What caused the Trail of Tears for kids?
In the 1830s the U.S. government took away the homelands of many Native American groups in the Southeast. It then forced them to move to lands west of the Mississippi River. Most of them had to walk all the way. This event is known as the Trail of Tears.
What was the Trail of Tears summary?
The Trail of Tears was the forced relocation during the 1830s of Indigenous peoples of the Southeast region of the United States (including the Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole, among others) to the so-called Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River.
What is the story of the Trail of Tears?
In the 1830s the United States government forcibly removed the southeastern Native Americans from their homelands and relocated them on lands in Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma). This tragic event is referred to as the Trail of Tears.
What is the Trail of Tears and why is it important?
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.
What is 1 fact about the Trail of Tears?
They made the journey to Indian Territory on foot (some “bound in chains and marched double file,” one historian writes) and without any food, supplies or other help from the government. Thousands of people died along the way. It was, one Choctaw leader told an Alabama newspaper, a “trail of tears and death.”
Why is trails of tears important?
This tragic chapter in American and Cherokee history became known as the Trail of Tears, and culminated the implementation of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which mandated the removal of all American Indian tribes east of the Mississippi River to lands in the West.
Why is the Trail of Tears so important?
The Trail of Tears has become the symbol in American history that signifies the callousness of American policy makers toward American Indians. Indian lands were held hostage by the states and the federal government, and Indians had to agree to removal to preserve their identity as tribes.
What were conditions like on the Trail of Tears?
Poor weather, disease, disorganization and famine plagued the tribes traveling to their new land. During the winter on the trail it is said that the weather was unbearable cold, which caused many difficulties for the tribes.
What did the Trail of Tears symbolize?
Where did Trail of Tears start?
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.
Who caused the Trail of Tears?
In 1838 and 1839, as part of Andrew Jackson’s Indian removal policy, the Cherokee nation was forced to give up its lands east of the Mississippi River and to migrate to an area in present-day Oklahoma. The Cherokee people called this journey the “Trail of Tears,” because of its devastating effects.
Why the Trail of Tears was wrong?
It was morally wrong because the arguments used to justify the move were based on falsehood. It stripped property rights from a minority that lacked the means to defend itself and redistributed their property to people who wanted it for themselves. It was legally wrong on Constitutional and judicial grounds.
How cold was the Trail of Tears?
Many hundreds perished from cold and hunger on this long and tortuous trek from their homeland near the Smokey Mountains to new government-designated lands in eastern Oklahoma. It took approximately eleven weeks during the fall and winter to cross the 60 cold and rainy miles between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.