On today's American continent, there are great cultural differences between the north and the south, and the south (Latin America) is a mixture of ethnic origins, culturally diverse, and even has a large number of Indian elementsBut what about the United States and Canada in North America?These two regions are almost an extension of European civilization, and there is very little indigenous culture or other regional cultures. This situation is inseparable from the cunning and cruelty of the Western European colonists who colonized the Americas. The United States today is vast, but this is based on the massive targeting of the Indians. The term "trail of tears" in English today refers to a series of forced population movements in the United States that forced Native Americans from their homelands in the southeastern United States to Indian territories on the west bank of the Mississippi River.
Uprooted Indians.
In the thirties of the 19th century, five large Indian peoples were scattered in the southeastern part of the United States: the Chickasors, the Cherokees, the Choctaw, the Creeks, and the Seminoles. These five tribes were friendly to European immigrants and absorbed more European civilization, so they were called the "Five Tribes of Civilization", at a time when white American racism was extremely strong, and even though these tribes were gentle and friendly and had lived in the land where their ancestors had lived for generations, the voices of assimilation of these tribes were still loud.
In addition, at this time, the United States was undergoing large-scale economic expansion, and the land in which these Indians lived was extremely rich, which had long been coveted by whites, and many whites** often raided and even ransacked Indian villages.
Even so, the colonists were not satisfied and demanded the complete expulsion of the Indians.
In 1830, against this backdrop, the U.S. Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, signed by Andrew Jackson at the time, which deprived Indians of their ownership of their territories, according to this Act:The Confederation would have the power to forcibly relocate Indians to the area of present-day Oklahoma, the designated Indian area, and no Indian would be allowed to disobey this order.
This migration is by no means peaceful. The whites had no sympathy or mercy for the Indians, and the army forcibly drove the Indians away, providing no food or other help, and the Indians had to walk 1,200 miles on foot, and by 1837, 46,000 Indians had moved from their homeland to the new Indian territory, and the European colonists were able to open up 25,000,000 acres (100,000 square kilometers) of land for settlement.
During the migration, the Indians suffered from bitter cold, heat, hunger, disease and violence, resulting in heavy casualties, with about 2,500,600 of the 17,000 Choctaws dying on the way. Only 5,000-6,000 people who remain on the east bank of the Mississippi River are threatened with legal trouble, harassment and intimidation"Homes were burned, fences were broken, crops were destroyed, people were tortured and abused, and the prime of the tribe was nearly extinct"。
On October 28, 1835, a group of Seminole warriors ambushed an American company marching from Fort Brooke in Tampa to Fort Kings in Ocala, killing 107 out of 110 American troops. At a cost of about $20,000,000 (the equivalent of $519241379 today), an astronomical amount at the time, the United States** was forced to compromise and allow less than 500 remaining Seminoles to remain in the Everglades (the last base).
The Cricks also fought back, but could not resist the powerful United States**, and were eventually forced to compromise and leave their homeland, with 3,500 of the 15,000 people dying on the way.
The brave and warlike Seminoles.
The Cherokee migration was brutal, and in the Cherokee language, known as nu na da ul tsun yi ("the land of its tears"), 7,000 state militia, regulars, and volunteers from Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Alabama were armed to escort 13,000 Cherokees to Cleveland, Tennessee, under the leadership of General Winfield Scott. The men were first held in a centralized detention and then moved to Oklahoma under the supervision of the U.S. military, where the territory they once lived in, which had been coveted by Georgian farmers, was quickly seized by the Americans. In the winter of 1838, the Cherokees embarked on a 1,000-mile (1,600-kilometer) journey westward with little clothing and even barefoot in the ground.
A volunteer from Georgia who participated in the relocation movement recounted"I've fought civil wars and seen thousands of people guned**, but the migration of the Cherokees was the most brutal errand I've ever seen."
The Indians counterattacked.
About 4,000 Cherokee people died.
The movement of the Chickasors was relatively peaceful, with the Confederation** and the Chickasors struck an agreement in 1836 to pay cash to buy their domains. But more than 3,500 people still died during the migration.
Forced by the United States, a large number of indigenous people were driven to remote and barren lands, precisely because this migration was very miserable and cruel, so it has been called the "Road of Blood and Tears", but this is only a small part of the United States' atrocities against Indians, and it is a relatively small part.