f the most brutal order in the history of American warfare. I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven at the bayonet point into the stockades. And in the chill of a drizzling rain on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle or sheep into six hundred and forty-five wagons and headed for the west The trail of the exiles was a trail of death. They had to sleep in the wagons and on the ground without fire. I have known as many of twenty-two of them to die in one night of pneumonia due to ill treatment, cold and exposure (Perdue 58).The removal of the Cherokee Indians is one of the greatest tragedies in the history of the United States. The most civilized tribe of all the Native Americans, the Cherokee did not fight back against their oppressors, but instead tried to legally retain their lands and belongings through the courts. They were not hunters, instead they learned to till the ground and produce their own food. They became literate and adopted Christianity as their religion. They were even governed by republican laws, however none of this made a difference to the white man. To them, the desire to clear the South Eastern United States of the Cherokees in order to make way for the territorial expansion was the only thing that mattered (Perdue 59). As if the Trail of Tears was not enough, the Cherokee would still have to endure more pain and suffering after they reached their lands in Oklahoma. Yes, the federal government had granted the Cherokees their land in Oklahoma for as long as the grass shall grow and the streams shall run, but that didnt stop them from allowing white settlers to slip into their territory. A few years after the Cherokee were settled, the white man again drove the Cherokee out of their lands and the government would again do nothing to prevent them. Few debaters noticed that the compromise violated the rights of Indians living in the permanent Indian Count...
