The Trail of Tears: Cherokee Legacy is a 2006 documentary by Rich-Heape Films. It presents the history of the forcible removal and relocation of Cherokee people from southeastern states of the United States to territories west of the Mississippi River, particularly to the Indian Territory in the future Oklahoma.
This removal in the 1830s has been popularly referred to as the "Trail of Tears." It followed the Indian Removal Act of 1830. This action was part of a larger United States policy of Indian removal.
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Actor Wes Studi as on-camera presenter James Earl Jones narrated the film.[ clarification needed ] Other celebrities providing voices for the film include James Garner, Crystal Gayle, and Wilma Mankiller. Native American and other history professors make on-camera narrative observations. The film includes speech in the Cherokee language.
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The Indian removal was the United States government's policy of ethnic cleansing through the forced displacement of self-governing tribes of American Indians from their ancestral homelands in the eastern United States to lands west of the Mississippi River—specifically, to a designated Indian Territory, which many scholars have labeled a genocide. The Indian Removal Act of 1830, the key law which authorized the removal of Native tribes, was signed into law by United States president Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830. Although Jackson took a hard line on Indian removal, the law was primarily enforced during the Martin Van Buren administration. After the enactment of the Act, approximately 60,000 members of the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands, with thousands dying during the Trail of Tears.
The Cherokee people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, they were concentrated in their homelands, in towns along river valleys of what is now southwestern North Carolina, southeastern Tennessee, southwestern Virginia, edges of western South Carolina, northern Georgia and northeastern Alabama consisting of around 40,000 square miles.
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 within that were ethnically cleansed by the United States government.
The term Five Civilized Tribes was applied by the United States government in the early federal period of the history of the United States to the five major Native American nations in the Southeast: the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminoles. White Americans classified them as "civilized" because they had adopted attributes of the Anglo-American culture.
The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was signed into law on May 28, 1830, by United States President Andrew Jackson. The law, as described by Congress, provided "for an exchange of lands with the Indians residing in any of the states or territories, and for their removal east of the river Mississippi". During the presidency of Jackson (1829–1837) and his successor Martin Van Buren (1837–1841) more than 60,000 Native Americans from at least 18 tribes were forced to move west of the Mississippi River where they were allocated new lands. The southern tribes were resettled mostly in Indian Territory (Oklahoma). The northern tribes were resettled initially in Kansas. With a few exceptions, the United States east of the Mississippi and south of the Great Lakes was emptied of its Native American population. The movement westward of indigenous tribes was characterized by a large number of deaths occasioned by the hardships of the journey.
John Ross was the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1828 to 1866; he served longer in that position than any other person. Ross led the nation through such tumultuous events as forced removal to Indian Territory and the American Civil War.
Brigadier-General Stand Watie, also known as Standhope Uwatie and Isaac S. Watie, was a Cherokee politician who served as the second principal chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1862 to 1866. The Cherokee Nation allied with the Confederate States during the American Civil War, and he was subsequently the only Native American Confederate general officer. Watie commanded Indian forces in the Trans-Mississippi Theater, made up mostly of Cherokee, Muskogee, and Seminole. He was the last Confederate States Army general to surrender.
Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. 1 (1831), was a United States Supreme Court case. The Cherokee Nation sought a federal injunction against laws passed by the U.S. state of Georgia depriving them of rights within its boundaries, but the Supreme Court did not hear the case on its merits. It ruled that it had no original jurisdiction in the matter, as the Cherokees were a dependent nation, with a relationship to the United States like that of a "ward to its guardian," as said by Chief Justice Marshall.
The Cherokee Outlet, or Cherokee Strip, was located in what is now the state of Oklahoma in the United States. It was a 60-mile-wide (97 km) parcel of land south of the Oklahoma–Kansas border between 96 and 100°W. The Cherokee Outlet was created in 1836. The United States forced the Cherokee Nation of Indians to cede to the United States all lands east of the Mississippi River in exchange for a reservation and an "outlet" in Indian Territory. At the time of its creation, the Cherokee Outlet was about 225 miles (360 km) long. The cities of Enid, Woodward, Ponca City, and Perry were later founded within the boundaries of what had been the Cherokee Outlet.
