"There were ten million Native Americans on this continent when the first non-Indians arrived. Over the next 300 years, 90% of all Native American original population was either wiped out by disease, famine, or warfare imported by the whites."
By 1840 all the eastern tribes had been subdued, annihilated or forcibly removed to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi.
     The discovery of the New World by European explorers caused endless problems for American Indians, whose homelands were gradually taken from them and whose cultures were dramatically altered, and in some cases destroyed, by the invasion.
     The first contact between southeastern American Indians and Europeans was the expedition of Hernando de Soto in 1540. De Soto took captives for use as slave labor, while others were abused because the Europeans deemed them savages. Epidemic diseases brought by the Europeans spread through the Indian villages, decimating native populations.
     Over the next two centuries more and more white settlers arrived, and the native cultures responded to pressures to adopt the foreign ways, leading to the deterioration of their own culture. During the colonial period Indian tribes often became embroiled in European colonial wars. If they were on the losing side, they frequently had to give up parts of their homelands.
    After the American Revolution the Indians faced another set of problems. Even though it took time for the new government to establish a policy for dealing with the Indians, the precedent had been set during the colonial period. The insatiable desire of white settlers for lands occupied by Indian people inevitably led to the formulation of a general policy of removing the unwanted inhabitants.
    Political leaders including President Thomas Jefferson believed that the Indians should be civilized, which to him meant converting them to Christianity and turning them into farmers. Many other whites agreed, and missionaries were sent among the tribes. But when the transformation did not happen quickly enough, views changed about the Indian people's ability to be assimilated into white culture.
    "We, the great mass of the people think only of the love we have to our land for...we do love the land where we were brought up. We will never let our hold to this land go...to let it go it will be like throwing away...[our] mother that gave...[us] birth."
     (Letter from Aitooweyah, to John Ross, principal chief of the Cherokees.)
National policy to move Indians west of the Mississippi developed after the Louisiana Territory was purchased from the French in 1803. Whites moving onto these lands pressed the U.S. government to do something about the Indian presence. In 1825 the U.S. government formally adopted a removal policy, which was carried out extensively in the 1830's by Presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren. The result was particularly overwhelming for the Indians of the southeastern United States - primarily the Cherokee, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles - who were finally removed hundreds of miles to a new home.
     Perhaps the most culturally devastating episode of this era is that concerning the removal of the Cherokee Indians, who called themselves (Italicized- Ani Yun wiya.) Traditionally the Cherokees had lived in villages in the southern Appalachians - present-day Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, western North Carolina, and South Carolina, northern Georgia, and northeastern Alabama. Here in a land of valleys, ridges, mountains, and streams they developed a culture based on farming, hunting, and fishing. 
    The Cherokees took on some of the ways of white society. They built European-style homes and farmsteads, laid out European-style fields and farms, developed a written language, established a newspaper, and wrote a constitution. But they found that they were not guaranteed equal protection under the law and that they could not prevent whites from seizing their lands. They were driven from their homes, herded into internment camps, and moved by force to a strange land.
     Throughout the years, the Cherokees have sought to maintain much of their original cultural identity. To increase public awareness of their heritage, many of them have advocated the designation of the Trail of Tears as a historic trail. 
    "The Cherokee are probably the most tragic instance of what could have succeeded in American Indian policy and didn't. All these things that Americans would proudly see as the hallmarks of civilization are going to the West by Indian people. They do everything they were asked except one thing. What the Cherokees ultimately are, they may be Christian, they may be literate, they may have a government like ours, but ultimately they are Indian. And in the end, being Indian is what kills them."
Richard White, Historian
(taken from the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, Comprehensive Management and Use Plan, US Dept of Interior, National Park Service)