where did the trail of tears go

How many people died on the trail of Tears?

The final death toll of the Trail of Tears is impossible to verify, says Smithers, he notes that contemporary historians believe that between 4,000 and 8,000 Cherokee perished during the forced removals in 1838 and 1839, as well as 4,000 Choctaw (a third of the entire tribe) and 3,500 Creek Indians.

What was life like after the trail of Tears?

What was life like after the Trail of Tears? The Cherokee lost a great deal when they arrived in Indian Territory. Many of them were quite prosperous in communities in the Southeast and had to sell their belongings for far less than they were worth.

What was the death toll for the trail of Tears?

This event is what came to be known as the Trail of Tears. Approximately 15,000 people were made to march for a distance of about 1,200 miles; and by the time the march ended, more than 5,000 of them had died of hunger and various forms of diseases like flu. The Indian problem

Where were Cherokees forced to go during trail of Tears?

The Trail of Tears is the name of the Cherokee’s forced removal by the U.S. to Indian Territory. But the phrase is also applied to the forced removals of the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee Creek, and Seminole, who were all removed from the Southeast. Sometimes the phrase is also applied to other forced removals of tribes elsewhere in the country.

Where did Trail of Tears begin and end?

Where does the Trail of Tears start and end? The Cherokee Trail of Tears started in the area around the Appalachian Mountains, which includes the states of North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama. The Cherokee Trail of Tears ends in Indian Territory in what is now the state of Oklahoma.

Where did the natives go after the Trail of Tears?

Between the 1830 Indian Removal Act and 1850, the U.S. government used forced treaties and/or U.S. Army action to move about 100,000 American Indians living east of the Mississippi River, westward to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma.

Where did the Trail of Tears finally end?

The Trail of Tears found its end in Oklahoma. Nearly a fourth of the Cherokee population died along the march. It ended around March of 1839.

When did Trail of Tears end?

1831 – 1850Trail of Tears / Period

Does the Trail of Tears still exist?

The Trail of Tears National Historic Trail commemorates the removal of the Cherokee and the paths that 17 Cherokee detachments followed westward. Today the trail encompasses about 2,200 miles of land and water routes, and traverses portions of nine states.

How did the Trail of Tears end?

The Cherokee who successfully made the trip west “exited” the Trail of Tears at disbandment sites like Fort Gibson, Oklahoma. Today, the fort and surrounding land are open to visitors.

What are 5 facts about the Trail of Tears?

01The Trail of Tears began with the signing of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. 02The Trail of Tears lasted around 20 years. 03The U.S. government and the American Indian tribes signed over 40 other treaties during this period. 04The American Indian people comprised 17 different tribes.

How long would it take to walk the Trail of Tears?

A map of the Trail of Tears. These Cherokee-managed migrations were primarily land crossings, averaging 10 miles a day across various routes. Some groups, however, took more than four months to make the 800-mile journey.

What happened to the Cherokee tribe after the Trail of Tears?

The Cherokee Nation had been promised by treaty they would not be bothered in their new home and would never be removed again. Instead, the U.S. chose to create a new state and allot tribes' land out to individual owners. With Oklahoma statehood in 1907, Cherokees suddenly became land owners and state citizens.

Who stopped the Trail of Tears?

In 1836, the federal government drove the Creeks from their land for the last time: 3,500 of the 15,000 Creeks who set out for Oklahoma did not survive the trip.

How many died on the Trail of Tears in total?

Check out seven facts about this infamous chapter in American history. Cherokee Indians are forced from their homelands during the 1830's.

How many survived the Trail of Tears?

About 1,000 Cherokees in Tennessee and North Carolina escaped the roundup. They gained recognition in 1866, establishing their tribal government in 1868 in Cherokee, North Carolina. Today, they are known as the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

What happened to the Cherokee after the Trail of Tears?

They began to adopt European customs and gradually turned to an agricultural economy, while being pressured to give up traditional home-lands. Between 1721 and 1819, over 90 percent of their lands were ceded to others.

What happened to the Cherokee who traveled on the trial?

The Cherokee people called this journey the "Trail of Tears," because of its devastating effects. The migrants faced hunger, disease, and exhaustion on the forced march. Over 4,000 out of 15,000 of the Cherokees died.

