Trail Of Tears Vs Gentrification

Between 1830 and 1850, the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, Creek, Seminole and Cherokee peoples were forced to leave their homelands to relocate further west. The Cherokee Nation removal in 1838 (the last forced removal east of the Mississippi) was brought on by the discovery of gold near Dahlonega, Georgia, in 1829, resulting in the Georgia Gold Rush.1 During the Trail of Tears (1838-1839), the Cherokee tribes were moved to the Indian Territory, near the Ozarks. They initially settled near Tahlequah, Oklahoma. This is where the tribes historically settled in 1838 to 1839, after the Indian Removal Act of 1830 passed during the presidency of Andrew Jackson.2 The removal included members of the Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw

As a part of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, Native American people were forcefully assembled and made to endure one of the longest walks from Georgia to Oklahoma on what has become known as the Trail of Tears. President Andrew Jackson’s motives for movement of the Native people to a new territory was to eliminate the Native race by stripping the victims of their vital resources needed for basic survival. After 178 years of expansion and growth in the United States of America, the circumstances for Native Americans remain unchanged. President Jackson’s sentiments have permeated the present society in issues associated with the physical and emotional fight to decolonize. Decolonization is both the individual and communal effort to regenerate

The Indian Removal Act was signed into law in 1830 by President Andrew Jackson. The act provided for the general control over the Native Americans from east of the Mississippi River to lands west, which was the Indian’s Territory. Even though, the removal was meant to be voluntary, the removal became a law. Thousands of Indian people including nearly the whole population of Indians that had lived in the southeastern United States were moved to the west. The first removal treaty to follow the passage of the Indian Removal Act was with the Choctaw Nation in 1830.

The Indian Removal Act was signed in 1830 by President Andrew Jackson to remove the Cherokee Indians from their homes and force them to settle west of the Mississippi River. The act was passed in hopes to gain agrarian land that would replenish the cotton industry which had plummeted after the Panic of 1819. Andrew Jackson believed that effectively forcing the Cherokees to become more civilized and to christianize them would be beneficial to them. Therefore, he thought the journey westward was necessary. In late 1838, the Cherokees were removed from their homes and forced into a brutal journey westward in the bitter cold.

Did you ever think about native americans throughout time? How they lived in the past to today? Throughout time Native Americans have faced many difficult obstacles, some that we know about that happened in the past, to recent happenings. From new land being discovered to diseases spread, to conflicts, wars, and to poverty in the modern world. These are the conflicts the The Native Americans faced from the beginning of time, to the modern day.

Cherokee Chief John Ross began to devise a plan to counter this removal and he stated with the Blood Law which stated that any Cherokee that made a deal to sell land to the United States without the consent of the entire tribe faced dire and certain consequences. Chief Ross then set out to take the Cherokee case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the case of Worcester v Georgia the U.S. Chief Justice, John Marshall ruled The Cherokee Nation is a distinct community, occupying its own territory with boundaries accurately described and which the laws of Georgia can have no force and which the citizens of Georgia have no right to enter but with the consent of the Cherokees themselves. The Cherokees were astatic with this ruling. However,

Unknown to many of the Native Americans at the time of their capture, they were leaving their home behind forever as well as their livelihoods. When General Scott and his men came and arrived to force people out of their homes, many people “did not have blankets and many of them had been driven from home barefooted”(Burnett). At the time of their capture, they were not given any information, which made their journey very brutal considering many of them did not have the proper protection from the harsh weather. As they started on their long journey “many of the children rose to their feet and waved their little hands good-by to their mountain homes, knowing they were leaving them forever”(Burnett). The people that were left in the tribe at the time did not sign up to leave their homes, which demonstrates how powerless they were over the invasion.

In 1830, encouraged by President Andrew Jackson, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act which gave the federal government the power to relocate any Native Americans in the east to territory that was west of the Mississippi River. Though the Native Americans were to be recompensed, this was not done fairly, and in some cases led to the further destruction of many of the eastern tribes. By early 1800’s, the white Americans established settlements further west for their own benefit, and later discovered gold. Furthermore, Georgia's attempt to regain this land resulted in the Cherokee protesting and taking this case to the United States Supreme Court.

In the late 1830’s, where the United States was growing rapidly, whites faced an obstacle while trying to settle in the South. This area of land was home of the Cherokee and other Indian tribes. The Cherokee Indians signed treaties hoping that white settlers would not come for their land. Prompted by the state of Georgia along with the president, Andrew Jackson, whom did not like Indians, expelled the Cherokee Indians from their homeland. Cherokee’s pleas to Georgia and the Supreme Court did little to stop their removal.

The Trail of Tears event of the removal of the Indians happened in 1838. “At the beginning of the 1830s, nearly 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. ”(History.com Staff). In this event, the Cherokee community of Native Americans was forced by the US government to move from their native home in the Southern part of the contemporary America to what is known as the Indian territories in Oklahoma. Arguments over land, restrictions, and laws were common amongst the Indians and settlers/whites.

The Trail of Tears was named so because of its devastating effects to the Cherokee nation. They were removed for one main reason, so their land could be used by the white men. Nobody had the right to take away their land. The land had been theirs since before the Europeans came and now they were being forcibly removed from it. On top of that, soldiers forced them to travel in the winter, causing thousands of Native Americans to die.