The Ridge, later known as Major Ridge was a Cherokee leader, a member of the tribal council, and a lawmaker. As a warrior, he fought in the Cherokee–American wars against American frontiersmen. Later, Major Ridge led the Cherokee in alliances with General Andrew Jackson and the United States in the Creek and Seminole wars of the early 19th century.
John Ridge, born Skah-tle-loh-skee, was from a prominent family of the Cherokee Nation, then located in present-day Georgia. He went to Cornwall, Connecticut, to study at the Foreign Mission School. He met Sarah Bird Northup, of a New England Yankee family, and they married in 1824. Soon after their return to New Echota in 1825, Ridge was chosen for the Cherokee National Council and became a leader in the tribe.
Fort Smith National Historic Site is a National Historic Site located in Fort Smith, Arkansas, along the Arkansas River. The first fort at this site was established by the United States in 1817, before this area was established as part of Indian Territory. It was later replaced and the second fort was operated by the US until 1871. This site was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1961.
Willstown was an important Cherokee town of the late 18th and early 19th century, located in the southwesternmost part of the Cherokee Nation, in what is now DeKalb County, Alabama. It was near Lookout or Little Wills Creek. It was in Wills Valley, which also incorporated Big Wills Creek. This was within the territory of the Lower Creek, who had crossed into this area in an effort to avoid European-American encroachment.
Red Clay State Historic Park is a state park located in southern Bradley County, Tennessee, United States. The park preserves the Red Clay Council Grounds, which were the site of the last capital of the Cherokee Nation in the eastern United States from 1832 to 1838 before the enforcement of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. This act resulted in a forced migration of most of the Cherokee people to present-day Oklahoma known as the Cherokee removal. At the council grounds, the Cherokee made multiple unsuccessful pleas to the U.S. government to be allowed to remain in their ancestral homeland. The site is considered sacred to the Cherokees, and includes the Blue Hole Spring, a large hydrological spring. It is also listed as an interpretive center along the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail.
This is a timeline of events in the history of the Cherokee Nation, from its earliest appearance in historical records to modern court cases in the United States. Some basic content about the removal of other southeastern tribes to lands west of the Mississippi River is included. In a series of treaties, these tribes ceded land to the United States.
The Cherokee in the American Civil War were active in the Trans-Mississippi and Western Theaters. In the east, Confederate Cherokees led by William Holland Thomas hindered Union forces trying to use the Appalachian mountain passes of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. Out west, Confederate Cherokee Stand Watie led primarily Native Confederate forces in the Indian Territory, in what is now the state of Oklahoma. The Cherokee partnered with the Confederacy in order to get funds, as well as ultimately full recognition as a sovereign, independent state.
Ross's Landing in Chattanooga, Tennessee, is the last site of the Cherokee's 61-year occupation of Chattanooga and is considered to be the embarkation point of the Cherokee removal on the Trail of Tears. Ross's Landing Riverfront Park memorializes the location, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Cherokee Nation was a legal, autonomous, tribal government in North America recognized from 1794 to 1907. It was often referred to simply as "The Nation" by its inhabitants. The government was effectively disbanded in 1907, after its land rights had been extinguished, prior to the admission of Oklahoma as a state. During the late 20th century, the Cherokee people reorganized, instituting a government with sovereign jurisdiction known as the Cherokee Nation. On July 9, 2020, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Muscogee (Creek) Nation had never been disestablished in the years before allotment and Oklahoma Statehood.
The Cherokee removal, part of the Indian removal, refers to the forced displacement of an estimated 15,500 Cherokees and 1,500 African-American slaves from the U.S. states of Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama to the West according to the terms of the 1835 Treaty of New Echota. It is estimated that 3,500 Cherokees and African-American slaves died en route.
Goingsnake, also spelled Going Snake; in Cherokee, I-na-du-na-i, ᎢᎾᏚᎾᎢ) (Cherokee) was a respected warrior, gifted orator, and prominent political leader of his people. He was born in the vicinity of present-day Nottely Lake, Georgia, then part of the large Cherokee territory.