Indian Removal Act of 1830 Monday April 1, 2019 Happy April Fool’s Day! Homework: Hand in your RAFT if you have not! Review sheet Marking period ends this Friday Unit test Friday!

Indian Removal Act of 1830 President Andrew Jackson signed into law an act stating that Native American Tribes would receive prairie land west of the Mississippi River in exchange for their current reservations. 14,000 Cherokee Indians were removed from their land and forced into prairie land. This land was considered undesirable for the white man.

The “White Men” believed that they were entitled to the Cherokee land because they wanted to expand America from “sea to shining sea” 1 With more people coming into America, they needed more land for the settlers to live on. 2 The Americans felt they could really benefit from the resources that Cherokee land offered such as gold and cotton. 3

Worcester v. Georgia 1832, the Supreme Court ruled that the Cherokee Indians had complete sovereignty over their territory as their land was their own and outside of the legal jurisdiction of the United States. President Jackson ignored the Supreme Court ruling and ordered the removal of the Native Americans.

Trail of tears Tuesday April 2nd 2019 Unit test Friday!

Was a series of forced relocations of Native Americans from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern portion of the present day United States, to areas west that had been designed as Indian Territory by the United States Government. The trail of tears

Life on the trail of tears As a result of the Indian Removal Act, the Cherokee’s had to pack their belongings, gather their family and head across the Mississippi River to their new land on the other side. The Cherokee’s predicted their journey would take 2 months. Guesses on how long it actually took? It took them between 4 and 5 months Most of the journey was in the dead of winter.

Why the “trail of tears”? Approximately 25% of the Cherokee Native Americans that were relocating on the trail had died The winter was too cold for them to hunt deer or buffalo. This will lead to the rationing of water, and whatever vegetables they could find that survived the winter such as turnips Between the lack of food and the freezing temperatures many of the Cherokee Indians died of hypothermia or starvation Why the “trail of tears”?

Many other also died from disease, common illnesses that passed through the tribe on the trail  these consisted of whopping cough small pox, malaria and the flu Some of the Cherokee people tried to get to their new land by crossing through the Mississippi River and ended up dying in the process