Trail of tears

Trail of Tears and the Five Civilized Tribes During the early years of 1800s, valuable gold deposits were discovered in tribal lands, which by previous cessions had been reduced to about seven million acres in northwest Georgia, eastern Tennessee, and southwest North Carolina. In 1819, Georgia appealed to the U.S. government to remove the Cherokee from Georgia lands. When the appeal failed, attempts were made to purchase the territory. Meanwhile, in 1820 the Cherokee established a …

…ve farther and farther west to avoid conflict with European settlers. By 1842 they had ceded most of their land to the United States and were relocated in Indian Territory, land set aside for them in present-day Oklahoma. Here the Choctaw became, along with Creek, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Seminole, part of a group of Native Americans known as the Five Civilized Tribes, so called because they had organized governments the establishment of public schools and newspapers.