The term "Trail of Tears" refers to a series of forced relocation of ~60,000 First Peoples from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States, to areas to the west of the Mississippi River that had been designated as "Indian Territory", caused by the Indian Removal Act. In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the U.S. Supreme Court objected to these practices and affirmed that native nations were sovereign nations “in which the laws of Georgia [and other states] can have no force.” Even so, the maltreatment continued. As President Andrew Jackson noted in 1832, if no one intended to enforce the Supreme Court’s rulings (which he certainly did not), then the decisions would “[fall]…still born.” Southern states were determined to take ownership of Indian lands and would go to great lengths to secure this territory.
