It was land that their ancestors had occupied and took care of for generations. By the end of the 1830’s, very few natives remained anywhere in the southeastern United States. White settlers wanted to grow cotton on the Indians land, so the federal government forced the indians to leave their homelands and walk thousands of miles to a specially designated Indian territory across the Mississippi River. This difficult journey was known as the Trail of Tears.The trail of tears began in Georgia.
Andrew Jackson was a campaigner of the Indian Removal Act. He spend many of his years as president leading very cruel campaigns against the native americans in Georgia and Alabama. Campaigns would result in him transferring hundreds of thousands of acres of land from Indian nations to white farmers. Since he was president, he continued this crusade. In 1830, he signed the Indian Removal Act, which gave the federal government power to exchange the natives land in the cotton industry east of mississippi for land to the west.
The law had required the government to compromise peacefully. The law did not allow President Jackson to pressure Native Americans into giving up their land, but Jackson and his government decided to ignore the law and force Native Americans to leave their lands that were theirs for many