"Kurgan Gringioni" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:
Quoted message said:
Naw, how about The Spanish Inquisition?
That's it, The Spanish Inquisition. All we have is the Salem Witch
Trials,
Quoted message said:that pales by comparison.
TRAIL OF TEARS
The Trail of Tears refers to the route followed by fifteen thousand Cherokee during their 1838
removal and forced march from Georgia to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma).
In 1791, a U.S. treaty had recognized Cherokee territory in Georgia as independent, and the Cherokee
people had created a thriving republic with a written constitution. For decades, the state of
Georgia sought to enforce its authority over the Cherokee Nation, but its efforts had little effect
until the election of President Andrew Jackson, a longtime supporter of Indian removal. Although the
Supreme Court declared Congress's 1830 Indian removal bill unconstitutional (Worcester v. Georgia,
1832), the national and state harassment continued, culminating in the rounding up of the Cherokee
by troops in 1838.
The Cherokee were forced to abandon their property, livestock, and ancestral burial grounds and move
to camps in Tennessee. From there, in the midst of severe winter weather, they were marched another
eight hundred miles to Indian Territory. An estimated four thousand people - over 25 percent of the
Cherokee Nation - died during the march.
The Trail of Tears, the path the Cherokee followed, became a national monument in 1987, serving as a
symbol of the wrongs suffered by Indians at the hands of the U.S. government.
historychannel.com
