Trail Of Tears Dbq

Improved Essays
The Trail of Tears and Cold-Blooded Sufferings

“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

Related Documents

  • Great Essays

    The Trail of Tears Introduction The Trail of Tears was a 1000-2000 mile journey that five tribes had to walk in order to get to their designated land that Andrew Jackson called “Indian Territory.” The Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Seminoles, were forced out of their homelands, not given any other option but to leave, or be killed trying to stay in their home where you made memories with families and friends. The trail was where thousands of people died from horrible sicknesses, starvation, and the harsh weather. The Trail of Tears, the migration of the Native Americans, is an important event in history because it created understanding of what the Native Americans had to go through, it commemorated their journey, and helps…

    • 1443 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The Trail of Tears and the Wounded Knee Massacre By George Sloan In the 1830s there were about 120,000 native Americans living in Georgia Tennessee Alabama North Carolina and the Florida Islands. The tribes living in those areas were the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Chacto Seminole and Creek. To the southwestern US, they were known as the Civilized Natives. But in 1936, the Government would drive 15000 Creek to…

    • 68 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Although the Natives being there first and had many treaties with the States, ensuring that their land would remain theirs. Andrew Jackson still pushed the Indian Removal Act even though congress was against it, and causing a harsh relocation event of Native Tribes in around Georgia, to Oklahoma, otherwise known as the Trail of Tears.…

    • 1032 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Trail Of Tears

    • 1021 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Why the Trail of Tears? The Trail of Tears was the name, given by the Cherokee Indians, to the forced march from their lands in the southeastern United States to the Indian Territory during 1838-1839. This event is a huge black spot in American history. This is only one instance in the history of man where domination of a weaker race of man occurred.…

    • 1021 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears During the spring semester of 2016, I was given the opportunity to read a very insightful book called, The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears, by Theda Purdue and Micheal D. Green. The book covers the events leading up to, during, and directly after the Trail of Tears. The Trail of Tears was the mass migration of Native Americans from their motherland in the eastern shores of the United States, to the territories of the southwestern United States. Throughout the early 19th Century, there were many conflicts between the government and Native Americans; although none were more racially and economically motivated than that of the state of Georgia and it’s citizens. “We believe the present plan…

    • 820 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Dbq Indian Removal

    • 1000 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Since the arrival of the Europeans in America, The native Indians had been under a lot of pressures. Acculturation, broken treaties, assimilation and removal policies had a few, if any, positive impacts on the Native Americans. The purpose of this paper is about the Indian removal policies that was created by an American president Andrew Jackson. In the development of this research, the removal of the Cherokees to land west of the Mississippi will be the center of attention . It’s important to know what motivate Andrew Jackson, to evict the Cherokees from their own land, and how the Cherokees react to that matter.…

    • 1000 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Overall, the Trail of Tears was a terrible time, but they overcame deaths, losses, and tears. Now, think about how scared you would be on the Trail of Tears, your parents dying, deadly diseases, starving in the winter, dying of hyperthermia in the winter. How would you survive? The Trail of Tears leads through the present day states of, Alabama Arkansas, Georgia, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, and North Carolina.…

    • 656 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Western Trail Of Tears

    • 104 Words
    • 1 Pages

    “Somebody must explain the 4,000 silent graves that mark the western trail of the Cherokees. I wish I could forget it all, but the picture of 645 wagons slowly moving over the frozen ground with the suffering Indians still lingers in my memory. ”(John G Burnett) This statement is true, by the mostly accurate deaths on the Tail of Tears. What I have learned and have known from watch sources like History Channel or studying the subject in American history class, the Trail of tears are greatly gruesome.…

    • 104 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The trail of tears was the hardest time for Native Americans during the Westward Expansion. Native Americans were removed from the Eastern and Central United States just to cross hundreds of miles to Oklahoma. Americans knew that since the Native Americans were in ‘their’ territory, they had the right to claim it from them. The Government had two choices to claim the territory from the Native Americans, either kill them off or move them to a different part of the state. In the end, President Andrew Jackson decided to peacefully remove them from their territory towards Oklahoma, starting the historical event ‘The Trail of Tears’.…

    • 281 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Although Cherokee removal is not fair for the Cherokees all of the time, they have to make sacrifices and try to make treaties with people that will work in their favor. “Cherokee removal remains a central event in the historical consciousness of modern Cherokees. People nowadays tell stories about Cherokee removal, and feel for the Cherokees loss of their ancestral land. Cherokees proved their rights through treaties and documents, but after standing their ground for long and being miserable they ended up moving to new…

    • 1061 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The trail of tears was the journey made by the native americans and some american soldiers, to scolt the indians, to the west of Mississippi and Georgia. The trail of tears was a unfortunate journey and considered a genocide of the cherokees because in their way to Mississippi had frozen lakes because of the harsh winter and many storms, they had to seat there for weeks and wait in order to cross the frozen lake. Most people had burn wounds on their backs and many people were near death because they were too sick and tired to hunt and starvation was causing deaths. Around 14-15 people were buried every stop in their way to their destiny. The journey was more than 1,200 miles and around five thousand people died.…

    • 719 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    It forced the Native Indians to surrender millions of acres of land and to move to west. Throughout the removal many Indians suffered through sickness and death. The Indian Removal Act not only removed the Indians from their rightful lands forcefully but also is responsible for over 4000 deaths of the Native Americans, that today is known as the ‘Trail of Tears’. Bibliography Calloway, Colin G. Kill the Indian and Save the Man 1870s-1920s. (In Bedford/St. Martin’s (Ed.), First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History, 4th ed., 2012) 412-483.…

    • 1122 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    There were five great Indian tribes that were affected by the Indian removal act. The Cherokee being the most notable and famous of the five great nations, and the only tribe to take their case to the Supreme Court. The removal of the Cherokee nation is what is known as the trail of tears. Thesis statement.…

    • 922 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Topic and Research Question Topic: For my historical event analysis, I have chosen to focus on The Cherokee "Trail of Tears" Research Question: How the Indian Removal Act of 1830 affected the Cherokee? Preliminary Writing Plan Introduction The historical analysis focuses on the topic is “The Cherokee Trail of Tears”; the topic is about a historical event that caused suffering and death of one of the tribes that are native in America. The Cherokee are among the Creeks, the Chickasaw, the Seminoles and the Choctaw who constituted the native tribes that assimilated and coped with the white settlers (United States Department of State, 2017).…

    • 751 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Trail Of Tears Essay

    • 1082 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The Trail of Tears was a dark turn in Native American history, which also affected Mississippi during Andrew Jackson’s presidency. Jackson’s Indian Removal Act forced out the Native Americans out of their land by the federal government and walk thousands of miles to designated territories across the Mississippi river. This was caused by white America’s urge to expand and grow cotton in the southern states. Since majority of the states was owned by the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, and Creek tribes Almost 125,000 Indians preoccupied the states of Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Florida during the 1830s since the time of their ancestors. This issue boiled over when white settlers were infuriated by the population of Native…

    • 1082 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays