The Trail of Tears started in 1831 and ended in 1850. It was a forced displacement of many Indian Tribes by the United States government. The Trail of Tears was a traumatic experience that consisted of many heartbreaking events such as government involvement, forced displacement, and brutal conditions.
The United States Government was very involved during the Trail of Tears. President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830 which gave funds to move the Indians west of the Mississippi River. The state of Georgia annulled the constitution of the Cherokee and they ordered that their tribal lands must be seized. Even though the Cherokees were not doing anything wrong, the State of Georgia still shut them out and had their lands seized. The Cherokee tribe hired a lawyer and brought this case all the way to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Marshall upheld the Cherokee tribe's
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Scholars from the article, Violence in America, believe that the removal should be considered genocide because, “One-quarter to one-third of removed Indians populations died from the forced migration” (Gottesman and Brown paragraph 1). The Cherokee, specifically, were hunted down and organized into wagon trains and were then under military guard. Their journey lasted for over six months, from October 1838 to March 1839. They walked more than a thousand miles all the way from Georgia to present-day Oklahoma. There were over fifteen thousand men, women, and children that were involved with the thousand-mile journey. “These traditional people were ripped from their homeland, from the sites of their spiritual strength, and from the graves of their ancestors. Furthermore, removal divided the tribe and ignited a bitter internal fratricide that followed the Trail of Tears.”(Gottesman and Brown paragraph 8). This quote shows how even though they were physically displaced they were also spiritually