This article traces the history of the forced relocation of the Five Civilized Tribes from their homelands in the southeastern United States to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River, roughly 1830 to 1842. It covers the political, legal, and military events of removal, with attention to each of the five nations. For broader context on federal-indigenous relations see Colonial-Native Relations - History. For the Cherokee legal cases see Cherokee Legal Cases - History. For contested interpretations see Trail of Tears - Debate and Trail of Tears Genocide - Debate.

Federal policy toward indigenous peoples east of the Mississippi in the early nineteenth century developed along two tracks. Henry Knox, Secretary of War under Washington, and his successors framed the goal as “civilization” - the conversion of indigenous peoples to sedentary agriculture and European social practices, after which, it was argued, they would require less land and could be absorbed into American society. Thomas Jefferson, while publicly supporting this assimilation framework, also privately advocated using trade debt to pressure indigenous nations to cede land, and after the Louisiana Purchase (1803) he considered western relocation as an alternative path for those unwilling to assimilate.¹⁾

The Five Civilized Tribes - Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek (Muscogee), and Seminole - occupied large portions of present-day Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Florida, and North Carolina. They were designated “civilized” in the parlance of the era in part because they had adopted elements of European-American economic and institutional life. The Cherokee developed a written syllabary under Sequoyah between approximately 1809 and 1821, established a constitutional government with a bicameral legislature in 1827, operated plantations, published a bilingual newspaper (the Cherokee Phoenix, founded 1828), and pursued treaty relations as a sovereign nation. Similar patterns of adaptation appeared among the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Creek, though with variation.

Georgia was the central site of political conflict over Cherokee removal. The state had been promised by the federal government in 1802 that the United States would extinguish indigenous land titles within its borders in exchange for Georgia ceding its western land claims. That promise had not been fulfilled by the 1820s. Georgia's legislature passed a series of laws through the late 1820s extending state jurisdiction over Cherokee lands, nullifying Cherokee laws, forbidding the Cherokee government from meeting, and barring indigenous testimony against white citizens in state courts. These laws were intended to make Cherokee residence untenable.²⁾

Andrew Jackson, elected president in 1828, had built his military reputation in campaigns against the Creek during the Creek War (1813-1814) and against the Seminole in Florida (1817-1818). He had long held that removal west of the Mississippi was the only durable solution to conflicts over eastern indigenous lands. His election brought into the executive branch a consistent commitment to removal that earlier administrations had pursued more ambivalently.

Jackson submitted a removal bill to Congress in 1829. The resulting Indian Removal Act, passed by the House 102-97 and the Senate 28-19 and signed by Jackson on May 28, 1830, authorized the president to negotiate treaties exchanging eastern indigenous land for equivalent territory west of the Mississippi and provided $500,000 for the purpose. The act did not authorize forced removal; it authorized negotiation of voluntary treaties. In practice, the distinction was not consistently observed.³⁾

The congressional debate was substantive and contested. Representative Davy Crockett of Tennessee opposed the bill on principled grounds, arguing it violated federal treaty obligations and would be remembered as an act of injustice. Senator Theodore Frelinghuysen of New Jersey gave a six-hour speech in opposition. Supporters argued that removal would protect indigenous peoples from state jurisdiction and settler encroachment, allow them to preserve their cultures, and resolve a genuine conflict between state and federal authority over a large region.

Opponents in Congress, the press, and religious organizations - particularly the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, which operated Cherokee missions - mounted a public campaign against the bill. The debate engaged concepts of treaty obligation, federal versus state authority, the capacity of the executive to override judicial decisions, and the rights of nations that had maintained peaceful relations with the United States under prior agreements.

