What is the song Trail of Tears about?
The Trail of Tears is best understood as an act of racism. Jackson’s goal was to remove Native Americans from land that was near the vicinity of the white people and relocate them to land west of the Mississippi. This included removal of the Cherokee people.
What does the Trail of Tears mean and why?
The Trail of Tears was the forced relocation of approximately 100,000 Native Americans in the 1830s, in which thousands of Indigenous people lost their lives. It’s remembered today as a great human rights atrocity and a shameful period in the oppression of native peoples by the United States Government.
Was the Trail of Tears good or bad?
It was morally wrong because of the loss of life. Somewhere between one-quarter and one-third of the Cherokee Nation was lost as a result of the Trail of Tears. It was morally wrong because the arguments used to justify the move were based on falsehood.
What really happened on the Trail of Tears?
In the year 1838, 16,000 Native Americans were marched over 1,200 miles of rugged land. Over 4,000 of these Indians died of disease, famine, and warfare. The Indian tribe was called the Cherokee and we call this event the Trail of Tears. The Indians became lost in bewilderment and anger.
What is the legacy of the Trail of Tears?
The Trail of Tears is the most sorrowful legacy of the Jacksonian Era. The Cherokee weren’t the only tribe forced off their ancestral lands by the United States government. The Chocktaws were moved west to a reservation in Arkansas.
What did the Trail of Tears lead to?
Whooping cough, typhus, dysentery, cholera and starvation were epidemic along the way, and historians estimate that more than 5,000 Cherokee died as a result of the journey.
What made the Trail of Tears so bad?
Severe exposure, starvation and disease ravaged tribes during their forced migration to present-day Oklahoma. As many as 4,000 died of disease, starvation and exposure during their detention and forced migration through nine states that became known as the “Trail of Tears.”
How does the Trail of Tears impact us today?
The Trail of Tears (and Indian Removal in general) does not really affect most Americans in ways that we can feel as we live our lives each day. The Trail of Tears helped to create the country we live in today. It helped make the Southeast the way it is today. It helped to create the history that we all share.