Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears

• The "Five Civilized Tribes" lived in the eastern part of the country, specifically in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida.
• Tribes included the Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw.
• Settlers wanted the federal government to relocate Native Americans living in the Southeast.

Indian Removal Act and Territory

• The Indian Removal Act allowed the federal government to pay Native Americans to move west.
• Officials were sent by Jackson to negotiate treaties with Native Americans of the Southeast.
• In 1834, Congress created the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma for Native Americans from the Southeast.

Cherokee Nation

• In the 1790s, the federal government recognized the Cherokee people in Georgia as a separate nation with their own laws.
• In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that Georgia had no right to interfere with the Cherokee.

Trail of Tears

• Most of the 17,000 Cherokee refused to honor the treaty and wrote a protest letter to the government and people of the United States.
• In 1838, General Winfield Scott, along with an army of 7,000 federal troops, arrived to remove the Cherokee from their homes and lead them west.
• The Cherokee, knowing that fighting would only lead to their destruction, surrendered, and the long march to the West began.
• Cherokee people called their forced journey west the Trail Where They Cried, and historians refer to it as the Trail of Tears.