Trail of Tears
Forced relocation and ethnic cleansing of the southeastern Native American tribes / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Trail of Tears was the forced displacement of approximately 60,000 people of the "Five Civilized Tribes" between 1830 and 1850, and the additional thousands of Native Americans within that were ethnically cleansed by the United States government.[3]
Trail of Tears | |
---|---|
Part of Indian removal | |
Location | Southeastern United States and Indian Territory |
Date | 1830–1850 |
Target | The "Five Civilized Tribes" (Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, Choctaw) |
Attack type | |
Cause | Indian Removal Act signed by President Andrew Jackson |
Deaths | Total: 13,200–16,700
See: [lower-alpha 1] |
Victims | 60,000 Indigenous Americans forcibly relocated to Indian Territory. |
Perpetrators | |
Motive |
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As part of Indian removal, members of the Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States to newly designated Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River after the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830.[4][3][5] The Cherokee removal in 1838 was the last forced removal east of the Mississippi and was brought on by the discovery of gold near Dahlonega, Georgia, in 1828, resulting in the Georgia Gold Rush.[6] The relocated peoples suffered from exposure, disease, and starvation while en route to their newly designated Indian reserve. Thousands died from disease before reaching their destinations or shortly after.[7][8][9][10][11] A variety of scholars have classified the Trail of Tears as an example of the genocide of Native Americans;[12][lower-alpha 2] others use the term ethnic cleansing.[33]