The Blogging from A to Z April Challenge is now up to the letter T.
The Trail of Tears refers to the route followed by 16,000 Cherokee Indians when they were forcibly removed by the United States Government from their homelands in Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, and Georgia in 1838, and sent to Indian Territory (known today as Oklahoma).
Relations between the Cherokee Nation and the U.S. government had been tense for some time. In 1791, a U.S. treaty recognized the Cherokee territory in Georgia as independent. The Cherokee people created a thriving republic and wrote a constitution. But over the years, the state of Georgia sought to exert its authority over the Cherokee Nation without little effect.
President Andrew Jackson was a supporter of Indian removal. Continued pressure from national and state governments led to the rounding up of the Cherokee by troops in 1838. Forced to abandon everything, the Cherokee were marched to camps in Tennessee. Then during the winter, they were moved another 800 miles into Indian Territory. Hundreds died during the trip west, and thousands more died as a result of being relocated.
The path the Cherokee followed because a national monument in 1987. You can find out more about the Trail of Tears at http://www.nps.gov/trte/index.htm