Cherokee trail of tears history channel

  • Trail of tears timeline
  • Why did the trail of tears happen
  • Who was responsible for the trail of tears
  • The longest-serving chief in the history of the Cherokee nation, John Ross dedicated much of his life to fighting against his people’s forced removal from their homelands. Tragically, he did so at a time when the U.S. government viewed Native Americans as little more than an obstacle to the new nation’s aggressive westward expansion.

    Ross rose to power during the most promising period in Cherokee history. During the s, they built a new capital city, developed their own written language and drafted a constitution. But his tenure as principal chief () coincided with the most tumultuous era in the tribe’s history, during which he faced ferocious pressure to relinquish their vast ancestral territory in the fertile Southeast. Starting in , the state of Georgia began annexing Cherokee’s homelands and claiming legal jurisdiction. In , the U.S. government passed the Indian Removal Act, codifying its plan to move all tribal people west of the Mississippi River. And in , a splinter faction of Cherokees—including a former close adviser to Ross—signed an illegitimate treaty that the federal government used to justify the Cherokee’s forced relocation, later called the Trail of Tears.

    Fluent in English and Cherokee, Ross long served the role of diplomat and negotiator on behalf of the tri

  • cherokee trail of tears history channel
  • The 'Indian Problem'

    White Americans, particularly those who lived on the western frontier, often feared and resented the Native Americans they encountered: To them, American Indians seemed to be an unfamiliar, alien people who occupied land that white settlers wanted (and believed they deserved).

    Some officials in the early years of the American republic, such as President George Washington, believed that the best way to solve this “Indian problem” was to simply “civilize” the Native Americans. The goal of this civilization campaign was to make Native Americans as much like white Americans as possible by encouraging them convert to Christianity, learn to speak and read English and adopt European-style economic practices such as the individual ownership of land and other property (including, in some instances in the South, enslaved persons).

    In the southeastern United States, many Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Creek and Cherokee people adopted these customs and became known as the “Five Civilized Tribes.”

    Did you know? Indian removal took place in the Northern states as well. In Illinois and Wisconsin, for example, the bloody Black Hawk War in opened to white settlement millions of acres of land that had belonged to the Sauk, Fox and other native nations.

    But the Na

    The Indian Abstraction Act deed the Footpath of Tears

    Idea for Unify in description Classroom

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