Trail of Tears: Forced Removal of Native Nations, 1830s

The Trail of Tears is the name given to the forced removal of Native American nations from the southeastern United States to Indian Territory, in present-day Oklahoma, during the 1830s. Under the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the Choctaw, Creek (Muscogee), Chickasaw, Seminole and Cherokee were pushed off their ancestral lands, often at gunpoint. Around 60,000 people were displaced, and thousands died from disease, exposure and hunger, making the removals one of the darkest episodes in American history.

Background: land, cotton and sovereignty

In the early 19th century the five nations later called the “Five Civilized Tribes” held millions of acres in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, North Carolina and Florida. Many had adopted farming methods, written laws and institutions similar to those of their white neighbours. The Cherokee developed a writing system created by Sequoyah in the early 1820s, published a bilingual newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, from 1828, and adopted a written constitution in 1827.

These changes did not protect them. The spread of cotton cultivation made the fertile lands of the Southeast hugely valuable to white settlers and planters. The discovery of gold in north Georgia in 1829 brought thousands of prospectors onto Cherokee land. Southern states, Georgia above all, insisted that Native nations within their borders had no right to govern themselves.

After the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, American leaders including Thomas Jefferson had begun to talk about moving eastern nations west of the Mississippi. The idea became official policy with the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828. Jackson, a former general who had fought the Creek and Seminole, argued that removal would protect Native peoples from destruction and open land for white settlement.

The Indian Removal Act

Congress passed the Indian Removal Act after bitter debate, and Jackson signed it on 28 May 1830. The vote in the House of Representatives was narrow. Opponents included northern evangelical groups and some politicians, among them Davy Crockett of Tennessee.

The act did not by itself order anyone to move. It authorised the president to negotiate treaties exchanging lands in the East for territory in the West, with payment for improvements and the cost of the journey. In practice, federal agents used bribery, threats and agreements with unrepresentative minorities to secure treaties, and the army enforced them.

The Cherokee in the courts

The Cherokee chose to resist through law. In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), the Supreme Court declined to hear their case, describing Native nations as “domestic dependent nations” rather than foreign states. A year later, in Worcester v. Georgia (1832), Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that Georgia’s laws had no force within Cherokee territory and that relations with the Cherokee belonged to the federal government.

The ruling was a legal victory but brought no practical protection. The federal government took no effective steps to stop Georgia, which surveyed Cherokee land and distributed it to white settlers by lottery.

The removals, nation by nation

Choctaw. The Choctaw were the first to go. Under the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek (September 1830) they ceded their remaining lands in Mississippi. Removal began in 1831 and continued into 1833. Poor planning, severe winter weather and a cholera epidemic killed many; estimates of Choctaw deaths run into the thousands. The French writer Alexis de Tocqueville watched a party of Choctaw crossing the Mississippi at Memphis in December 1831 and described their suffering in Democracy in America.

Creek (Muscogee). By the Treaty of Cusseta (1832) the Creek ceded their Alabama lands in exchange for individual allotments, which speculators and settlers quickly seized through fraud. After violence broke out in 1836, the army removed about 15,000 Creek, some in chains. Many died on the journey or soon after arrival.

Chickasaw. The Chickasaw signed treaties in 1832 and 1834 and paid for their own removal from northern Mississippi from 1837. Their journey was better supplied than most, but they still suffered from disease, and they had to settle on land leased from the Choctaw.

Seminole. Many Seminole in Florida refused to accept the Treaty of Payne’s Landing (1832). Their resistance led to the Second Seminole War (1835-1842), one of the costliest Native wars the United States ever fought. Leaders such as Osceola became famous. Most Seminole were eventually deported, but several hundred stayed in the Florida Everglades, and their descendants remain there today.

The Cherokee removal, 1838-1839

In December 1835 a small group of Cherokee known as the Treaty Party, led by Major Ridge, his son John Ridge and Elias Boudinot, signed the Treaty of New Echota. It exchanged all Cherokee land in the East for land in Indian Territory and $5 million. Principal Chief John Ross and most of the nation rejected it, and a petition against it was signed by about 15,000 Cherokee. The US Senate nonetheless ratified the treaty in May 1836 by a margin of a single vote, giving the Cherokee two years to leave.

