“The Trail of Tears was part of the Indian removal, a series of forced displacements and ethnic cleansing of approximately 60,000 Native Americans of the Five Civilized Tribes between 1830 and 1850 by the United States government. Tribal members ‘moved gradually, with complete migration occurring over a period of nearly a decade.’ Members of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes—the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations (including thousands of their black slaves) were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States to areas to the west of the Mississippi River that had been designated Indian Territory. The forced relocations were carried out by government authorities after the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. ... The relocated peoples suffered from exposure, disease, and starvation while en route to their newly designated Indian reserve. Thousands died from disease before reaching their destinations or shortly after. Suzan Shown Harjo of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian describes it as a genocide. ...”
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