Trail of tears cherokee legacy documentary study guide answers

Based on your reading in the webtext, respond to the following prompt in two to three paragraphs:

Consider the following statement: "In preparing for the Cherokee Removal, state and federal officials were motivated solely by desire to seize the Natives' land."

Does this statement present the full picture? In two or three paragraphs, explain how you would revise this statement to present a more complex explanation of the motivations that drove state and federal officials, as well as white citizens of Georgia, during the years immediately preceding the Cherokee Removal.The Cherokee Removal was dramatized in a 2009 documentary, "We Will Remain: The Trail of Tears." To see all or part of this documentary, click here. You can watch as much of the documentary as you'd like, but the part relevant to the Trail of Tears consists of Segments 18 - 28. You will have to log into Shapiro Library with your SNHU credentials to access this streaming video.

John Ross promptly denounced the treaty and the Cherokee National Council declared it a fraud, but the U.S. Senate ratified it in 1836 by a single vote. Under terms of the treaty, Cherokee had two years to move west voluntarily, before the U.S. Army would begin a "forced removal." Relatively few Cherokee, virtually all of them supporters of the Treaty Party, relocated willingly.

In 1838, Jackson's successor, President Martin Van Buren, ordered General Winfield Scott to begin forcibly removing the Cherokee. But the initial removal operation, involving about 3,000 Natives, resulted in hundreds of deaths and desertions; Scott suspended the operation and placed the remaining Cherokee in 11 internment camps. Eventually, Principal Chief John Ross—bowing to the inevitable, but also hoping to safeguard his position as leader once the Cherokee arrived in Indian Country—signed a contract with the government to oversee the relocation plan. (Prucha, 1984)