How did the Trail of Tears affect native populations in the future?

The terms "Trail of Tears" and "The Place Where They Cried" refer to the suffering of Native Americans affected by the Indian Removal Act. It is estimated that the five tribes lost 1 in 4 of their population to cholera, starvation, cold and exhaustion during the move west.

How did the Native Americans get to America?

Scientists have found that Native American populations - from Canada to the southern tip of Chile - arose from at least three migrations, with the majority descended entirely from a single group of First American migrants that crossed over through Beringia, a land bridge between Asia and America that existed during the ...

What was the Trail of Tears?

The Trail of Tears was the forced relocation during the 1830s of Indigenous peoples of the Southeast region of the United States (including the Che...

What routes were used as part of the Trail of Tears?

The routes used by Indigenous people as part of the Trail of Tears consisted of several overland routes and one main water route that stretched som...

How many people died as a result of the Trail of Tears?

According to estimates based on tribal and military records, approximately 100,000 Indigenous people were forced from their homes during the Trail...

Where is the Trail of Tears located?

The Trail of Tears memorial at the New Echota Historic Site in Georgia, which honors the Cherokees who died on the Trail of Tears. Location. Southeastern United States and Indian Territory. Attack type. Forced displacement. Deaths.

How long did it take to cross the Trail of Tears?

A Trail of Tears map of Southern Illinois from the USDA – U.S. Forest Service. It eventually took almost three months to cross the 60 miles (97 kilometres) on land between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. The trek through southern Illinois is where the Cherokee suffered most of their deaths.

How many Cherokees died in the Cherokee Trail of Tears?

Forcible removals began in May 1838 when General Winfield Scott received a final order from President Martin Van Buren to relocate the remaining Cherokees. Approximately 4,000 Cherokees died in the ensuing trek to Oklahoma. In the Cherokee language, the event is called nu na da ul tsun yi ("the place where they cried") or nu na hi du na tlo hi lu i (the trail where they cried). The Cherokee Trail of Tears resulted from the enforcement of the Treaty of New Echota, an agreement signed under the provisions of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which exchanged Indian land in the East for lands west of the Mississippi River, but which was never accepted by the elected tribal leadership or a majority of the Cherokee people.

How many miles of trails were there in 1987?

In 1987, about 2,200 miles (3,500 km) of trails were authorized by federal law to mark the removal of 17 detachments of the Cherokee people. Called the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, it traverses portions of nine states and includes land and water routes.

What was the name of the group that was lost in the swamps of Little Rock?

When they reached Little Rock, a Choctaw chief referred to their trek as a " trail of tears and death ". The Vicksburg group was led by an incompetent guide and was lost in the Lake Providence swamps.

What tribes were relocated under the Indian Removal Act of 1830?

The Creek, Choctaw, Seminole, and Chicksaw were also relocated under the Indian Removal Act of 1830. One Choctaw leader portrayed the removal as "A Trail of Tears and Deaths", a devastating event that removed most of the Native population of the southeastern United States from their traditional homelands.

What was the purpose of the Trail of Tears?

U.S. Federal Government, U.S. Army, state militias. Motive. Acquisition of Native American land east of the Mississippi River. The Trail of Tears was part of a series of forced displacements of approximately 60,000 Native Americans between 1830 and 1850 by the United States government known as the Indian removal.

GIS Interactive Map

The National Park Service Geographic Resources Program hosts an interactive trails map viewer. Choose the Trail of the Tears National Historic Trail and then zoom in to find the details you need for trip planning.

Places to Go along the Trail

It highlights different sites that can be visited along the trail. You'll find museums, interpretive centers, and historic sites that provide information and interpretation.

Trail of Tears National Historic Trail Map

The Trail of Tears National Historic Trail passes through the present-day states of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Tennessee.

What was the name of the trail of tears?

This difficult and sometimes deadly journey is known as the Trail of Tears.

How did the South drive Native Americans out of the South?

Several states passed laws limiting Native American sovereignty and rights and encroaching on their territory. In Worcester v. 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] can have no force.” Even so, the maltreatment continued. As President Andrew Jackson noted in 1832, if no one intended to enforce the Supreme Court’s rulings (which he certainly did not), then the decisions would “ [fall]…still born.” Southern states were determined to take ownership of Indian lands and would go to great lengths to secure this territory.

