would be permitted to occupy their ancient ancestral lands.

However, Jackson adopted a different, and much harsher, approach. Tribes in the Southeast of the country were to be forcibly removed and relocated west of the Mississippi where they would be resettled on designated Indian Territory. Astonishing as it may seem, Jackson apparently believed that this was a humane policy that would actually prevent Native Americans from being systematically wiped out by white American settlers. In actual fact, the new policy was disastrous for the Native American tribes concerned, especially the Cherokee. Tens of thousands of men, women, and children perished on the long trek out West, struck down by cold, hunger, and disease.

The outcome of the Trail of Tears was that the Native Americans were essentially removed from the Southeast and relocated to what was then Indian Territory across the Mississippi.  They were not able to keep all of Indian Territory in the long run as whites moved out across the continent.  Regardless of what happened with Indian Territory, the Trail of Tears resulted in the removal of Native Americans from the Southeast.  During this removal, thousands of Indians died due to harsh conditions along the way.

As white settlers spread out across the Southeast, they came to covet lands that the Native Americans owned.  The Native Americans of the Southeast had become relatively settled and “civilized” and were, in fact, known as the “Five Civilized Tribes.”  Even though these tribes had become sedentary and had adopted many European ways, the white settlers still wanted them off the land. They wanted to appropriate the land for themselves.  Therefore, they pushed the government to move the Indians out of the Southeast.  The government eventually did this, forcing the tribes to move to what is now Oklahoma.  Thousands died along the way, giving rise to the name “Trail of Tears.”

The outcome of this event was that the Native Americans were removed from the South and white settlers (and their black slaves) had the land all to themselves.

The historical significance of the Trail of Tears is that it represents a grave injustice done to Native Americans by the United States government.

In the 1830s, the “Five Civilized Tribes” were living in the Southeastern United States and were generally starting to assimilate into American ways.  They had mostly adopted sedentary farming lifestyles and other aspects of “civilization.”  This ought to have made it possible for them and the whites to live together.

However, the Americans wanted the Indian lands.  Therefore, they forced the tribes to relocate to what is now Oklahoma.  The term “Trail of Tears” is used to refer to the forced journey to what was then called the Indian Territory.

Thus, the Trail of Tears is significant because it is an instance of the US government treating Native Americans in what can be seen as an unjust manner.

The Cherokee Nation had once occupied a large swath of the Southeast, but by the early nineteenth century, it had been reduced by wars and treaties to a small parcel of land in western North Carolina, northern Georgia, and eastern Tennessee. The Cherokee had fully accepted the assimilationist polices of the United States government. They had become farmers and planters, they framed a western-style constitution, many purchased slaves, and most adopted western dress. They were the most assimilated of the so-called "Five Civilized Tribes" that inhabited the southeast, but like the other four tribes (the Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole) they were facing pressures from white expansion as southern whites, eager for land to plant cotton, eyed their traditional homelands, making claims to it based on racial superiority.

In 1828, gold was discovered in Cherokee lands, and Andrew Jackson, a determined expansionist, became president. Two years later, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, which gave states the power to negotiate removal treaties with the Cherokee. When Georgia did so, with a small faction of Cherokees, the vast majority refused to leave, and sued the federal government. The Supreme Court, in Worcester v. Georgia, ruled in favor of the Cherokee, but Jackson ignored the decision, and ordered the removal of the Cherokee from Georgia, negotiating the Treaty of New Echota to bring this into effect.

From 1837 to 1838, the US government sent federal troops to forcibly remove Cherokees from their lands and march them to Indian territory, located in modern Oklahoma. This began the infamous Trail of Tears, in which scores of Cherokee died of disease and exposure on their long march. The removal continued to have terrible repercussions for the Cherokee Nation, which remained divided among political factions for decades. Those who had opposed the move and those who had supported it because they thought it was inevitable remained bitter political enemies.

The Trail of Tears is the name given to the forced removal of the Cherokee people from their rightful lands in the Southeastern United States to new territory in what is now Oklahoma, west of the Mississippi River.  The march was ordered by President Andrew Jackson and occurred in the years 1838 and 1839 as per both the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the Treaty of New Echota in 1835.

In 1830, Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law, which allowed him to exchange lands occupied by Native American tribes in existing states for unsettled lands west of the Mississippi River.  This meant relocating entire tribes thousands of miles away from their native lands, and few were willing to undergo the change.  Many, such as the Seminoles in Florida, attempted to resist with military action; these uprising were violently quelled, and noting the ineffectiveness of such a strategy the Cherokees instead approached the problem administratively.  The Cherokee tribe of the Southeastern United States were highly organized and had their own elected government representatives, and they took the issue to federal court.  The Supreme Court ruled the forced extradition of the Cherokee people was unconstitutional, and yet Jackson refused to adhere to this ruling; amid an environment in which other tribes were being removed from their homes and shown no mercy along the way, some Cherokee citizens agreed to the Treaty of New Echota, accepting payment and new lands as compensation for the relocation.  This treaty gave Jackson the leverage he needed to force the entirety of the Cherokee nation – some fifteen thousand individuals – to undertake the long, hard road from Georgia to an area in present-day Oklahoma.  The Native Americans suffered immensely during the journey, almost a quarter of them losing their lives along the way.  The devastation and sorrow this relocation caused led the Cherokees to give the journey the name “The Trail of Tears,” a moniker embraced by history as testament to the injustice faced by these individuals.