Cherokee principal chief John Ross led a sustained legal and political resistance to removal. The Cherokee filed suit in the Supreme Court in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), seeking an injunction against Georgia's extension of state law over Cherokee lands. Chief Justice John Marshall, writing for the Court, held that the Cherokee were a “domestic dependent nation” rather than a foreign state and declined jurisdiction on that basis, but his opinion described indigenous nations as having an unquestioned right to their lands and characterized their relationship to the United States as resembling that of “a ward to his guardian.”⁴⁾

The following year, a test case arose from Georgia's prosecution of Samuel Worcester, a missionary who had remained in Cherokee territory without the license Georgia now required of white residents. In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), Marshall ruled for Worcester, holding that the laws of Georgia could have no force within Cherokee territory, that the Cherokee nation was a distinct community with self-governing authority over its territory, and that only the federal government - not the states - had authority in relations with indigenous nations.

Jackson did not enforce the ruling. His reported response - “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it” - is not sourced in any contemporaneous document and may be apocryphal, but it accurately represents the posture of the administration, which took no action to restrain Georgia.⁵⁾ Georgia continued to enforce its laws. Worcester remained imprisoned until he agreed to leave Cherokee territory.

Within the Cherokee Nation, a faction known as the Treaty Party, led by Major Ridge, his son John Ridge, and Elias Boudinot (editor of the Cherokee Phoenix), concluded that removal was inevitable and that negotiating the best possible terms was preferable to continued resistance. The majority, including Principal Chief John Ross, opposed any cession. Ross submitted a petition with approximately 15,000 signatures - representing most of the Cherokee adult population - to Congress opposing removal.

In December 1835, representatives of the Treaty Party signed the Treaty of New Echota with U.S. treaty commissioner John Schermerhorn, ceding all Cherokee lands east of the Mississippi for five million dollars and equivalent territory in Indian Territory, with two years allowed for voluntary removal. The treaty was signed without the authorization of the Cherokee National Council and over the explicit protest of John Ross. The Senate ratified it by a single vote in May 1836. Major Ridge reportedly said at the signing that he was signing his own death warrant; he, John Ridge, and Boudinot were killed by anti-treaty Cherokees in Indian Territory in 1839.⁶⁾

The two-year voluntary removal period, set to expire in May 1838, saw only about 2,000 Cherokee - mostly Treaty Party members - relocate voluntarily. The remainder, roughly 15,000 to 17,000 people, remained in their eastern homelands under John Ross's direction, continuing to press for annulment of the treaty.

In May 1838, General Winfield Scott arrived in Cherokee country with approximately 7,000 troops and orders to begin forced removal. Soldiers constructed a network of stockade forts and conducted a roundup operation through the summer of 1838, gathering Cherokee from their homes and farms with little time to collect belongings or secure property. Accounts from soldiers, missionaries, and Cherokee survivors describe families separated, livestock and property taken by settlers who followed the troops, and inadequate provisions in the holding stockades. Disease spread in the camps during the hot months. An estimated 1,500 to 2,000 Cherokee died in the stockades before the main overland movement began.⁷⁾

John Ross negotiated with Scott to allow the Cherokee to conduct the overland removal themselves rather than under direct military supervision. The main body of approximately 13,000 people set out in detachments beginning in the fall of 1838. The route ran roughly through Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas into Indian Territory. The winter of 1838-1839 was unusually severe. Clothing and food were inadequate. The journey ranged from 800 to over 1,000 miles depending on route. Mortality estimates for the overland journey vary; most historians place total Trail of Tears deaths - including those in the stockades and during the removal process - between 4,000 and 8,000, though some estimates run higher. Cherokee accounts collected in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries describe extreme cold, starvation, and the dead being buried along the route.⁸⁾ A small number of Cherokee remained in the mountains of North Carolina, forming the basis of what became the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

The name “Trail of Tears” translates a Cherokee phrase, Nunna daul Tsuny, meaning roughly “the trail where they cried” or “the place where they cried.” The phrase entered American historical vocabulary gradually; systematic scholarly and public use became widespread in the twentieth century.

