Trail of Tears

 
Trail of Tears is the forcible relocation of Native Americans, which is seen as the shameful period in the U.S. Governments history that required the removal of thousands of Native Americans from their tribal lands, leaving many to die during the difficult journey. With the establishment of the Indian Removal act of 1830, the U.S. Congress gave the authority to President Andrew Jackson to remove thousands of Native Americans from their tribal lands (McGill, 2017). In the coming years after the Cherokee Nation would protest the Indian RemovalAct by seeking a new way to handle the dispute by way of the court systems to fight their battle as principal Chief John Ross who led the effort to bring an end of the Indian Removal Act. In doing so, Chief John Ross would select William Wirt a chief advocate and former U.S. attorney general to represent the Cherokee Nation as chief counsel to the Supreme Court hearing in Cherokee Nation v. State of Georgia (1831) and Worcester v Georgia (1832)(Cave, 2003). The rulings in both cases were to end the forcible removal and relocation of the Cherokee Nation. However, the state of Georgia proclaimed that no laws written by the Cherokee Nation were valid due to the boundaries of tribal land were located in the jurisdiction of State of Georgia. This led to the Supreme Court ruling by Chief Justice John Marshall to intervene in Worcester v Georgia (Cherokee Nation V. Georgia, 1991). In spite of Supreme Court rulings, President Andrew Jackson’s lack of respect of the Native Americans new sovereignty disregarded the court
ruling, that led to thousands of Cherokee Indians to die in the removal, all due to the encroachment of new settlers and newly discovered gold in Cherokee tribal land. The Cherokee Nation in a long-standing relationship with the United States Government had pre-established treaties that were created to hold off new settlements on tribal lands called the Treaty of Hopewell signed in 1785. The Hopewell treaty formed the initial means that offered protection under the government that outlined the boundaries of the Cherokee territory and assured the rights to millions of acres of land that encompassed the states of North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, parts of Alabama (Swygart, 2014). However, in the coming decades, the continuous influx of new settlers would reduce the size of the territory, which would cause the undoing of the Cherokee nation. General Andrew Jackson, led the initial charge against the war with the Seminole Native Indians. Within this time, also held the position of federal Indian commissioner to the state of Georgia and established his personal stance to eliminate all Native Americans from their tribal lands. With each misfortune he caused, he later on became the seventh president of the United States in 1829, which was not surprising to those who knew him. After establishing his personal belief of obtaining more land from Native Americans, President Jackson sought the U.S