It is difficult to imagine the hardships which faced the people of the Cherokee Nation who made the forced march to the Indian Territory. They had already lost their homes and possessions. Most felt that their government would not force them from their homes and made no plans for the long, arduous journey. When the government roundup of Cherokees began, many were forced from their homes with only the barest possessions.

The detachments which left in June of 1838 found themselves making the journey in the hottest part of the year during a drought. Sickness and death plagued the exodus, most of it caused by a combination of bad water, bad diet and physical exhaustion, particularly among the children. Some of the Indians left almost naked and without shoes and refused government clothing because they felt it would be taken as an acceptance of being removed from their homes. Some refused government food; others were given foodstuffs that were not normally part of their diet, such as wheat flour, which they did not know how to use. One military estimate of the death toll in one of the parties was put at 17.7%, with half of the dead being children.

Because of the heavy death toll, Chief Ross and the National Council asked General Scott to allow the rest of the Cherokee to wait until Fall to move, and to supervise their own removal. General Scott approved the plan, provided that all must be on the road by October 20. The remaining detachments which left in the Fall--most of the exodus--met different hardships. Unseasonably heavy rains turned the primitive roads to mud. Wagons became mired axle or beddeep in the muck, and the Cherokee were repeatedly forced to manually drag the wagons free.

Those who were forced to halt beside the frozen Mississippi River still remembered a half-century later the hundreds of sick and dying in wagons or lying on the frozen ground with only the single blanket provided by the government to each Indian for shelter from the January wind.

Besides the cold, there was starvation and malnutrition. Sometimes the funds for food were embezzled by those hired to provide it along the route. The later detachments often found that all of the wild game had been depleted by hunters from the first detachments which passed through. Weakened by the hunger and exertions of the trip, the Cherokee became easy victims of disease, particularly cholera and smallpox, but even measles, whooping cough, pleurisy and dysentery. Stragglers were sometimes preyed upon by wild animals. A few of the travelers were waylaid by frontier rogues and beaten or murdered after they were robbed.

A traveler who witnessed a passing mother holding her dying child wrote,

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