To many white Americans, the existence of these people in lands that could be used for the expansion of the United States was unacceptable, and many wanted the Native American to be removed and relocated to a new area, west of the Mississippi River which was not then of interest to settlers. In 1830, the administration of President Andrew Jackson signed into law a new piece of legislation, the Indian Removal Act, which gave the government the power to force these tribes to relocate to new lands in Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma.
The forced relocations that followed have become known as the Trail of Tears. Some were conducted with extreme brutality, and many thousands of Native American people died as a direct result. Once they had been uprooted from their homelands, many tribes found themselves unable to continue with ways of life which they had followed for thousands of years, and the nature and character of Native American culture and society was forever changed.
This is an account of the privations of these forced relocations and the indifference of the U.S. government and the majority of Americans to the suffering they caused to the Native American people. This is the story of the Trail of Tears.
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