The trail of tears

 

The Trail of Tears is the name that received the forced transfer from their ancestral lands by the United States of the Choktaw people in 1831 and the Cherokees in 1838. As a result of this migration, it is estimated that about four died one thousand Cherokee. In the Cherokee language, this event is called "Nunna daul Isunyi", which in English could be translated as "the way where we cry."

The deportation was the result of the application of the Treaty of New Echota an agreement signed according to provisions of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which required the exchange of territories of the native peoples in the east for others west of the Mississippi River, but that was never accepted by the elected leaders of the tribe nor by the majority of the Cherokee people. In fact, a law was passed whereby Cherokee could remain in the states of Georgia and Florida, where the Indian Removal Act - which the Cherokee had denounced in court - was temporarily annulled. Despite this, US President Martin Van Buren ignored the new law and dispatched federal troops to rally about 17,000 Cherokee to camps before banishing them west.

Most of the deaths occurred due to weather conditions, racial harassment of Americans, and inadequate government planning of the food and shelter necessary to undertake the operation. After rallying the Cherokee, it was the Cherokee nation itself that oversaw most of the emigration.

The Cherokee were not the only Native Americans who were forced to emigrate in those years, and thus the expression Trail of Tears is sometimes used to refer to similar events suffered by other indigenous peoples, especially the Five Civilized Tribes. In fact, the phrase itself may have originated as a description of the deportation of the Choctaw nation.

The tension between Georgia and the Cherokee Nation led to a crisis with the discovery of gold near Dahlonega in 1829, which caused the first gold rush in the history of the United States. Hopeful gold speculators began to invade Cherokee lands, and pressure began on the Georgian government.

When Georgia wanted to extend state laws on Cherokee tribal lands, the matter went to the US Supreme Court. The court ruled that the Cherokee were not a sovereign and independent nation, and therefore refused to hear the case.

President Jackson strongly advocated the deportation of the natives to the west. With the Indian Renoval of 1830, the US Congress granted Jackson authority to negotiate treaties of removal, in which Indian territory in the east was exchanged for lands west of the Mississippi River. Jackson used the dispute with Georgia to pressure the Cherokee and get them to sign the treaty.1

The rapid expansion of the United States population in the early nineteenth century produced tensions with the North American indigenous tribes located within several states. While state governments did not want to have independent indigenous enclaves within their state borders, indigenous tribes did not want to be relocated or renounce their identities.

With the Pact of 1802, the state of Georgia gave up its claims to the national government for the territories to the west (which later became the states of Alabama and Mississippi). In exchange for this, the national government promised that it would finally agree to treaties to relocate all indigenous tribes located within Georgia, and therefore giving the latter control of all the territory within its borders.

However, the Cherokee, whose ancestral tribal lands overlapped with the borders of the states of Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Alabama, refused to move. They established a capital in 1825 in the city of New Echota (near present-day Calhoun, in the state of Georgia). In addition, and guided by Chief John Ross and Major Ridge, Speaker of the Cherokee National Council, the Cherokee adopted a written constitution on July 26, 1827, declaring the Cherokee Nation as a sovereign and independent nation.

Treaty of Removal and Resistance

With the reelection of Andrew Jackson in 1832 some of the most energetic opponents of the Cherokee relocation began to change their positions. Meanwhile, anticipating the removal of the Cherokee, the state of Georgia began bidding to divide the Cherokee tribal lands between the white Georgians.

Faced with the imminence of the transfer, the Cherokee Nation divided into two groups: the Cherokee of the west, led by Commander Ridge; and those of the east, who continued to recognize the authority of Chief John Ross as head of the nation

The US Government proposed to pay the Cherokee $ 4.5 million (among other compensation) to move themselves. The Cherokee Nation Council rejected the proposal in October 1835. Only five hundred Cherokee (out of several thousand) attended a call to rally Cherokee who were supposed to accept the removal treaty, and in 1835 twenty supporters signed or marked with an X of the Cherokee removal, the so-called Treaty of New Echota,

Chief Ross, unsurprisingly, didn't. The signatures violated the law of the Cherokee Nation, which had been approved in 1829, as it punished the transfer of Cherokee lands in writing with capital punishment.

Not a single official of the Cherokee Council signed the document. This treaty handed over all Cherokee territory east of the Mississippi River to the Americans. Despite protests from the Cherokee National Council and Chief Ross arguing that the document was a fraud, Congress ratified the treaty on May 23, 1836, albeit by a majority of a single vote.