Following the US government removal policy carried out in the 1830’s by Presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, the US government forcibly removed more than 16,000 Cherokee Indians from their homelands in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, relocating them to areas now called Oklahoma. In 1838, President Van Buren ordered troops to round up the Cherokee and remove them to the 11 internment camps built for the purpose. 10 of these camps were in Tennessee, with more than 4,800 in the seven camps around Charleston TN. Remembered as the “Trail Where They Cried” a total of almost 90,000 Native Americans were relocated. The Cherokee were among the last to go – and were divided into detachments of between 700 to 1,600 each. Mortality was high on the land routes where road conditions, illness, and the winter weather made death a daily occurrence. From the first day of the journey to the last – the Trail of Tears was a trail of death with as many as 25 dying a day. The northern route started at Tennessee, crossed central Tennessee, southwestern Kentucky and southern Illinois, crossing the Mississippi River north of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and across southern Missouri and the northwest corner of Arkansas. Most of the land route detachments entered present-day Oklahoma near Westville.
http://www.nps.gov/trte
http://ngeorgia.com/history/trailoftearsmap2.html
http://www.nationaltota.org/the-story/
http://www.npca.org/magazine/2006/summer/news1.html
http://www.powersource.com/cocinc/history/trail.htm
http://ourgeorgiahistory.com/indians/cherokee/trail_of_tears.html
http://www.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/118trail/118trail.htm