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The events of the trail of tears
Cherokee Trail of Tears
Essays on the trail of tears
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Following a Trail of Tears
For yet another third period, I walked through the faded pink door into the fluorescent-lit room. I walked along the back wall, past the poster of the “Pledge of Allegiance” spelled out with license plates. I sat down in my seat. This would be my first of two periods in a row with Mrs. Sorenson, the quirky history/English teacher who would bring out her fiddle and sing songs based on the unit of U.S. history we were working on. This day, Mrs. Sorenson wasn’t singing any songs. There weren’t many songs she knew about the Trail of Tears. She reminded us about how the American Indians had owned the land before the Europeans came and how the new settlers wanted to keep the natural resources found in the Indians’ homelands. Mrs. Sorenson explained that the Cherokee Indians, a tribe of Native Americans, were forced off their land and marched thousands of miles on foot to be moved to the designated Indian Territory. She mentioned that many died, but more Cherokees cried. To me, this was merely information to be absorbed for the test, and then squeezed out to make room for the next unit. I had bigger problems than mere thousands of people in the past being paraded to some other place. Little did I know that in five years I would study literature extensively on the Trail of Tears for my college English class.
The Trail of Tears was the Cherokee removal in 1838 from the southeast states of the United States into Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. Remembering back to eighth grade, I vaguely recall the Indians being forced off their land and moved to Indian Territory with the violent assistance of soldiers; however, all the research I have done point out that only a few were moved under sol...
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...te. This knowledge could keep Iraqi citizens from dying today. It could keep Iraqi and American soldiers alive. It could feed and house homeless all around the world. I want to be able to make a difference. If getting information is all we as people need to do to make a difference, we should try and stay informed. Information is the key to a healthy and peaceful world, which is why I will make an effort to keep informed.
Works Cited
Anderson, William L. Cherokee Removal: Before and After. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia P, 1991. 75-83.
Jackson, Andrew. "Andrew Jackson's Second Annual Message." PBS. Comp. James D. Richardson. 4 Apr. 2007 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h3437t.html.
Johnston, Carolyn R. Cherokee Women in Crisis: Trail of Tears, Civil War, and Allotment, 1838-1907. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama P, 2003. 56-78.
Owen, Narcissa, and Karen L. Kilcup. A Cherokee woman's America memoirs of Narcissa Owen, 1831-1907. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005.
The United States may be glamor of hope and prosperity for many nations still undergoing democratic maturity and development; however, her story is one that combines deadly struggles and an array of governmental decisions that defined the path to freedom of now the world’s most powerful country. One of the ways to understand the history of the United States is through revisiting the Trail of Tears, which is documented in the film. We Shall Remain: Trail of Tears. Notably, the film documentary with five parts in total highlighting the history of Native Americans from the 17th
Along the way 4,000 Indians died because of the harsh terrane and the cruelty of the soldiers and many of them are buried in unmarked graves along the trail of tears. The trail of tears has been Know according to a white Georgian the “Cruelest work I ever knew”(Tindall pg 343).A few Cherokees Indians hide in the mountains and became knew as the Eastern Band of Cherokees. Later the Creeks and the Chickasaws went back to try to take back control of their lands. During the trail of tears nearly 100,000 Indians were forced to relocate to the west. The government during that time sold about 100 million acres of Native American lands, and most of the land was prime cotton growing
Ellis, Jerry. Walking the Trail: One Man's Journey along the Cherokee Trail of Tears. New
Byers, Ann. The Trail of Tears: A Primary Source of History of the forced Relocation of the Cherokee Nation. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, 2003.
Like most Americans, I have spent many moments since the terrorist attacks of 9/11 trying to grasp both the acts themselves and the seemingly endless chain of depressing events following in their wake. Although many have rediscovered faith communities or a renewed social activism in their search for understanding, I have immersed myself in the lessons of Cherokee culture and history. This history teaches me to situate September 11th in the context of other tragedies that have occurred on American soil. For example, as many as 10,000 Cherokee people perished as a result of the forced march to Oklahoma known as the Trail of Tears B or, more accurately, the nuna dat suny, which literally translates as "they were crying in that place." Cherokee oral tradition is replete with stories acknowledging the trauma of what historians euphemistically call "removal", and its physical, spiritual and social wounds may never be completely healed. Other stories, and particularly those in the genre known as origin narratives, illuminate both 9/11 and Removal by enabling the emergence of a distinctly Cherokee critical theory of violence.