What did the whites do to their land?

But their land, located in parts of Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, Florida and Tennessee, was valuable, and it grew to be more coveted as white settlers flooded the region. Many of these whites yearned to make their fortunes by growing cotton, and often resorted to violent means to take land 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.

How many Native Americans lived in Georgia in the 1830s?

Indian Removal. The Trail of Tears. Can You Walk The Trail of Tears? Sources. 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. By the end of the decade, very few natives ...

What did the Indian Removal Act do?

In 1830, he signed the Indian Removal Act, which gave the federal government the power to exchange Native-held land in the cotton kingdom east of the Mississippi for land to the west, in the “Indian colonization zone” that the United States had acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase.

What was the best way to solve the Indian problem?

Some officials in the early years of the American republic, such as President George Washington, believed that the best way to solve this “Indian problem” was simply to “civilize” the Native Americans.

What was the Indian problem?

The 'Indian Problem'. 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, alien people who occupied land that white settlers wanted (and believed they deserved).

What tribes traveled the Trail of Tears?

Learn the Trail of Tears history, as you follow the Arkansas Trail of Tears, along which Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, and Seminole Indians traveled in the 1830s.

What was the name of the war that led to the removal of the Cherokee?

A small group of Florida Indians signed a removal treaty in 1833, but most resisted emigration, sparking the so-called Second Seminole War (1835–1842), one of the most expensive in U.S. history. Cherokee leaders fought removal in the courts and in Congress, contesting Georgia laws and an unauthorized 1835 treaty.

Where to start on the Northen Route?

Northen Route - Start on the Old Wire Road at the Arkansas/Missouri border to US 62 to Brightwater: Two routes follow from here to the state line: From Brightwater on Sugar Creek Road to Hwy 72 through Bentonville, Hiwasse, Gravette to Maysville.

When did the Muscogee tribe move west?

Some Muscogee (Creek) bands began moving west in 1827 after the tribe was forced out of Georgia. Those emigrating after an 1832 treaty ceded Creek land in Alabama were among the most destitute and most numerous traveling through Arkansas. Most had to walk, some in chains as prisoners of war, and their journeys in 1834, 1836, and 1837 were made more miserable by the negligence of private contractors.

When did the Choctaw tribes emigrate?

In 1830, the Choctaw were the first of the five major Southeast tribes to agree to a removal treaty, emigrating in three official waves in 1831, 1832, and 1833. Fraud involved in Choctaw allotments resulted in the issuance in 1842 of so-called Choctaw Scrip, which speculators could trade to buy land in Arkansas and three other states.

What was the purpose of the Indian Removal Act of 1830?

This act allowed the forcible removal of the five tribes to new lands in the Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma). All five tribes passed through Arkansas, and many of the territory's most prominent figures made substantial fortunes from removal.

Where is the Trail of Tears?

A publicly-accessible section of this Trail of Tears route is located nearby, in a swale just north of the McGinnis Cemetery. This quarter-mile-long segment of trail ruts (which was part of the main or northern Trail of Tears route) is located on a private farm and is not accessible to the visiting public.

Is Trail Ruts open to the public?

none. This segment of trail ruts is located on a private farm and is not accessible to the visiting public. This is a section of the main (northern) route that approximates the route of State Highway 146 across Illinois.

What is the Trail of Tears?

In Western North Carolina, the Trail of Tears is not only a story of loss and injustice, but a story of resistance, tenacity, and revival.

Where did the Creeks escape?

In 1837, soldiers operating out of Fort Armistead in Tennessee pursued Creek (Muskogee) Indians into the mountains of North Carolina, when Creeks tried to escape their own nation’s Removal by seeking refuge in Cherokee territory. A year later, in 1838, US troops and state militia began gathering Cherokees.

How many Cherokees were in the deportation camps?

That delay forced them to languish in the deportation camps for much of the summer, before traveling overland to Indian Territory. Most North Carolina Cherokees were assigned to one of three detachments, numbering around 1,000 people each. Conductors included Jesse Bushyhead, a Cherokee Baptist preacher; Situagi, ...

What was the removal of Cherokee people?

