Trail Of Tears: The Indian Trail Of Tears

Trail of Tears, the journey of 900 Miles that took approximately nine months to complete. The Cherokee Indians and over 40 other groups or tribes traveled over land and water and were held in concentration camps along the way. The Cherokee traveled with military escorts. They left behind highly coveted land. The Environments of the Indians were not good for walking on the trail, the journey is long and and dangerous the weather was bad and many died. Dozens of people buried at each stop? ⅓ of the people who walked died, this is about 4,000 people but though estimates set as high as 6,000. The main reason these people died is because of Dehydration.Dehydration is when the human body has the loss of bodily fluids such as water. The body sweats off more water than it takes in and when they were walking the trail they had limited amount of water and sweat because of the walking. Another reason so many died is Tuberculosis.

Usually the ones who had escaped usually got caught and had to return and march like criminals. Some refused to leave the march when others escaped and ran in the mountains and hid and some joined others on small farms. Usually small farms were stripped of tribal connections and burdened with unclear legal status, they faced an uncertain future. The farms sheltered the ones who stayed on the farms. Others stopped at internment camps and continued to march along the trail. (Blackburn 53-64)

The Cherokee Indians were forced to move out of there home land when President Jackson refused to enforce the court 's ruling. This was also called the Treaty of New Echota, this occurred on December 29th, 1835. The agreement gave the Cherokee territory to the government for exchange in new lands west of the Mississippi as well as approximately 5$ Million dollars. But yet the Treaty was not supported by Most of the Cherokee and was in direct violation of the law that forbade the sale of the cherokee