“An American Betrayal Cherokee Patriots And The Trail Of Tears.” Kirkus Reviews 79.17 (2011) : 1570-1571 Literary Reference Center, Web, 6 March 2014
The history of the relationship between Indigenous Peoples of the North America and European settlers represents a doubtlessly tragic succession of events, which resulted in a drastic decline in Indigenous population leading to the complete annihilation of some Native groups, and bringing others to the brink of extinction. This disastrous development left the Indigenous community devastated, shaking their society to its very pillars. From the 1492 Incident and up to the 19th century the European invasion to the North America heavily impacted the social development of the Indigenous civilization: apart from contributing to their physical extermination by waging incessant war on the Indian tribes, Anglo-Americans irreversibly changed the Native lifestyle discrediting their entire set of moral guidelines. Using the most disreputable inventions of the European diplomacy, the colonizers and later the United States’ government not only turned separate Indigenous tribes against each other but have also sown discord among the members of the same tribe. One of the most vivid examples of the Anglo-American detrimental influence on the Native groups is the history of the Cherokee Nation and the U.S. Indian Removal Policy. The Cherokee removal from Georgia (along with many other Indian nations) was definitely an on-going conflict that did not start at any moment in time, but developed in layers of history between the Native Americans, settlers of various cultures, and the early U.S. government. This rich and intricate history does not allow for easy and quick judgments as to who was responsible for the near demise of the Cherokee Nation. In 1838, eight thousand Cherokees perished on a forced march out of Georgia, which came to be called the T...
"American President: Andrew Jackson: A Life in Brief." Miller Center of Public Affairs. Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia, 2011. Web. 03 Apr. 2011.
In 1838 President Andrew Jackson passed an Indian Removal policy, this policy would ensure loss of home and many deaths for the Native Americans. In the early 1830s there were approximately 125,000 Native Americans whom lived in vast lands in Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, and Florida.(Trail of Tears). These lands were very important to the Native Americans who honored the lands their past ancestors walked and built a life.(Trail of T.). Sadly by the end of the decade many things had changed for the Native Americans.
Imagine abruptly being forced out of your home. Imagine walking barefoot for miles and seeing people close to you collapse left and right. This is how every Native American on the Trail of Tears lived because of the Indian Removal Act. This act, signed by President Andrew Jackson on May 28 of 1830, granted him the right to grant unsettled lands in exchange for Indian lands. These lands were inhabited by the Five Civilized Tribes - the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole. Due to the Indian Removal Act, these five tribes were forced off their land and sent 1500 miles west to present day Oklahoma. Thousands died of countless illnesses, their sufferings earning the migration its name - the Trail of Tears. The Indian Removal Act
“My friends, circumstances render it impossible that you can flourish in the midst of a civilized community. You have but one remedy within your reach, and that is to remove to the West. And the sooner you do this, the sooner you will commence your career of improvement and prosperity (9) .” This quote by Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, shows how he misled the Native Americans prior to the Trail of Tears. The Trail of Tears was one of the United States’ worst examples of man's inhumanity to man. Over one hundred thousand Native Americans were taken from their homes, and over twenty thousand died, but none suffered as much as the Cherokees (2). The Cherokees were discriminated against by the U.S. government, which
The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was an abuse of power exerted on the Indian tribes residing in America by the people of the colonies as well as presidents at the time of their removal. Many Indians affected lost their lives, their loved one’s lives’, and the land they thrived on dating back years to their ancestors. This act would be later named “the trail of tears” because of the monumental loss the Indian tribes had endured during their displacement, and the physical and psychological damages of these people (TOTWSR).
The American-Indian documentary film is based on the historical eviction of the Native Americans from their homelands. The documentary is a five part series that span from the 17th to the 20th century beginning with the arrival of the Puritans, the tensions with the Native Americans and their eventual eviction from their homelands. Part III ‘Trail of Tears’ is about tribal debates on how the Cherokee people accepted the policy of assimilation into the Western lifestyle in order to keep their lands and safeguard the Cherokee nation but the white Americas discriminated them regarding them as savages. Their removal was part of Andrew Jackson’s policy to forcefully evict the Indians from the east of the Mississippi River to Oklahoma. The journey is referred to as the ‘Trail of
B. J., Jackson as a President: Yesterday and Today. Planet Papers. Retrieved June 14, 2009,