Answer:
The infamous Trail of Tears, is not only regarding the removal of Cherokee Indians from their ancestral lands in Georgia, but also, the removal of all Five Indian Nations, from their ancestral lands in what is today known as the Deep South. Seminoles, from Florida, Cherokees, from Georgia, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Creek, plus all their African American slaves, were forced to move, between the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, and the gradual removal of each of these Nations, into their assigned place in the then Territory of Oklahoma.
There were many people who played a part in this horrendous and absolutely cruel act. But none is better known for it than President Andrew Jackson, the real brain behind the whole thing. In violation of previous treaties made between the Federal government and the Indian Nations, Jackson finally achieved a decision from Congress that changed everything, especially after the whole debacle with the case in Georgia, which further fueled the desire of white settlers to have the Indians revomed. This case was the discovery of great reserves of gold inside Indian territory, for which, settlers began to invade Indian lands, and the state of Georgia intervened. This was the first of many factors that played a part in having the Five Indian Nations removed.
The cruelest past of the whole deal is that when the United States was formed as a nation, treaties had been struck with these Nations, deals that recognized their independence, and accepted that the U.S federal government would respect the Nations´ ownership over the land and over their people. All these treaties were ignored, and reversed, as soon as the Indian Removal Act was passed and the result was, not just the removal of these people, either by their acceptance of the terms negotiated with Indian leaders by the federal government, or by force, but the death of many Indians along the way as they went towards their new appointed place in Oklahoma.
The Indian Removal Act, which led to the Trail of Tears, would not have been necessary, if white Americans had learned to work in peace with their Native counterparts. What fueled this injustice was greed, and the perception by white settlers that all others who were not Caucasian, especially Africans, and Indians, were beneath them and did not deserve rights.
