Trail Of Tears Dbq

“In May 1838, an army of 4,000 regulars and 3,000 volunteer soldiers under command of General Winfield Scott marched into the Indian country and wrote the blackest chapter on the pages of American history”(Document 5). This quote is from a soldier who witnessed firsthand some of the worst things the government did to Native Americans, the Cherokee specifically. The Cherokee are a Native American tribe who lived in Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, and Tenesee. They were known as one of the “Five Civilized Tribes”, since they quickly adapted to American culture through the ways of practicing Christianity, farming their land, adapting a written language, among other customs common in American culture. Despite this, they were moved off their land

The Cherokee took the Georgian government to court over their land rights. It eventually escalated to Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the Cherokee keeping their land.However, the president, Andrew Jackson was used the power given to him in the Indian Removal Act to reject the Supreme Court’s ruling and kick the Cherokee off anyway. Much later in 1838, the Cherokee were forced to walk 1,200 miles from their land all the way to Oklahoma,in what is now called the Trail of Tears. It was full of horrible violations of basic human rights, such as being granted no place to sleep and were deprived of rest during the frigid winter. Injustices like these are usually repaid with reparations, which is when compensation is paid for wrongdoings in the past, but the Cherokee are yet to receive their payment. The Cherokee Nation deserve reparations because they had a legal right to their land, they were horribly mistreated on the Trail of Tears, and a group who was mistreated in a similar way were given reparations, so the Cherokee also deserve

As a result of this, the Cherokee deserve to be repaid for their suffering. On the Trail of Tears, the Cherokee were not given any sort of protection against the freezing cold they were forced to travel through. Due to this, a soldier said that “I have known as many as 22 of them to die in one night of pnuemonia due to ill treatment, cold and exposure.”(Document 5). This means that in a matter of about 14-16 hours, 22 people died, nearly 2 people every hour. That shows how little the soldiers valued the Cherokee’s wellbeing, to the point due to the amount of neglect on their part, 22 people died in a single night from a death that could’ve been prevented if they were given enough to survive. But the lack of empathy on the soldier’s part started before they even began traveling. While the Cherokee were being prepared to leave, the same soldier from before stated that, “I saw the helpless Cherokee arrested, dragged from their homes, and in the chill of a drizzly rain on an October morning, I saw them loaded like cattle into 645 wagons and started a terrible journey west”(Document 5). The Cherokee, during the entire process of the Trail of Tears, were treated as if they were subhuman, and undeserving of the care and compassion that every person deserves. As the soldier said, they were treated as if they were no better than a sheep or