Introduction The words we use make a difference. Y

You can say that what happened was simply a forced migration undertaken by the Cherokee Indians of the eastern United States from 1838-39.

But it is also not true because it disguises the nature of what actually took place. The more common name given to this forced migration is the Trail of Tears and this more poetic description of it bespeaks the terribleness of this series of historical events that displaced a people from their homeland in an act of murderous greed.

Of course, what happened to the Cherokees was not unique: The history of the settling of the United States by those of European descent is the story of the displacement by these settlers of the people who had first lived on the land. For despite the fact that across the continent Native Americans showed a fundamental willingness to integrate their society with whites, the white settlers continued to view them as an inferior race possessing none of the same legal rights as the Euro-Americans and requiring none of the same moral considerations as other whites. By examining the ways in which the Cherokee were treated we can come to a better understanding of the ways in which all of the native peoples of America were treated by European settlers and their descendants.

Like other native peoples, the Cherokee had been affected by the colonization of America by Europeans from the earliest decades of colonization, but the impact on their civilization w

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in 1830, the federal government began to depart from its relatively benign policy of respecting and even protecting the legal and political rights of those American Indians who were still living on their traditional homelands (and who had not signed treaties promising to leave) and still had intact social and cultural systems. As white Americans continued to demand that more land be made available to them, the U.S. Army - along with a range of federal officials - began to force Western and Southwestern Indians from their lands and settle them as far away as feasible from whites. The new lands that they were given, in addition to being far away from known places where traditional farming and hunting techniques would do little good, were often ill-adapted to support human life. It was land, in other words, that U.S. officials believed that white settlers would never want. In other words, these lands were acceptable for people that whites saw as less than fully human. U.S. President Andrew Jackson strongly supported this new federal policy of forcible displacement, which was formalized as a part of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. While a number of northern tribes were peacefully resettled in the West, many members of the Five Civi

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