Indian Removal Act 1830

The Indian Removal Act was a law passed in 1830 when it was signed by Andrew Jackson. Now, the states were greedy for the land the Native Americans had settled on, and the Indian Removal Act was supposed to offer the Natives a trade for their land, but that's not quite what happened to all tribes. The government wanted the land that was east of the Mississippi River, and the Natives were supposed to move west of the river. The law stated that if the Native Americans didn't want to move, they didn't have to. But that's not what happened. The government only talked to the leaders of tribes who wanted to move and ignored and forced out the ones who didn't. This happened to the Cherokees. Those poor Cherokees were split between wanting to leave and not wanting to leave, because they thought it was their choice. Well, I guess the government got tired of waiting, so in 1838 the government just decided to ship 'em off to walk the thousand miles from Georgia to present day Oklahoma, better know as the Trail of Tears. And, if you didn't know this already, approximately 4,000 Native Americans died walking that awful journey. As a result of some tribe's resistance to move from their homelands, wars broke out between the U.S. Government and the Native American Tribes.