This trail of tears timeline traces federal Indian removal policy from its legal origins in the 1830 Indian Removal Act through the forced 1838–1839 march that killed thousands of Cherokee people. It also follows the parallel removals of the Muscogee (Creek), Chickasaw, Seminole, and Choctaw nations, carried out under the same policy and remembered as one of the most devastating chapters in American history.
Trail of Tears Timeline: The Indian Removal Act and Early Removals (1830–1832)
On May 28, 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, authorizing the federal government to negotiate, and where necessary compel, the relocation of Native nations from the southeastern United States to land west of the Mississippi River in exchange for their ancestral territory. The Choctaw Nation was removed first, beginning in 1831 following the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, and its removal became the model that federal officials applied to the nations that followed.
The Cherokee Nation pursued a different path, turning to the US courts. In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), the Supreme Court declined jurisdiction to block Georgia’s laws over Cherokee territory, though Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion described the Cherokee Nation as a “domestic dependent nation” under US guardianship. The following year, in Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the Court went further, ruling that Georgia’s state laws had no legal force within Cherokee territory and affirming Cherokee sovereignty. President Jackson’s administration did not enforce the ruling, and Georgia continued to press for Cherokee removal.
Trail of Tears Timeline: The Treaty of New Echota and Other Removals (1832–1837)
With the courts unable to halt state pressure, federal officials pursued removal through treaty. On December 29, 1835, a minority faction known as the Treaty Party, acting without the authorization of Principal Chief John Ross or the elected Cherokee government, signed the Treaty of New Echota. The treaty ceded all remaining Cherokee land east of the Mississippi in exchange for $5 million and set a two-year deadline for the Cherokee Nation to depart. The great majority of Cherokee people, including Ross, refused to recognize the treaty’s legitimacy and did not leave voluntarily.
During these same years, the other nations targeted by the Indian Removal Act were also forced from their homelands. The Muscogee (Creek) and Chickasaw nations were removed by the mid-1830s, often under harsh and poorly supplied conditions of their own. Many Seminole people in Florida instead resisted removal by force, fighting the US Army in the Second Seminole War, a conflict that dragged on until 1842 and became the longest and costliest of the era’s Indian wars.
Trail of Tears Timeline: The 1838–1839 Cherokee Removal
When the Treaty of New Echota’s two-year deadline passed in May 1838, President Martin Van Buren ordered federal troops under General Winfield Scott to enforce the removal. US soldiers rounded up roughly 16,000 Cherokee people, often with little warning, and held them in crowded internment camps before forcing them on overland and river routes to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. Most of the journey took place during the harsh winter of 1838–1839, and the people forced along it endured exposure, inadequate food and shelter, and outbreaks of disease.
Historians and the Cherokee Nation itself commonly estimate that around 4,000 Cherokee people died as a result of the removal, a figure also used by the National Park Service, which today administers the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail across nine states; because record-keeping along the routes was incomplete and inconsistent, some historians place the toll higher, in a range extending toward 8,000 deaths. The Trail of Tears remains one of the most thoroughly documented instances of forced displacement in American history, and is distinct from the broader, longer span of armed conflict covered on our separate American Indian Wars timeline, which traces warfare between Native nations and colonial or federal forces from the seventeenth century through 1890.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was the Trail of Tears?
The Trail of Tears was the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation from its homeland in the southeastern United States to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River in 1838–1839, carried out by the US Army under the terms of the disputed 1835 Treaty of New Echota.
How many people died on the Trail of Tears?
Historians and the Cherokee Nation commonly estimate that around 4,000 of the roughly 16,000 Cherokee people forced to make the journey died from exposure, disease, and starvation, a figure also used by the National Park Service; some historians place the toll higher due to incomplete records.
Which Native nations were removed under the Indian Removal Act?
The Indian Removal Act of 1830 led to the forced relocation of the Choctaw, Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Chickasaw, and Seminole nations, though the Seminole resisted removal militarily in Florida during the Second Seminole War.
How does this timeline relate to the American Indian Wars?
This page focuses specifically on the forced removal era under the Indian Removal Act; for the broader, longer history of armed conflict between Native nations and colonial or US forces from the seventeenth century through 1890, see our separate American Indian Wars timeline.