What is the Trail of Tears? From 1837 to 1839, thousands of Cherokee traveled along local roads and trails on their way to Indian Territory in the West.

The Cherokee, or Ani’-Yun’ wiya, did not willingly leave their homeland in the southern Appalachian Mountains. The 1830 Indian Removal Act required that they surrender their land. In the decade that followed, the federal government forcibly removed Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole from their homes in the Southeast and relocated them to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma.

The Cherokee people called this journey the "Trail of Tears" because of its devastating effects. The migrants faced hunger, disease, and exhaustion on the forced march. Over 4,000 out of 15,000 of the Cherokees died.

The roots of this forced migration lay in greed. The British Proclamation of 1763 designated the region between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River as Indian Territory. Although that region was to be protected for the exclusive use of indigenous peoples, large numbers of Euro-American land speculators and settlers soon entered. In 1829 a gold rush occurred on Cherokee land in Georgia, and vast amounts of wealth were at stake. Land speculators soon demanded that the U.S. Congress transfer to the states the control of all properties owned by tribes and their members. That position was supported by President Andrew Jackson, who was himself an avid speculator. Congress complied by passing the Indian Removal Act (1830). The state of Georgia continued to press for Indian lands, and a group of Cherokees known as the Treaty Party began negotiating a treaty (Treaty of New Echota) with the federal government in 1835. Despite overwhelming Native American opposition to the Treaty of New Echota, the eastern lands were sold for $5 million, and the Cherokee people agreed to move beyond the Mississippi River to Indian Territory. The Senate ratified the treaty despite knowledge that only a minority of Cherokees had accepted it. Within two years the Cherokees were to move from their ancestral homelands.