The Genocide: Trail of Tears/The Indian removal act During the 1830s the united states congress and president Andrew Jackson created and passed the “Indian removal act”. Which allowed Jackson to forcibly remove the Indians from their native lands in the southeastern states, such as Florida and Mississippi, and send them to specific “Indian reservations” across the Mississippi river, so the whites could take over their land. From 1830-1839 the five civilized tribes (The Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole, and Chickasaw) were forced, sometimes by gun point, to march about 1,000 miles to what is present day Oklahoma. While making this gruesome travel more than 4,000 Indians died from disease, starvation and treacherous conditions. This travel became known as the “trails of tears”. These Native Americans were not how white settlement described them. Many of the tribes adopted Euro-american practices and created their own communities with schools and churches, even developed their own languages and created bilingual newspapers. These tribes were more civilized then we are lead to believe. White Americans loathed the Indians because they were “undeserving” of the fertile land they had. White settlers wanted this land so bad they burned down house and towns, stole animals and lived in land that didn’t belong to them. They tormented the native Americans for decades and then the state governments started passing laws to strip the Indians of their rights. In two separate cases, (Cherokee