast distance under force during the arduous winter of 1838-1839.# This is one of the saddest events in American history, yet we must not forget this tragedy.
... the unwilling tribes west of the Mississippi. In Jackson’s letter to General John Coffee on April 7, 1832, he explained that the Cherokees were still in Georgia, and that they ought to leave for their own benefit because destruction will come upon them if they stay. By 1835, most eastern tribes had unwillingly complied and moved west. The Bureau of Indian Affairs was created in 1836 to help out the resettled tribes. Most Cherokees rejected the settlement of 1835, which provided land in the Indian territory. It was not until 1838, after Jackson had left office, that the U.S. Army forced 15,000 Cherokees to leave Georgia. The hardships on the “trail of tears” were so great that over 4,000 Cherokees died on their heartbreaking westward journey. In conclusion, the above statement is valid and true. The decision the Jackson administration made to remove the Cherokee Indians to lands west of the Mississippi River was a reformulation of the national policy. Jackson, along with past Presidents George Washington, James Monroe, and Thomas Jefferson, tried to rid the south of Indians This process of removing the native people was continuous as the years went on.
Democracy can be traced back before the coming of Christ. Throughout Greece during the sixth century democracy was in its earliest stages and as the millenniums would pass the power of government by the people would show distinct alterations. This is evident when analyzing The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears by Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green. These authors illustrate how the U.S government adjusts policies from that of assimilating the Native American Indians to that of removing them from their homelands and forcibly causing the Cherokee nation to relocate themselves west of the Mississippi. In further depth Perdue and Green portray though vivid description how the government would show disloyalty and how that caused division between the tribal members of the Cherokee people. This endeavor of travel and animosity of the Indians would become known as the Trail of Tears.
President Jackson declared that “our ancestors found them the uncontrolled possessors of these vast regions” (188). It has been through persuasion and force that we have moved the Native Americans until some tribes have become extinct. The governor, Lumpkin, of Georgia argued that the state cannot exercise against the constitutional rights and moral duty. The Cherokee’s claimed that the treaties and laws of the United States had guaranteed their residency, their privileges and secured them against intruders. Even though the Cherokees had successfully appealed to the Executive, Legislative and Judicial governments Georgia continues to rob them of their laws government and land rights. The Cherokee people petitioned to the government of the United States to fulfill their promises and protect them and all they were given for a response was that the United States could not interfere. Even though I believe the Cherokee Nation had to fight for their sovereignty none of the choices available to them would have provided them with a good resolution. The white people really did not want them to assimilate because they feared them and considered them uncivilized. Moving freely to unknown lands would have been very difficult. By this time the Indians had suffered many losses from disease, they were becoming dependent on
The trail of tears was a hideous harsh horrible time that the Native Americans will not forget the 1830s about 100,000 Native Americans peacefully lived on 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 of akers. They have been on this land generations before the wight men arrived. There was gold found in Gorga and the land was for ital. They used huge cotton plantations because the people would get rich off of them. In 1830 Andrew Jackson privily sinned the removal act. Te removal act gave the Government the power to trade the land for the land that the Native Americans were on. The Native Americans did not want to move, but the precedent sent troops to force the removal. Solders who looted there homes traveled 15,000 Cherokees, and gunpoint marched over 12,000
The federal government proceeded to find a way around this decision and had three minor Cherokee chief’s sign the “Treaty of New Echota” in 1835 giving the Cherokee lands to the government for 5.6 million dollars and free passage west. Congress got the treaty ratified by only one vote. Members of their tribes murdered all three chiefs who took part in the signing of the treaty. After this event there was not much the Cherokee’s could do and were forcibly moved west on what they called and are known today as the ‘Trail of Tears,’ which became a constitutional crisis in our history. In this instance the lack of cooperation between the branches of the government was the downfall for the Cherokee nation. The way the Cherokee’s were forced west caused losses of up to twenty percent of the nation. This figure is only a guess and scholar’s think it was more a third of the nation was lost. The ‘Trail of Tears’ was also a morale issue in the United States, later having an impact on our history the way other Native American races in general are treated in the future.
At the beginning of the 1830s there was nearly 125,000 native Americans that lived on “millions of acres of the land of Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida”.(history.com) These lands had been occupied and cultivated by their ancestors for generations before. Then because of The Trail of Tears was an “800-mile forced journey marked by the cruelty of soldiers”. (Tindall P.434) and by the end of the forced relocations very few Native Americans remained anywhere in the southwest. “working on behave of the white settlers federal government forced them to leave their lands and walk miles to an “Indian territory””.(history.com) .This all happened because of the Indian Removal act of 1930, which authorized the relocation of the eastern Indians to the west of the Mississippi river. The Cherokee Indians tried to fight the relocation and even with the Supreme Court’s support Andrew Jackson still forced them to leave their land. By the 1840s there wasn't many Cherokee Indians that still remained in the southwest.
