The Cherokee removal (May 25, 1838 – 1839) was part of the broader Indian removal policy and 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. This forced displacement occurred according to the terms of the 1835 Treaty of New Echota. The Cherokee removal was one of several forced relocations of American Indian groups from the American South, North, Midwest, Southwest, and the Plains regions during this period, though other groups such as the Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Muscogee (Creek) were also removed reluctantly during this era of U.S. policy.
The removal process itself lasted from May 25, 1838 through 1839, during which the Cherokee and enslaved African-Americans were forcibly transported westward. The Cherokee have since called this event Nu na da ul tsun yi (the place where they cried), though this term and the alternative phrase Tlo va sa (our removal) do not appear to have been used at the time of the removal itself, and both terms seem to be of Choctaw origin.
The consequence of the forced removal was devastating. It is estimated that 3,500 Cherokees and African-American slaves died en route during the removal process. This mass displacement and death toll stands as a significant and tragic chapter in American Indian history, representing the human cost of the Indian removal policy during the early republic period.
The early republic period saw the United States move from the weak Articles of Confederation to the federal Constitution ratified in 1788, with the Bill of Rights added in 1791. George Washington served two terms as president (1789–1797), establishing precedents for executive authority, and the federal capital moved permanently to Washington D.C. in 1800. The Louisiana Purchase (1803) doubled the nation's territory for roughly $15 million, opening vast trans-Mississippi lands to American expansion. The War of 1812 against Britain ended inconclusively but produced a surge of American national identity and eliminated most British support for Indigenous resistance east of the Mississippi. The Northwest Indian Wars (1785–1795) and the Creek War (1813–1814) broke Indigenous confederacies that had resisted US expansion. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 temporarily balanced slave and free states as the nation expanded westward, but embedded the contradiction of slavery in every subsequent territorial debate.
c.3,500 Cherokees and African-American slaves died en route
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