What is a reason why people died on the Trail of Tears?

Disease. Emigrants feared death from a variety of causes along the trail: lack of food or water; Indian attacks; accidents, or rattlesnake bites were a few. However, the number one killer, by a wide margin, was disease. The most dangerous diseases were those spread by poor sanitary conditions and personal contact.

What were the causes of death on the Trail of Tears?

The dysentery and diarrhea that tore through the campsites and the harsh winter conditions claimed the lives of many, particularly children and the elderly, who were buried in makeshift graves along the way. The last of the Cherokee completed the Trail of Tears in March 1839.

What diseases killed people on the Trail of Tears?

Cholera was one of the reasons for the deaths of Native Americans during the Trail of Tears. Traveling by steamboat was a common way to travel and cholera was present in the waterways used by the steamboats. It is estimated that 5,000 Native Americans died of cholera on this journey to areas west of the Mississippi.

What incidents led to the Trail of Tears?

In the 1830s the United States government forcibly removed the southeastern Native Americans from their homelands and relocated them on lands in Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma). This tragic event is referred to as the Trail of Tears.

What did the Cherokee believe about death?

Traditional Cherokee belief teaches that all souls after death continue to live on as spirits, some manifested into the bodies of animals while others are unseen.

What Life On the Trail of Tears Was Like

What were the causes of the death of 5000 Cherokee people?

Then, they marched the Indians more than 1,200 miles to Indian Territory. Whooping cough, typhus, dysentery, cholera and starvation were epidemic along the way. Historians estimate that more than 5,000 Cherokee died as a result of the journey.

What disease killed the Cherokee?

The small pox disease wiped out 50% of the Cherokee Nation because they were located on the eastern coast. That would have been about 20,000 people or more that died in a very short time.

Who suffered the Trail of Tears?

The Trail of Tears was the forced relocation during the 1830s of Indigenous peoples of the Southeast region of the United States (including the Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole, among others) to the so-called Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River.

How many survived the Trail of Tears?

In August 1839, John Ross was elected Principal Chief of the reconstituted Cherokee Nation. Tahlequah, Oklahoma was its capital. It remains tribal headquarters for the Cherokee Nation today. About 1,000 Cherokees in Tennessee and North Carolina escaped the roundup.

Who was most affected by the Trail of Tears?

Some 100,000 American Indians forcibly removed from what is now the eastern United States to what was called Indian Territory included members of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole tribes.

How many Cherokee are left?

Today, the Cherokee Nation is the largest tribe in the United States with more than 380,000 tribal citizens worldwide. More than 141,000 Cherokee Nation citizens reside within the tribe's reservation boundaries in northeastern Oklahoma.

What did the Cherokee eat?

The tribal diet commonly consisted of foods that were either gathered, grown, or hunted. The three sisters – corn, beans, and squash – were grown. Wild greens, mushrooms, ramps, nuts, and berries were collected. Deer, bears, birds, native fish, squirrels, groundhogs, and rabbits were all hunted.

How many Native Americans died?

Historian David Stannard estimates that the extermination of Indigenous peoples took the lives of 100 million people: "...the total extermination of many American Indian peoples and the near-extermination of others, in numbers that eventually totaled close to 100,000,000." A 2019 study estimates the pre-Columbian ...

How long is the Trail of Tears?

The trail extends from North Carolina through Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, Illinois, Arkansas, Missouri, and ends in Oklahoma. The trail is 5,043 miles long (8114 km) with water and land routes.

When did the Trail of Tears end?

On March 26, 1839, Cherokee Indians came to the end of the “Trail of Tears,” a forced death march from their ancestral home in the Smoky Mountains to the Oklahoma Territory.

What did the Indian Removal Act do?

Introduction. The Indian Removal Act was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830, authorizing the president to grant lands west of the Mississippi in exchange for Indian lands within existing state borders.

Who was the last person alive from the Trail of Tears?

Rebecca Neugin, shown here in 1931 at the age of 96, was the last Cherokee survivor of the Trail of Tears.

Was there a second Trail of Tears?

The Quapaws endured a second trail of tears on their way to a small reservation in the northeastern part of what would later become Oklahoma. The Sauks and Mesquakies (Foxes) also suffered multiple trails of tears.

Who cried on the Trail of Tears?

The Cherokees were just one of five tribes in the Southeast to suffer under Jackson's removal policies. The Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole—likely more than 90,000 people in all—also were rounded up and moved to Indian Territory. “All went through their own versions of the Trail of Tears,” said Norris.

How many died on Trail of Tears?

The U.S. Department of War forcibly removes approximately 17,000 Cherokee to Indian Territory (which is now known as Oklahoma). Cherokee authorities estimate that 6,000 men, women, and children die on the 1,200-mile march called the Trail of Tears.

How bad was the Trail of Tears?

Between 1830 and 1850, about 100,000 American Indians living between Michigan, Louisiana, and Florida moved west after the U.S. government coerced treaties or used the U.S. Army against those resisting. Many were treated brutally. An estimated 3,500 Creeks died in Alabama and on their westward journey.

Which disease killed 90% of Native Americans?

They had never experienced smallpox, measles or flu before, and the viruses tore through the continent, killing an estimated 90% of Native Americans. Smallpox is believed to have arrived in the Americas in 1520 on a Spanish ship sailing from Cuba, carried by an infected African slave.

What drugs did Cherokee use?

Results: Several Cherokee medicinal plants are still in use today as herbal medicines, including, for example, yarrow (Achillea millefolium), black cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa), American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius), and blue skullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora).

How many Cherokee died?

It is estimated that of the approximately 16,000 Cherokee who were removed between 1836 and 1839, about 4,000 perished. At the time of first contacts with Europeans, Cherokee Territory extended from the Ohio River south into east Tennessee.