Trail of Tears

The forced removal of the Cherokee in 1838-39 from their homelands in the east to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) is known as the "Trail of Tears" or "The Trail Where They Cried". Of the 16,000 Cherokees who were herded into stockades and marched west by U.S. troops, about 4,000 died of desease, exposure, or fatigue. A U.S. soldier, John Burnett, recalled in later years, "I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven by bayonet into stockades. And in the chill of a drizzling rain on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle or sheep into six hundred and forty-five wagons and started toward the west"

The boundaries of the Cherokee Country prior to the European invasion

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