The land was unknown and unfamiliar to them. There were other Indian tribes living there already, if the Cherokees moved in they would be seen as intruders. Also the Cherokees were farmers and the new area did not have a large supply of wood or water.
The reason the Cherokee gave to reject the idea of moving beyond the Mississippi River was their attachment to the lands that the federal government intended them to leave. The Cherokee considered their ancestral lands as a fundamental part of their culture, their history and their idiosyncrasy. In fact, the great majority of the native tribes considered their lands as an autonomous entity, granting them a certain degree of spirituality. Therefore, the fact of having to move from these lands represented for the Cherokee an almost degrading situation, very difficult to accept, since the lands did not represent for them a property in the sense that White Americans gave to it, but they had with it a sense of spiritual and cultural belonging that transcended the mere material possession.
