Trail of Tears is the name given to the forced removal of Native American tribes from their ancestral lands in the southeastern United States to lands west of the Mississippi River. The forced removal was ordered by the United States government in the 1830s, and it resulted in the deaths of thousands of Native Americans.
As the Cherokee moved west, thousands died of starvation, disease, and exposure. The official U.S. government count at the end of the forced removal of the Five Civilized Tribes was 4,000 dead, but most historians estimate that the real death toll may have been as high as 15,000, nearly one-fourth of the 60,000 Native Americans uprooted from their homelands.
Statistics
According to the National Park Service, the number of deaths during the Trail of Tears is estimated to be between 4,000 and 15,000 people, with the majority being women and children. It is estimated that approximately 1,000 men, 1,000 women, and 2,000 children died.