A court said one thing, a president did another, and thousands walked west through the snow.
What shiny discovery in the hills of northern Georgia doomed the Cherokee to lose their homeland?
Gold The Georgia Gold Rush that followed the find near Dahlonega brought on the Cherokee removal, the last forced removal east of the Mississippi.
A French visitor asked a Choctaw man why his people were leaving the land of their ancestors. What three-word reason did he repeat?
To be free Alexis de Tocqueville watched the Choctaw leave Memphis, and their chief wrote that his people would rather suffer and be free than live under laws they had no voice in making.
Missionaries jailed in Georgia for living on Cherokee land took their case all the way to the Supreme Court. Who won?
The Cherokee In Worcester v. Georgia the court ruled that Georgia's laws had no force on Cherokee land, but it never asked anyone to enforce the decision.
Stuck for weeks at a frozen river post, each Choctaw got a handful of boiled corn and two cups of hot water a day. What lone vegetable came with it?
One turnip Floods stopped the wagons and ice clogged the rivers, so the Choctaw waited out the freezing weather at Arkansas Post on tiny rations.
The heartbreaking name we still use for this journey was first spoken by someone who walked it. Who said it?
A Choctaw chief When his exhausted group finally reached Little Rock, the chief called their trek a "trail of tears and death," and the phrase stuck for the removal of all five nations.
