The Trail of Tears is the common name for the network of routes the United States Federal government forced the Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw to travel between 1830 and 1850.
As the National Park Service map below shows, the trail began largely in Georgia and Tennessee, traverses the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, and Missouri, and ends in Arkansas and Oklahoma.
Trail of Tears map
It was the Indian Removal Act of 1830, signed by President Andrew Jackson, that formally gave the US Government the power to expel Native Americans from their homes. They were forced to give up the rich agricultural lands on which they had lived for centuries in exchange for the drier, more barren land of The Ozarks (Northeast Oklahoma and Northwest Arkansas.).
As its name suggests, The Trail of Tears was a deeply unpleasant — often deadly — route for the Native Americans. And the development and execution of the Trail of Tears remains one (among many) of the most egregious breaches of morality ever perpetrated by the United States government.
From our modern perspective, so-called “Indian Removal” would be abhorrent no matter what. But part of the reason The Trail of Tears is such a dark stain on American history is that, as Historian Amy Sturgis explains, the people in power knew it was wrong at the time.
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