TRAIL OF TEARS

The Trail of Tears refers to the route followed by fifteen thousand Cherokee during their 1838 removal and forced march from Georgia to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma).

In 1791, a U.S. treaty had recognized Cherokee territory in Georgia as independent, and the Cherokee people had created a thriving republic with a written constitution. For decades, the state of Georgia sought to enforce its authority over the Cherokee Nation, but its efforts had little effect until the election of President Andrew Jackson, a longtime supporter of Indian removal. Although the Supreme Court declared Congress's 1830 Indian removal bill unconstitutional (Worcester v. Georgia, 1832), the national and state harassment continued, culminating in the rounding up of the Cherokee by troops in 1838.

The Cherokee were forced to abandon their property, livestock, and ancestral burial grounds and move to camps in Tennessee. From there, in the midst of severe winter weather, they were marched another eight hundred miles to Indian Territory. An estimated four thousand people—over 25 percent of the Cherokee Nation—died during the march.

The Trail of Tears, the path the Cherokee followed, became a national monument in 1987, serving as a symbol of the wrongs suffered by Indians at the hands of the U.S. government.

See also Cherokee Nation v. Georgia; Indians.