When the deadline passed in May 1838, only about 2,000 had gone. General Winfield Scott and around 7,000 soldiers and militia began rounding up the remaining Cherokee in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and North Carolina. Families were forced from their homes with little warning and held in stockades and internment camps, where dysentery and other diseases spread rapidly in the summer heat.

The first groups were sent west by the army in June 1838, partly by river, and suffered heavily in the drought. Ross then persuaded the government to let the Cherokee manage their own removal. Most of the nation travelled overland in about a dozen detachments of roughly 1,000 people each, setting out in the autumn of 1838. The main routes ran some 800 to 1,200 miles (1,300 to 1,900 km) through Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri and Arkansas. Freezing weather, ice on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and shortages of food and blankets made the winter journey deadly. The last detachments reached Indian Territory in March 1839.

By the numbers

Death tolls for all of the removals are uncertain, because records were incomplete and many deaths occurred in camps or in the first years after arrival. Enslaved African Americans held by some Cherokee and other Native slaveholders were also forced to make the journey.

Key people

• Andrew Jackson (1767-1845): seventh US president and the leading champion of removal.
• John Ross (1790-1866): Principal Chief of the Cherokee, who fought the removal in Congress and the courts and later led the Cherokee Nation in the West.
• Major Ridge (c. 1771-1839): Cherokee leader who signed the Treaty of New Echota, believing removal was unavoidable. He, his son John Ridge and Elias Boudinot were killed by Cherokee opponents in June 1839.
• Winfield Scott (1786-1866): US Army general who commanded the round-up of the Cherokee in 1838.
• John Marshall (1755-1835): Chief Justice who ruled in favour of the Cherokee in Worcester v. Georgia.

Myths and facts

Myth: Jackson said “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” This famous line first appeared decades later, in a book by Horace Greeley published in 1864. There is no reliable evidence that Jackson said it, although his administration did nothing to enforce the ruling.

Myth: There was a single Trail of Tears. There were many routes, by land and by river, used by different nations over more than a decade. The National Park Service trail today covers several of them.

Myth: The removal was voluntary. A few groups left under treaty terms they had negotiated, but most removals were carried out under heavy pressure or by military force.

Consequences and legacy

In Indian Territory the five nations rebuilt their governments, schools and farms, but deep divisions remained. Among the Cherokee, conflict between Ross’s supporters and the Treaty Party continued for years after the killings of 1839. Indian Territory itself was steadily reduced over the following decades and was absorbed into the state of Oklahoma in 1907.

The removals opened about 25 million acres of land in the Southeast to white settlement, much of it for cotton plantations worked by enslaved people. Later, many of the peoples of the Plains and the West faced similar policies of displacement and violence, from the Sand Creek Massacre to the Wounded Knee Massacre.

The name Trail of Tears is often linked to a Cherokee phrase usually translated as “the trail where they cried”. In 1987 the US Congress designated the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, which today marks more than 5,000 miles of routes across nine states.

Timeline

• 1830, 28 May: Andrew Jackson signs the Indian Removal Act.
• 1830, 27 September: The Choctaw sign the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek.
• 1831, November-December: The first Choctaw parties are removed west.
• 1832, 3 March: The Supreme Court rules in Worcester v. Georgia.
• 1835, 29 December: The Treaty of New Echota is signed by the Cherokee Treaty Party.
• 1836, summer: The army forcibly removes thousands of Creek from Alabama.
• 1838, May: The deadline for Cherokee removal passes; troops begin the round-up.
• 1838, autumn: Cherokee detachments set out on the overland routes west.
• 1839, March: The last Cherokee detachments reach Indian Territory.
• 1842: The Second Seminole War ends.

Why it matters

The Trail of Tears showed how a government could use law, treaties and force to take land from nations that had tried to coexist with it. Its human cost and its broken legal promises remain central to understanding the relationship between the United States and Native nations. For the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw and Seminole, it is remembered not only as a tragedy but also as a story of survival and rebuilding.