The Choctaw were the first of the Five Civilized Tribes removed under the Indian Removal Act. The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek (September 1830) was negotiated under conditions disputed by Choctaw accounts; Federal Removal Commissioner John Coffee and Secretary of War John Eaton held the treaty council after most Choctaw leaders had already left, negotiating with a smaller group. The treaty ceded approximately 11 million acres of Choctaw land in Mississippi for equivalent territory in Indian Territory. Individual Choctaw who chose to remain in Mississippi were offered 640-acre allotments and U.S. citizenship, though few of these provisions were honored in practice.⁹⁾

Removal was carried out in three major waves, 1831-1833. Federal logistical management was poor; contracted supplies arrived late or not at all. The first removal group in the winter of 1831-1832 encountered extreme cold and inadequate rations. Alexis de Tocqueville, traveling in the region, witnessed Choctaw removal in Memphis in December 1831 and recorded his observations in Democracy in America - describing the passage of a large group in bitter cold, the sick and elderly among them, in a scene he called one of the most distressing spectacles he had witnessed.¹⁰⁾ Estimates of Choctaw deaths during removal range from 2,500 to 6,000 out of approximately 19,000 who undertook the journey.¹¹⁾

The Creek Nation in Alabama ceded its eastern lands under the Treaty of Cusseta (1832), which allotted individual plots to Creek heads of household with the intent that they could sell their allotments and remain in Alabama or move west. The allotment process was followed by widespread fraud; speculators used forgeries, coercion, and exploitation of Creek signatories - many of whom could not read English - to acquire allotments. By 1835, large numbers of Creek had been dispossessed through fraudulent land sales, and violent conflict broke out between dispossessed Creek and white settlers.

The federal government responded by authorizing military removal. General Winfield Scott and later General Thomas Jesup oversaw operations. Approximately 15,000 Creek were removed in 1836-1837, many in chains following a brief military campaign. A contingent of Creek warriors enlisted to assist in the Seminole War in Florida as a condition of removal. Mortality estimates during Creek removal are substantially less precise than for the Cherokee or Choctaw, reflecting gaps in the evidentiary record; historians estimate between 3,500 and 10,000 deaths from disease, starvation, and exposure during and immediately after removal.¹²⁾

The Chickasaw ceded their eastern Mississippi and Tennessee lands under the Treaty of Pontotoc Creek (1832). Unlike the other removed nations, the Chickasaw negotiated compensation terms that were more favorable in the short term; they sold their eastern lands for cash and purchased territory in Indian Territory from the Choctaw Nation, with whom they eventually formed a political arrangement. Chickasaw removal in 1837-1838 was managed in part by the Chickasaw themselves with federal assistance, and mortality, while significant, was lower proportionally than among the other removed nations. Estimates range from several hundred to approximately 500 deaths during the removal process, though disease mortality in Indian Territory in subsequent years was substantial.

The Seminole of Florida refused removal. The Treaty of Payne's Landing (1832) and the Treaty of Fort Gibson (1833) committed a Seminole delegation to removal, but the Seminole National Council rejected both treaties as unauthorized. Osceola, a prominent Seminole war leader, killed U.S. Indian Agent Wiley Thompson at Fort King in December 1835 in coordination with an ambush that destroyed a column of approximately 110 soldiers under Major Francis Dade - killing all but three - on the same day. The Second Seminole War began.

The war was fought primarily as guerrilla conflict in the swamps and hammocks of Florida. Seminole forces under Osceola, Alligator, and others used the terrain effectively against regular Army units. Osceola was captured in October 1837 during a parley under a white flag - an act condemned in the American press - and died in captivity at Fort Moultrie, South Carolina, in January 1838. Command passed to other leaders. The United States employed multiple generals; the war was characterized by high Army desertion and disease rates, and no decisive military outcome. Between 1,500 and 2,000 U.S. soldiers died, making it the longest and most costly of the Indian Wars in the Southeast.