Removal was a massive operation, requiring the arrest, collection, imprisonment, and deportation of thousands of people. In order to facilitate this brutal work, the US government surveyed roads, trails, and Cherokee communities. The Unicoy (or Unicoi) Turnpike, established in 1816, already ran through Western North Carolina, and the road featured multiple waystations to serve livestock drovers moving between Tennessee and Georgia. Fort Butler became the headquarters of the Eastern Division of the Army of the Cherokee Nation. All Cherokee prisoners from North Carolina would pass through Fort Butler, before following the Unicoy Turnpike to Fort Armistead in Tennessee. The Army constructed other posts in the surrounding area: Fort Hembree in present-day Hayesville; Delaney in Andrews; Montgomery in Robbinsville; and the northern-most military installation in the Removal operation, Fort Lindsay, at Almond. What is now the Old Army Road, stretching between Robbinsville and Andrews, was improved over a period of 10 days from a Cherokee trail to accommodate wagons. A segment of North Carolina’s Great State Road stretched from Franklin to Fort Butler and became a major conduit for delivering deportees. The North Carolina legislature approved its construction in 1837 to facilitate the sale and settlement of Cherokee lands after the Treaty of New Echota. The Army also established Camp Scott at the Cherokee town of Aquone, a stop on the way to Fort Delaney from outlying areas. From these collection points, all of the North Carolina Cherokees captured by the army were funneled through Fort Butler to begin the journey west.

What tribes lived in Quallatown?

Cherokees living at Quallatown, on the Oconaluftee River, were exempt from Removal, thanks to provisions in earlier treaties between the Cherokees and the United States. Known as the Luftee or Citizen Indians, this group eventually coalesced with those Cherokees who managed to avoid capture during Removal to form the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. North Carolina acknowledged the Cherokees ’ right to remain in the state in 1868, and the United States eventually recognized the Eastern Band as a distinct tribe. By 1875, political unification of Cherokee communities led to the emergence of six townships. Today, the western-most communities of Cheoah (now Snowbird), Valley River (now Tomotla), and Hanging Dog (now Hanging Dog and Grape Creek) constitute one of these six townships, while the remaining townships are located on the Qualla Boundary, the large landholding established in the vicinity of Quallatown. The Cherokee legacy remains one of survival, persistence, and resurgence, as they have successfully rebuilt their lives in both the West and in the Southeast.

What is the old Army Road?

What is now the Old Army Road, stretching between Robbinsville and Andrews, was improved over a period of 10 days from a Cherokee trail to accommodate wagons. A segment of North Carolina’s Great State Road stretched from Franklin to Fort Butler and became a major conduit for delivering deportees. The North Carolina legislature approved its ...

What were the Cherokees doing in North Carolina?

“After three weeks of the most arduous and fatiguing duty, traveling the country in every direction, searching the mountains on foot in every point where Indians could be heard of we [have] not been able to get sight of a single one,” one officer reported. “Their constant vigilance, perfect knowledge of the country, and the rapidity with which that enabled them to communicate intelligence from one camp to another, has rendered all attempts to capture them utterly in vain.” Some Cherokee families received waivers to remain behind. These included the prominent John Welch, a wealthy farmer and slave owner who cultivated valuable bottom lands near the Valley River. Welch and others encouraged Cherokees “to leave home & take to the mountains,” and they covertly fed and encouraged the fugitives. Declared an instigator of rebellion, the Army seized Welch and held him without charge at Fort Cass. The military only released Welch after Removal was completed. Welch’s farm became a haven for about 100 landless Cherokees who escaped the Army’s net. Dickageeska, one of these homeless Cherokees, recalled that resisting removal came at a steep price, as they were “compelled to subsist on the sap of trees and roots, and nearly all the children belonging to his people died, only two children remained out of a population of near 100 persons.” The Army conducted intermittent attempts to collect the fugitives and remove them as late as October 1838. Nevertheless, by 1840 these Cherokees were “forming settlements, building townhouses, and show every disposition to keep up their former manners and customs of councils, dances, ballplays, and other practices,” as one observer reported.

Overview

Historical context

Legal background

Choctaw removal

Seminole resistance

Creek dissolution

Chickasaw monetary removal

Cherokee forced relocation