Do Tears Repair Themselves After Rape

At the beginning of the 1830s, virtually 125,000 Native Americans lived on millions of acres of land in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida–land their ancestors had occupied and cultivated for generations. Past the finish of the decade, very few natives remained anywhere in the southeastern United States. Working on behalf of white settlers who wanted to grow cotton on the Indians' country, the federal government forced them to leave their homelands and walk hundreds of miles to a specially designated "Indian territory" across the Mississippi River. This difficult and sometimes deadly journey is known equally the Trail of Tears.

The 'Indian Trouble'

White Americans, particularly those who lived on the western frontier, often feared and resented the Native Americans they encountered: To them, American Indians seemed to be an unfamiliar, conflicting people who occupied land that white settlers wanted (and believed they deserved). Some officials in the early years of the American republic, such every bit President George Washington, believed that the best way to solve this "Indian problem" was simply to "acculturate" the Native Americans. The goal of this civilization entrada was to make Native Americans every bit much similar white Americans as possible by encouraging them convert to Christianity, learn to speak and read English and prefer European-way economic practices such as the individual buying of country and other property (including, in some instances in the South, African slaves). In the southeastern U.s.a., many Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Creek and Cherokee people embraced these customs and became known as the "Five Civilized Tribes."

Only their land, located in parts of Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, Florida and Tennessee, was valuable, and information technology grew to be more coveted as white settlers flooded the region. Many of these whites yearned to brand their fortunes past growing cotton, and often resorted to violent means to accept state from their Indigenous neighbors. They stole livestock; burned and looted houses and towns; committed mass murder; and squatted on land that did not belong to them.

Country governments joined in this effort to drive Native Americans out of the Southward. Several states passed laws limiting Native American sovereignty and rights and encroaching on their territory. In Worcester 5. Georgia (1832), the U.S. Supreme Court objected to these practices and affirmed that native nations were sovereign nations "in which the laws of Georgia [and other states] tin have no strength." Fifty-fifty then, the maltreatment continued. Equally President Andrew Jackson noted in 1832, if no i intended to enforce the Supreme Courtroom'south rulings (which he certainly did not), then the decisions would "[autumn]…still born." Southern states were determined to take ownership of Indian lands and would become to great lengths to secure this territory.

Indian Removal

Andrew Jackson had long been an advocate of what he called "Indian removal." Equally an Ground forces general, he had spent years leading vicious campaigns against the Creeks in Georgia and Alabama and the Seminoles in Florida–campaigns that resulted in the transfer of hundreds of thousands of acres of state from Indian nations to white farmers. As president, he continued this crusade. In 1830, he signed the Indian Removal Act, which gave the federal authorities the ability to commutation Native-held land in the cotton fiber kingdom east of the Mississippi for land to the west, in the "Indian colonization zone" that the United states had acquired as office of the Louisiana Buy. (This "Indian territory" was located in present-mean solar day Oklahoma.)

The constabulary required the government to negotiate removal treaties fairly, voluntarily and peacefully: It did non permit the president or anyone else to coerce Native nations into giving upward their land. However, President Jackson and his government frequently ignored the alphabetic character of the police force and forced Native Americans to vacate lands they had lived on for generations. In the wintertime of 1831, under threat of invasion by the U.Southward. Army, the Choctaw became the first nation to be expelled from its state altogether. They made the journey to Indian Territory on human foot (some "bound in bondage and marched double file," one historian writes) and without any nutrient, supplies or other assistance from the government. Thousands of people died along the way. It was, ane Choctaw leader told an Alabama newspaper, a "trail of tears and expiry."

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The Trail of Tears

The Indian-removal process continued. In 1836, the federal government drove the Creeks from their land for the terminal time: three,500 of the fifteen,000 Creeks who set out for Oklahoma did not survive the trip.

The Cherokee people were divided: What was the best way to handle the regime'south decision to get its hands on their territory? Some wanted to stay and fight. Others thought it was more pragmatic to concord to get out in exchange for money and other concessions. In 1835, a few self-appointed representatives of the Cherokee nation negotiated the Treaty of New Echota, which traded all Cherokee country eastward of the Mississippi for $5 one thousand thousand, relocation help and compensation for lost property. To the federal regime, the treaty was a done deal, but many of the Cherokee felt betrayed; later all, the negotiators did not stand for the tribal government or anyone else. "The musical instrument in question is not the deed of our nation," wrote the nation'south main main, John Ross, in a alphabetic character to the U.Southward. Senate protesting the treaty. "We are not parties to its covenants; it has not received the sanction of our people." Nearly 16,000 Cherokees signed Ross's petition, but Congress approved the treaty anyway.

By 1838, only about 2,000 Cherokees had left their Georgia homeland for Indian Territory. President Martin Van Buren sent General Winfield Scott and 7,000 soldiers to expedite the removal process. Scott and his troops forced the Cherokee into stockades at bayonet betoken while his men looted their homes and belongings. Then, they marched the Indians more than 1,200 miles to Indian Territory. Whooping coughing, typhus, dysentery, cholera and starvation were epidemic along the way, and historians guess that more than than 5,000 Cherokee died as a result of the journeying.

Past 1840, tens of thousands of Native Americans had been driven off of their land in the southeastern states and forced to move beyond the Mississippi to Indian Territory. The federal authorities promised that their new country would remain unmolested forever, but equally the line of white settlement pushed westward, "Indian State" shrank and shrank. In 1907, Oklahoma became a state and Indian Territory was gone for adept.

Can You Walk The Trail of Tears?

The Trail of Tears is over five,043 miles long and covers nine states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Today, the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail is run past the National Park Service and portions of information technology are accessible on pes, by horse, by bicycle or past car.