All about the ancient tribes
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.
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.
They were not allowed time to gather their belongings, and as they left, whites looted their homes. Then began the march known as the Trail of Tears, in which 4,000 Cherokee people died of cold, hunger, and disease on their way to the western lands.
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
Quahadis were the hardest, fiercest, least yielding component of a tribe that had long had the reputation as the most violent and warlike on the continent; if they ran low on water, they were known to drink the contents of a dead horse’s stomach, something even the toughest Texas Ranger would not do.
The Indian Removal Act was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830, authorizing the president to grant lands west of the Mississippi in exchange for Indian lands within existing state borders.
They are known to us today as the Wendat (also known as Huron,) Neutral-Wenro, Erie, Laurentian (or St. Lawrence Iroquoian,) Susquehannock, Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, Tuscarora, Nottaway, and Cherokee.
The prevailing theory proposes that people migrated from Eurasia across Beringia, a land bridge that connected Siberia to present-day Alaska during the Last Glacial Period, and then spread southward throughout the Americas over subsequent generations.
Trail of Tears, in U.S. history, the forced relocation during the 1830s of Eastern Woodlands Indians of the Southeast region of the United States (including Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole, among other nations) to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River.
The Cherokee Nation has more than 300,000 tribal members, making it the largest of the 567 federally recognized tribes in the United States.
Jackson warned the tribes that if they failed to move, they would lose their independence and fall under state laws. Jackson backed an Indian removal bill in Congress. Members of Congress like Davy Crockett argued that Jackson violated the Constitution by refusing to enforce treaties that guaranteed Indian land rights.
When death occurred, everything in the house, including the surviving family became unclean. The personal belongings of the deceased were either buried with him or burned at the grave site. He put in the pot certain weed and later gave the tea to the family members who drank it and washed themselves with it.
Ron Cooper completes his 835-mile journey along the northern route of the Cherokee Trail of Tears in Park Hill, Okla., in April 2011. The journey took him nearly three months to complete.
The Removal Act paved the way for the forced expulsion of tens of thousands of American Indians from their land into the West in an event widely known as the “Trail of Tears,” a forced resettlement of the Indian population.
US President Andrew Jackson oversaw the policy of “Indian removal,” which was formalized when he signed the Indian Removal Act in May 1830. The Indian Removal Act authorized a series of migrations that became known as the Trail of Tears. This was devastating to Native Americans, their culture, and their way of life.