From 1815-1850 the United States became more diverse. Many of the immigrants came from Germany and Ireland. Immigrants came to the United States for freedom, abundant land, and economic opportunities and because of the Potato Famine. The Potato Famine was where the crops, mostly potatoes, started to fail. They were contaminated with a disease that destroyed the roots, and leaves of the potato. The Cherokee nation became more spread out and enjoyed the United States because of the whites society. By the 1800s the Cherokees adopted to many of the white’s society’s. Although, neither of these groups constantly had the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness to everyone. This led to unfair treatment of the immigrants and the Cherokee. The Cherokees were forced to leave their
The Trail of Tears was a hard battled journey for the Cherokee Nation. The Cherokee were driven to move west. They had to compromise and sign treaties, which drove them out of their land by the U.S. government. This was unfair to the Cherokees; the white settlers wanted the land for gold. Trail of tears is historically monumental because it shows the U.S. government cruelty to the Native Americans. It was unfair rights because they basically stole Cherokees land to satisfy their hunger for gold.
“Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race.” - Martin Luther King Jr. The Trail of Tears is a historical title given to an event that happened in 1838.In this event, the Cherokee community of Native Americans was forced by the USA government to move from their native home in the Southern part of the contemporary America to what is known as the Indian territories of Oklahoma. While some travelled by water, most of them travelled by land. The Cherokees took 6 months to complete an 800 mile distance to their destination.
I walked into the room on New Year’s Day and felt a sudden twinge of fear. My eyes already hurt from the tears I had shed and those tears would not stop even then the last viewing before we had to leave. She lay quietly on the bed with her face as void of emotion as a sheet of paper without the writing. Slowly, I approached the cold lifeless form that was once my mother and gave her a goodbye kiss.
Several Native Americans from the Cherokee tribe had feared that the whites would encroach upon their settlements in the near future so they moved west of the Mississippi many years before the Indian Removal Act was put into place. This good foresight and early movement allowed for them to pick the time that they wanted to leave and they allowed themselves the leisure of moving at their own pace and stopping when they wanted which cut down on casualties extremely and this also allowed them to allocate the appropriate amount of supplies for the trip before attempting to make it prematurely and causing catastrophe to hit. They established a government and worked out a peaceful way of life with the nearby surroundings and allowed themselves to blend into the area that they desired rather than an area that was designated for them. There was always a large tension building between the whites and Cherokee which had reached its climax after the discovery of gold in Georgia. This drove a frenzy that many people wanted in on to make out with a good sum of money as gold was in high demand and worth a lot at the time. When the gold was found it started a miniature gold rush and pulled in whites and
In the essay, “The Trail of Tears” by author Dee Brown explains that the Cherokees isn’t Native Americans that evaporate effectively from their tribal land, but the enormous measure of sympathy supported on their side that was abnormal. The Cherokees process towards culture also the treachery of both states and incorporated governments of the declaration and promises that contrived to the Cherokee nation. Dee Brown wraps up that the Cherokees had lost Kentucky and Tennessee, but a man who once consider their buddy named Andrew Jackson had begged the Cherokees to move to Mississippi but the bad part is the Indians and white settlers never get along together even if the government wanted to take care of them from harassment it shall be incapable to do that. The Cherokee families moved to the West, but the tribes were together and denied to give up more land but Jackson was running for President if the Georgians elects him as President he agreed that he should give his own support to open up the Cherokee lands for establishment.
Natives were forcefully removed from their land in the 1800’s by America. In the 1820’s and 30’s Georgia issued a campaign to remove the Cherokees from their land. The Cherokee Indians were one of the largest tribes in America at the time. Originally the Cherokee’s were settled near the great lakes, but overtime they moved to the eastern portion of North America. After being threatened by American expansion, Cherokee leaders re-organized their government and adopted a constitution written by a convention, led by Chief John Ross (Cherokee Removal). In 1828 gold was discovered in their land. This made the Cherokee’s land even more desirable. During the spring and winter of 1838- 1839, 20,000 Cherokees were removed and began their journey to Oklahoma. Even if natives wished to assimilate into America, by law they were neither citizens nor could they hold property in the state they were in. Principal Chief, John Ross and Major Ridge were leaders of the Cherokee Nation. The Eastern band of Cherokee Indians lost many due to smallpox. It was a year later that a Treaty was signed for cession of Cherokee land in Texas. A small number of Cherokee Indians assimilated into Florida, in o...