Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, Sequoyah Research Center. University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Trail of Tears National Historic Trail. Honor or memorial gifts are an everlasting way to pay tribute to someone who has touched your life. When a tribute gift is given the honoree will receive a letter acknowledging your generosity and a bookplate will be placed in a book.
For more information, contact or calsfoundation cals. Read our Privacy Policy. The first time you log in to our catalog you will need to create an account. Creating an account gives you access to all these features. Go Back. Get Involved. Nominate an Entry Review Entries. Suggest a Topic or Author Suggest Media. Become a Volunteer Involve Students. Other Online Encyclopedias Other Resources. Lesson Plans History Day Volunteers Donors. A month later, Andrew Jackson was elected president of the United States.
Within two years, the state would require any whites living among the Indians—such as missionaries—to sign an oath of allegiance to the state or get out. Ross spent much of those two years in Washington, trying to overturn the new laws.
Major Ridge grew alarmed: the fewer Cherokees who remained, the easier they would be to displace. He set out on a speaking tour intended to calm tribe members inclined to flee. But more trouble was on the way: gold had been discovered on tribal land in Georgia, drawing a new wave of settlers, and President Jackson was not about to stop them.
After Georgia authorities sent a posse after the Cherokees, gunfire rang out through northern Georgia. Congress passed the removal bill that May, and by September Jackson had begun negotiating with the Chickasaws, the Choctaws and the remaining Creeks to move west.
Within four years they would be under land cession treaties or on the move. Some Seminoles also left in the early s, and others fought the Army in Florida for several years. But Ross refused even to meet with Jackson. Instead, he turned to the U. Ross used that opinion to bring another suit, this time challenging the arrests of white missionaries who had refused to swear allegiance to Georgia. Now faced with a case involving U.
On March 3, , the justices declared the arrests unconstitutional and said Georgia could not extend its laws to Cherokee land. They also ruled that the federal government, by treaty, had the authority to protect Indian tribes from state intrusions.
Gradually, he realized that court victory or not, his people were losing ground. But he could not relay that message to the tribe for fear of being branded a traitor, or killed. He was even hesitant to confide in his father, believing Major Ridge would be ashamed of him. But the son underestimated his father.
Forbidden to meet by Georgia law, the Cherokees had abandoned New Echota in Settlers were confiscating their homesteads and livestock. By sharing his thoughts on Jackson, John Ridge helped his father come to the conclusion that the tribe had to at least consider going west. But Major Ridge kept his feelings private, believing he needed to buy time to persuade his people to think about uprooting. At the same time, he began to wonder how Ross could remain so strident in his resistance.
Ross met twice with Jackson at the White House, to no avail. By spring , the Cherokees were split between a National Party, opposed to removal, and a Treaty Party, in favor of it. In signing the letter, Ridge acknowledged that he had softened on removal.
In a closed meeting, the chiefs gave Ross until fall to resolve the impasse with the government before they made the letter public. Under so much pressure—from the state of Georgia, the federal government and a stream of settlers—the tribe began to disintegrate. John Ridge quietly continued to recruit members to the Treaty Party and make overtures to Jackson.
When Ross learned of these efforts, he tried to pre-empt them, proposing to cede Cherokee land in Georgia and to have Cherokees in other states become U. McLoughlin, William G. Mooney, James. Historical Sketch of the Cherokee. Sturgis, Amy H. The Trail of Tears and Indian Removal. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, Burnett, John G.
Neugin, Rebecca. Martin, In the winter of , under threat of invasion by the U. Army, the Choctaw became the first nation to be expelled from its land altogether. Thousands of people died along the way. The Indian-removal process continued. In , the federal government drove the Creeks from their land for the last time: 3, of the 15, Creeks who set out for Oklahoma did not survive the trip. Some wanted to stay and fight. Others thought it was more pragmatic to agree to leave in exchange for money and other concessions.
To the federal government, the treaty was a done deal, but many of the Cherokee felt betrayed; after all, the negotiators did not represent the tribal government or anyone else. Senate protesting the treaty. By , only about 2, Cherokees had left their Georgia homeland for Indian Territory. Scott and his troops forced the Cherokee into stockades at bayonet point while his men looted their homes and belongings.
Then, they marched the Indians more than 1, miles to Indian Territory. Whooping cough, typhus, dysentery, cholera and starvation were epidemic along the way, and historians estimate that more than 5, Cherokee died as a result of the journey. By , tens of thousands of Native Americans had been driven off of their land in the southeastern states and forced to move across the Mississippi to Indian Territory.
In , Oklahoma became a state and Indian Territory was gone for good.
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