Trail of Tears

This article is about the event in Native American history. For other uses, see Trail of Tears (disambiguation).

Trail of Tears
Part of Indian removal
The Trail of Tears memorial at the New Echota Historic Site in Georgia, which honors the Cherokees who died on the Trail of Tears
LocationSoutheastern United States and Indian Territory
Date1830–1850
TargetThe "Five Civilized Tribes" (Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, Choctaw)
Attack type
CauseIndian Removal Act signed by President Andrew Jackson
Deaths13,200–16,700[a]
Victims60,000 Indigenous Americans forcibly relocated to Indian Territory.
Perpetrators
Motive

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 and their enslaved African Americans[3] within that were ethnically cleansed by the United States government.[4]

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.[5][4][6] 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.[7] 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.[8][9][10] A variety of scholars have classified the Trail of Tears as an example of the genocide of Native Americans;[11][b] others categorize it as ethnic cleansing.[32][c]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference ReferenceA was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Crepelle, Adam (2021). "Lies, Damn Lies, and Federal Indian Law: The Ethics of Citing Racist Precedent in Contemporary Federal Indian Law" (PDF). N.y.u. Review of Law & Social Change. 44: 565. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 21, 2024. Retrieved August 19, 2023.
  3. ^ Littlefield, Daniel F. Jr. The Cherokee Freedmen: From Emancipation to American Citizenship. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978, p. 68
  4. ^ a b Minges, Patrick (1998). "Beneath the Underdog: Race, Religion, and the Trail of Tears". US Data Repository. Archived from the original on October 11, 2013. Retrieved January 13, 2013.
  5. ^ "Indian removal". PBS. Archived from the original on April 18, 2010. Retrieved October 17, 2017.
  6. ^ Roberts, Alaina E. (2021). I've Been Here All The While: Black Freedom on Native Land. University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 14–15. ISBN 9780812253030.
  7. ^ Inskeep, Steve (2015). Jacksonland: President Jackson, Cherokee Chief John Ross, and a Great American Land Grab. New York: Penguin Press. pp. 332–333. ISBN 978-1-59420-556-9.
  8. ^ Thornton 1991, pp. 75–93; Prucha 1984, p. 241; Ehle 2011, pp. 291–292
  9. ^ "A Brief History of the Trail of Tears". www.cherokee.org. Archived from the original on October 18, 2017. Retrieved October 17, 2017.
  10. ^ "Native Americans". Archived from the original on December 12, 2021. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
  11. ^ Cite error: The named reference Ostler2019 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  12. ^ Lutz, Regan A. (June 1995). West of Eden: The Historiography of the Trail of Tears (PhD). University of Toledo. pp. 216–217.
  13. ^ Michael, Smith & Lowe 2021, p. 27.
  14. ^ Piecuch, Jim (7 December 2014). "Perspective 1: three Centuries of Genocide". In Bartrop, Paul R.; Jacobs, Steven Leonard (eds.). Modern Genocide: The Definitive Resource and Document Collection. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1610693639.
  15. ^ Basso, Andrew R. (6 March 2016). "Towards a Theory of Displacement Atrocities: The Cherokee Trail of Tears, The Herero Genocide, and The Pontic Greek Genocide". Genocide Studies and Prevention. 10 (1): 5–29 [15]. doi:10.5038/1911-9933.10.1.1297.
  16. ^ Harff, Barbara (1987). "The Etiology of Genocides". In Wallimann, Isidor; Dobkowski, Michael N. (eds.). The Age of Genocide: Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. p. 41.
  17. ^ Strickland, Rennard (1986). "Genocide-at-Law: An Historic and Contemporary View of the North American Experience". University of Kansas Law Review. 713: 719.
  18. ^ Tennant, Christopher C.; Turpel, Mary Ellen (1990). "A Case Study of Indigenous Peoples: Genocide, Ethnocide and Self-determination". Nordic Journal of International Law. 287 (4): 287–319 [296–297]. doi:10.1163/157181090X00387.
  19. ^ Conversa, Maria (2021). "Righting the Wrongs of Native American Removal and Advocating for Tribal Recognition: A Binding Promise, The Trail of Tears, and the Philosophy of Restorative Justice". UIC Law Review. 933. University of Illinois Chicago: 4, 13.
  20. ^ Keefe, Thomas E. (13–14 April 2019). Native American Genocide: Realities and Denials. First International Conference of the Center for Holocaust, Genocide & Human Rights Studies, University of North Carolina. Charlotte. p. 21.
  21. ^ Lewy, Guenter (9 November 2007). "Can there be genocide without the intent to commit genocide?". Journal of Genocide Research. 9 (4): 661–674 [669]. doi:10.1080/14623520701644457.
  22. ^ MacDonald, David B. (2015). "Canada's history wars: indigenous genocide and public memory in the United States, Australia and Canada". Journal of Genocide Research. 17 (4): 411–431 [415]. doi:10.1080/14623528.2015.1096583.
  23. ^ Fenelon, James V.; Trafzer, Clifford E. (2014). "From Colonialism to Denial of California Genocide to Misrepresentations: Special Issue on Indigenous Struggles in the Americas". American Behavioral Scientist. 58 (3): 3–29 [16]. doi:10.1177/0002764213495045.
  24. ^ Bowser, Benjamin P.; Word, Carl O.; Shaw, Kate (2021). "Ongoing Genocides and the Need for Healing: The Cases of Native and African Americans". Genocide Studies and Prevention. 15 (3): 83–99 [86]. doi:10.5038/1911-9933.15.3.1785.
  25. ^ Dadrian, Vahakn N. (1975). "A Typology of Genocide". International Review of Modern Sociology. 5 (2): 201–212 [209]. JSTOR 41421531.
  26. ^ Jones, Adam (2006). "The conquest of the Americas". Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction. Routledge. p. 75. ISBN 978-0-203-34744-7.
  27. ^ Bracey, Earnest N. (2021). "Andrew Jackson, Black American Slavery, and the Trail of Tears: A Critical Analysis". Dialogue and Universalism. 31 (1): 119–138 [128]. doi:10.5840/du20213118.
  28. ^ French, Laurence (June 1978). "The Death of a Nation". American Indian Journal. 4 (6): 2–9 [2].
  29. ^ Slocum, Melissa Michal (2018). "There Is No Question of American Indian Genocide". Transmotion. 4 (2): 1– 30 [4]. doi:10.22024/UniKent/03/tm.651.
  30. ^ Budhathoki, Thir Bahadur (December 2013). Literary Rendition of Genocide in Cherokee Fiction (MPhil). Tribhuvan University. p. 89.
  31. ^ Martin Rogers, Janna Lynell (July 2019). Decolonizing Cherokee History 1790-1830s: American Indian Holocaust, Genocidal Resistance, and Survival (MA). Oklahoma State University. p. 63.
  32. ^ Anderson, Gary Clayton (2014). Ethnic Cleansing and the Indian: The Crime That Should Haunt America. University of Oklahoma Press. pp. 3–22. ISBN 978-0-8061-4508-2.
  33. ^ Safire, William (March 14, 1993). "On Language: Ethnic Cleansing". New York Times. Archived from the original on July 27, 2024. Retrieved June 29, 2024.
  34. ^ Lemkin, Raphael (2005) [1944]. Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress. The Lawbook Exchange. p. 79. ISBN 978-1-58477-901-8. Retrieved June 24, 2024. Originally published in 1944 by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).