The federal government ultimately relocated most of the Seminole to Indian Territory through a combination of military pressure, prisoner surrender policies, and offers of safe conduct that were sometimes violated. Approximately 3,000 to 4,000 Seminole were transported west by 1842, when the United States declared the war ended. A remnant population of several hundred Seminole, led by figures including Sam Jones (Abiaki) and Billy Bowlegs, remained in the Florida Everglades and was never formally subjugated. A Third Seminole War (1855-1858) resulted in the removal of most of the remaining Florida Seminole; a small group refused surrender and remained. Their descendants are the Seminole Tribe of Florida and the Miccosukee Tribe, which did not formally sign a peace treaty with the United States until the late twentieth century.¹³⁾

The removed nations reconstituted their governments in Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. The Cherokee Nation reestablished its constitutional government, founded schools and eventually a public education system, published newspapers, and operated a functioning legal apparatus. Tensions between the Treaty Party and the Ross faction culminated in the killings of Major Ridge, John Ridge, and Elias Boudinot in June 1839, and a period of internal political violence before the factions united under a new constitution in 1839.

The Five Civilized Tribes held enslaved African Americans prior to removal, and slavery continued in Indian Territory under their governance. Cherokee and Creek slaveholders brought enslaved people west during removal. The nations' constitutions and laws recognized slavery as an institution. During the Civil War, each of the Five Civilized Tribes was split; significant factions allied with the Confederacy and signed treaties with the Confederate government. Others maintained loyalty to the Union. The war in Indian Territory was destructive, with internal conflict, displacement, and significant population loss. The Reconstruction treaties of 1866 between the United States and the Five Civilized Tribes required emancipation, the granting of citizenship to formerly enslaved people (the Freedmen), and additional land cessions as a condition of restored federal relations.¹⁴⁾

Whether the Treaty of New Echota was a valid cession given that it was signed by an unauthorized minority faction and opposed by the principal chief and a documented majority of the Cherokee people is contested by historians and legal scholars. See Trail of Tears - Debate.

Whether the Indian Removal Act authorized only voluntary treaty negotiations or effectively created a framework for coerced removal is disputed among historians of federal Indian policy. See Colonial-Native Relations - Debate.

Whether the Trail of Tears meets the definition of genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention - specifically whether intent to destroy the Cherokee or other removed nations “as such” can be demonstrated - is contested among historians and legal scholars. See Trail of Tears Genocide - Debate.

The precise mortality figures for each removal are disputed; estimates vary significantly across sources, and some historians argue that deaths in Indian Territory from disease in the years immediately following removal should be included in any accounting. See Trail of Tears Death Toll - Debate.

Whether Jackson's decision not to enforce Worcester v. Georgia constituted an unconstitutional usurpation of judicial authority or fell within legitimate executive discretion is disputed by constitutional historians. See Worcester v. Georgia - Debate.

The degree to which Choctaw, Creek, and Chickasaw removal treaties were freely negotiated versus products of coercion, fraud, or procedural manipulation is disputed; the evidentiary record on the conduct of specific treaty councils is incomplete. See Five Civilized Tribes Removal - Debate.

1. Perdue, Theda and Michael D. Green. The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears. Viking, 2007.

2. Ehle, John. Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation. Doubleday, 1988.

3. Remini, Robert V. Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars. Viking, 2001.

4. Rozema, Vicki, ed. Voices from the Trail of Tears. John F. Blair, 2003.

5. Mooney, James. Myths of the Cherokee and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Bureau of American Ethnology, 1900.

6. DeRosier, Arthur H. The Removal of the Choctaw Indians. University of Tennessee Press, 1970.

7. Green, Michael D. The Politics of Indian Removal: Creek Government and Society in Crisis. University of Nebraska Press, 1982.

8. Mahon, John K. History of the Second Seminole War, 1835-1842. University of Florida Press, 1967.

9. Debo, Angie. And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes. Princeton University Press, 1940.

10. Garrison, Tim Alan. The Legal Ideology of Removal: The Southern Judiciary and the Sovereignty of Native American Nations. University of Georgia Press, 2002.

11. Peters, Richard, ed. The Case of the Cherokee Nation against the State of Georgia. Philadelphia, 1831.

12. Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. 1835. (Vol. 1, Chapter XVIII.)

13. Wallace, Anthony F.C. The Long, Bitter Trail: Andrew Jackson and the Indians. Hill and Wang, 1993.

14. Foreman, Grant. Indian Removal: The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians. University of Oklahoma Press, 1932.

15. Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. Oxford University Press, 2007.