The Trail of Tears

The Trail of Tears is a path the Cherokee Indians had to go on. How did it begin you ask? Well it all started with the whites and the Indians trying to compromise with each other. The whites said that you will have to be like us if you want any money, land, and if you what protection from us. The Indians agreed to be like the whites. Some of the Indians did not want to be like the whites. They learned how to write, read, farm, they went to school, they went to church, and they had jobs. They wore white mans clothes and lived in homes. A man named Sequoyah made the Cherokee alphabet even though he didn’t know how to read or write. They even had their own government system and used the whites way of government when they made their own, but all these changes were not enough for the whites for the Indians to be just like them. So they started to make a treaty to remove them once and for all. The whites wanted their land for good farming and when gold was discovered there they also wanted gold. This act was called “The Indian Removal Act”. They said you have two years to move or we will force you out.  The Indians didn’t want to move, so they came with a plan of their own. They sent John Ross to speak to the president about it. Well he did get to speak with president Andrew Jackson, but the only thing he said was “ It’s the GA’s and counsels problem not mine.” So they sent many treaties of their own, but they only looked at two of them. After a while of fighting the government John Ross and other people who were trying to help the Indians had to sign the removal. On the day of 1838 three days after the deadline the Indians were forced out of their homes carrying only what they had on them. Then they started their trip up west to Oklahoma. 12,000 out of 16,000 Indians died of coldness or diseases. Only a few made it, but others were not so lucky. That is the story of the Trail of Tears. I hope you see how wrong this removal act was. Maybe today we will treat the Indians of today better then we did  hundreds of years ago.                     

The Trail of Tears!

I have seen death

I have seen war

I have heard many guns

I have to learn the ways of the whites

Read

Eat

Farm

Write

Cloth

Life

Church

School

A Government

I want to be me again

Now we have to leave the land I love

Some people have be tread use

Andrew Jackson too

We sacrificed our life for him

Be tread by our own people

Solders everywhere

They poled me a way from my room

I had a big heavy soft blanket on me

Caring my baby brother in my arms

My mother is holding my hand

Walked for many a mile

My feet ace

Body aces

We travel with out stopping

I cry while my mother holds me and baby brother close

Travel for 7 months

We are cold and people are dying

Hard to survive

We make it to Oklahoma

- Teresa Dominguez