This is what happened to the Choctaws, Cherokees, Creeks and Chickasaws, mandated by an act of Congress in 1830. Some people did not make it all the way to Oklahoma. Little family groups stopped along the way, for reasons not recorded. The Jena Band of Choctaw ended their westward walk in the community of Eden, near Jena Since this tribe was able to document it has had a continuous form of government for many generations, could establish the genealogy of its people and still has a language, the Jena Band of Choctaw was recognized as a sovereign nation last year by Congress. It did not suddenly become a sovereign nation, however.
Federal recognition acknowledges that the tribe has always been a sovereign nation.
Most of these groups were apparently part of the removal after 1830. To the Native Americans, the whole thing was simply forcible removable from their homes, Jackson emphasized. Nobody asked them if they wanted to move. The Cherokee nation resisted by filing a lawsuit, which was upheld by the Supreme Court. Although some Cherokees fled into the remote mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina to avoid removal, most were sent west under an order from President Andrew Jackson who defied the Supreme Court ruling.