United States History Student Edition

In the Indian Territory, the Cherokee and other groups built log cabins similar to the one shown here.

The forced relocation of some 15,000 Cherokee was a terrible ordeal. Most people were not prepared for the journey. Trouble started even before they set out. As the Cherokee crowded in camps and awaited the command to begin their march, illness broke out. As many as 2,000 Cherokee died. Once on their way, they suffered from hunger and from exposure to the weather. These conditions led to the deaths of another 2,000 people. Still more died once they were in the Indian Territory. When the relocation was over, more than a quarter of the Cherokee population was dead. The Cherokee came to call their forced journey west the Trail Where They Cried. Historians call it the Trail of Tears. 7 CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING Identifying Cause and Effect How and why did Chief John Ross protest the Treaty of New Echota? What was the result? Resistance and Removal GUIDING QUESTION Why did some Native Americans resist resettlement? Many Native American peoples did not want to give up their lands. However, the Seminole in

Florida were the most successful in resisting removal. They faced pressure in the early 1830s to sign treaties giving up their land, but the Seminole leader Osceola (ah•see•OH•luh) and his followers resolved not to leave. They decided to fight instead. “I will make the white man red with blood, and then blacken him in the sun and rain,” Osceola vowed. The Seminole in Florida In 1817 and 1818 when it was still a Spanish territory, General Andrew Jackson led raids into Florida to stop the Seminole attacks on white settlers in neighboring U.S. states. His raids also searched for people who had fled there after escaping enslavement. These raids and the Seminoles’ counterattacks became known as the First Seminole War. After the United States took possession of Florida in 1821, arriving settlers began clashing with the Seminole around the Seminole settlement of Tallahassee. To end these conflicts, the Seminole agreed to the Treaty of Moultrie Creek in 1823, under which they moved to a large reservation south of present-day Ocala. The Seminole reservation in Florida was short-lived, however. Soon after the Indian Removal Act was passed in 1830, the United States demanded that the Seminole give up this reservation and move

resolve to make a firm decision 314

PHOTO: Carol Barrington/Alamy Stock Photo; TEXT: Osceola. The Origin, Progress, and Conclusion of the Florida War, by John T. Sprague. New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1848.