Trail Of Tears Essay Thesis

The Trail of Tears

The Trail of Tears was a sad and extremely harsh time for the Native Americans. Multiple factors led up to The Trail of Tears including Major Ridge’s declaration of war on the Creek Indians. Originally Native Americans thought that white settlers would help them; however, the settlers had a different plan in mind to sweep the land out from under their feet and force them away from their land. So then the forced removal of the natives began.

Major Ridge declared war on the Creek Indians or also known as red sticks. The red sticks were the ones allied to Tecumsehh. Major Ridge and the Cherokee following him fought along side General Andrew Jackson who was going to play a crucial part in Cherokee history. The defeat of Tecumseh’s

They almost achieved universal literacy at a time when a lot of their white neighbors could barely read and or write. But the whites still weren’t satisfied. But after 1828, it wasn’t only about the matter of land because there was a discovery of gold in Ward’s Creek. Ward’s Creek was a western branch of the Chestatee River in the state of Georgia in the middle of the Cherokee Nation. And on December 20, 1828, Georgia passed an act annexing all Cherokee land in the state and pushing away all of the Cherokee laws and

He went to have a conversation with president Jackson about Jackson's offer of new land in the west and three million dollars for compensation and john ross came back home after turning Jackson down on his offer. And john ross and 20 other delegates signed a treaty to

So the Cherokee was made to give up their ancestral lands and move out west to present-day Oklahoma. This journey took around six months to go from Georgia and the Carolinas area to their new land out west. The ones who were forced on this journey had to overcome hunger, disease, and exhaustion on this harsh march. But sadly some were not able to persevere and died and it was roughly 4,000 out of 15,000 Cherokees died during this deadly journey. Since then the Cherokee people have called this march the trail of tears because of its vastly devastating effects.

With all that being said the conclusion is that people will do whatever it takes to get what they want which in this case was land that had gold discovered in it. But so many people paid either with their own lives or their loved ones, their ancestral lands, their homes all of it ripped away. All that destruction is to be able to satiate someone's wants and not their needs. But it didn't need to be forced it could have been discussed and come down to an agreement not just take it