USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Between the 1830 Indian Removal Act and 1850, the U.S. government used forced treaties and/or U.S. Army action to move about 100, 000 American Indians living east of the Mississippi River, westward to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma.

Detailed explanation-2: -Under the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole nations – known as the Five Tribes – were forced from their ancestral homelands in the southeast and relocated to “Indian Territory, ” as Oklahoma was then designated.

Detailed explanation-3: -The Trail of Tears National Historic Trail traces their route to Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the current capital of the Cherokee Nation. An exhibit at the Cherokee Heritage Center in Tahlequah features 16, 000 hand-crafted beads representing the people who made that awful journey.

Detailed explanation-4: -Those who were still alive five months later found themselves in Indian Territory. Of the 17 total detachments of Cherokee that traveled along the Trail of Tears, the majority went by foot. Those who walked to present-day Oklahoma left mostly between August and November 1838, following a variety of overland routes.

Detailed explanation-5: -On March 26, 1839, Cherokee Indians came to the end of the “Trail of Tears, ” a forced death march from their ancestral home in the Smoky Mountains to the Oklahoma Territory.