The trail of tears was the forced migration of several American Indian tribes from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States to farther west of the Mississippi River, their new territory, as designated in the Indian Removal Act of 1830.
The tribes, that included Cherokee, Creek, Ponca, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole, and others, were forcibly relocated by government authorities between 1830 and 1850. During the journey, people suffered from starvation, thirst, exposure, disease and exhaustion; thousands of them died before even getting to their destiny.
