“I fought through the Civil War and have seen men shot to pieces and slaughtered by thousands, but the Cherokee removal was the cruelest work I ever knew.” Quoted by a Georgian militiamen during the gathering of Cherokee Indians, he describes how horrible this removal was on the Native Americans that once lived in the Cherokee Territory. (Document D) Once the Cherokee were rounded up, they were sent to travel the Trail of Tears to the west side of the Mississippi River. After traveling over the Mississippi, they were on the land given to them by the United States government which is today known as Oklahoma. When they arrived, they had to start all over again and built up their civilization from the ground. (Video) The conditions of the Cherokee removal were a series of cold-blooded suffering given to them by the United States government for a westward expansion.
One horrible suffering of the Cherokee tribe was it took several years to rebuild the Cherokee nation. (Video) While in the Cherokee Territory, they were informed by Thomas Jefferson that if they could become more like the common white man, the Native Americans could fit in and possibly live among white people. (Video) Cherokee people tried their …show more content…
(Video) The United States had given the Cherokees a deadline to be off of Cherokee Territory and beginning the journey west. Cherokee people were given two years to leave the land before they would be forced off. In one case, chief justice John Marshall ruled that Georgia had no power over the Cherokee tribe. Andrew Jackson then defied this ruling and said, “Burn a fire under them, they’ll move.” (Video) What Jackson was saying was that if they threaten the Cherokees then they would eventually move off the