Analysis Of The Trail Of Tears

The Trail of Tears began with the idea of white settlers wanting to settle in the land where Native Americans were to grow cotton. They believed that Native Americans weren’t people, and they were just objects occupying the land they wanted and felt they deserved. The white settlers were forcing Native Americans to migrate to designated “Indian Territory” that was across the Mississippi River. The ideas of the early white Americans was to try to convert the Native Americans to be more like the white people. They wanted to get them to convert to Christianity, learn to read and write English, and to adopt forms of European culture. Some tribes in the southeastern part of the United States accepted these changes. The Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole,
Creek and Cherokee were the tribes that embraced the new customs and later became known as the “Five Civilized Tribes.” However, as more white settlers came, the land became more appealing to them, and they did not care how “civilized” the people there were. The settlers would do whatever it would take to get ahold of the land they wanted to grow their cotton on. The settlers were stealing livestock, burning or looting houses and towns, and just setting up camp on land that didn’t belong to them.

State governments also got behind the ideas of the white settlers.
The states would restrict the rights of Native Americans to the point that would make them want to leave. However, when large cases came up, the Supreme Court was more reasonable when it came to the rights Native Americans should have. Regardless of the Supreme Court’s rulings, the state governments continued to restrict Native Americans with the ideals of the white Americans to back them. They didn’t care what happened to the Native Americans as long as they got the land that they wanted and felt should belong to
them.

Some Native Americans were unsure about the white settlers coming, and moved West on their own. They felt it would be better to move away from them than to have to interact with them at all. However, if they did not move as far as the white settlers wanted them to, they would eventually be forced to move to the “Indian Territory.”

Andrew Jackson was the person who started everything, and fully supported the removal of the Native Americans from the land. He believed that the white Americans deserved the land that the Native Americans resided in. This was part of the idea behind Manifest Destiny. They believed that all the land from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean belonged to them and they could claim it regardless of who or what was already there. Indian policy caused the President little political trouble because his primary supporters were from the southern and western states and generally favored a plan to remove all the Indian tribes to lands west of the Mississippi River. While Jackson and other politicians put a very positive and favorable spin on Indian removal in their speeches, the removals were very often quite violent.

The Trail of Tears happened in 1838 and 1839. Between these two years, about 16,000 Cherokees were forced to move. About 4,000 of those 16,000 died along the journey due to various causes. Many Native Americans died due to starvation and many others because of a lack of supply of water. They weren’t able to bring enough supplies with them to survive the entire journey to the designated “Indian Territory.”

The 1,200 mile journey was not light on the Native Americans.
Many families lost members along the way. Those who did survive were not in a good condition when they got to the “Indian Territory.” In addition to all of those problems, the Native Americans would have to relearn the land they are now forced to live in. Most of them, if not all, have lived in the same area for their whole life and knew the land very well. They also studied the habits of animals in the area to know the best situation for hunting. The Native Americans did not favor this action, but they were left with either moving to the new land, possibly dying along the way, or defying the demands of the white settlers and most likely being killed by them.

This journey brought the Native Americans from present day Georgia to present day Oklahoma. This trip brought them across a large portion of the United States. It was a journey that about ¼ of the people taking the trip would not survive.

If a Native American wanted to stop to bury a friend or relative along the journey, they would be shot by a soldier. The soldier’s had a total disregard for the proper treatment of the Native Americans and only had one motive, to keep them moving to the designated “Indian Territory.” The General that was in charge of the Trail of Tears was Winfield
Scott.

The Treaty of New Echota was what got everything started. It was signed by about 100 Cherokees. It went into place in 1836 and allowed the Native Americans two years to pack up and leave their homeland peacefully. After that, the aggressive forms of removal began.