On May 28, 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Bill, which
authorized the removal of Native Americans east of the Mississippi River, most notably the
Cherokees, to land in the West. Eventually in 1838 and 1839, the United States Army forcibly
removed about 13,000 Cherokees from their ancestral homelands in the Southeast to Indian
Territory (present-day Oklahoma) in what eventually became known as the “Trail of Tears.”1 At
least 2,500 Cherokees died in ramshackle stockades before the journey and hundreds more died
en route to and in Indian Territory from either disease or violence. Historians estimate that over
4,000 Cherokees in total died during the Trail of Tears.2

Although Andrew Jackson’s strong support for Indian removal was well known before
his election to the presidency in 1829, the Trail of Tears was not inevitable. In the early 1800s,
white Americans debated whether or not to remove the Cherokees from the Southeast. Cherokee
removal was a particularly contentious issue in Georgia, where most of the Cherokees lived. In
addition, the Cherokees disagreed amongst themselves over whether or not to accept the Indian
Removal Bill after it was signed in 1830. After reading Chapter 7 of Discovering the American
Past, answer EITHER question A) or question B):

Category: Essays