The Trail of Tears is one of the greatest genocides of all time and is largely overlooked in American history. In order to understand the situation experienced by Native Americans, it is important to know the events that led to this horrific period in our nation's history. There is an English saying that goes “those who do not know their past are doomed to repeat it”. With all of the immigration and race issues going on in our country today, it is imperative that we, as the American people, remember and learn from our past mistakes so that we do not repeat and find ourselves in a similar situation. Native Americans fought for their rights and beliefs before the American justice system. Their goal other than fighting for their rights was, but ultimately they were forced to leave their homes and settle west of the Mississippi River (Foner, 2012). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Beginning in the 1830s, nearly 125,000 Native Americans lived on millions of acres of land in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, and Florida, the lands their ancestors occupied and farmed for generations. By the late 1830s, very few Native Americans remained in the southeastern United States. The federal government forced Native people to leave their homes and land and walk thousands of miles to a designated “Indian Territory” across the Mississippi River. Although the United States claimed that it believed that if the tribes could show that they were civilized Indians and could be assimilated into the American population, they would be allowed to remain on their lands, the American people considered the land as their own and would use everything that belonged to them. strength needed to take it. Even though the Cherokee people had shown their willingness to respect the established treaties by becoming the Indian Removal Act. In 1830, the Jackson administration established the Indian Removal Act (Kidwell, 2010). This point in our nation's history begins with Andrew's presidency. Jackson. President Jackson rose to fame as an Indian fighter and hero of the Battle of New Orleans, then moved to Tennessee as a wealthy planter and slave owner. Like most white settlers of the era, Jackson sympathized with land-hungry citizens eager to seize land owned by Native Americans. Jackson believed in democracy, but it did not extend to Native Americans. The law of the time required the government to negotiate expulsion treaties with the natives in a fair, voluntary, and peaceful manner. This meant that it did not allow the president or other of his officials to force indigenous people to abandon their lands. President Jackson and his administration frequently ignored this law and forced Native Americans off the land they owned and lived on for generations. Jackson believed that the most humane solution to dealing with the natives was to force them to leave their homeland and resettle in the area west of the Mississippi River. Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law in 1830; this forced thousands of Native Americans to leave their homes and resettle elsewhere. In the winter of 1831, the American army threatened to invade the Choctaw. This led them to become the first Native Americans to be removed from their land. The Choctaw headed west on foot to the new “Indian Territory.” Some.