The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears
By: Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green
Contributors: Green, Michael D., 1941-
Series: The Penguin 35054030086447library of American Indian history
Publisher: Viking
Published: 2007
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 189
ISBN-13: 9780670031504
Subjects: Cherokee Indians -- History -- 19th century; Cherokee Indians -- Relocation; Trail of Tears, 1838-1839
Description: Documents the 1830s policy shift of the U.S. government through which it discontinued efforts to assimilate Native Americans in favor of forcibly relocating them west of the Mississippi, and traces the decision's specific effect on the Cherokee Nation.

"In the early nineteenth century, the U.S. government shifted its policy from trying to assimilate American Indians to relocating them, and proceeded to forcibly drive seventeen thousand Cherokees from their homelands. This journey of exile became known as the Trail of Tears. Historians Perdue and Green reveal the government's betrayals and the divisions within the Cherokee Nation, follow the exiles along the Trail of Tears, and chronicle the hardships found in the West. In its trauma and tragedy, the Cherokee diaspora has come to represent the irreparable injustice done to Native Americans in the name of nation building and in their determined survival, it represents the resilience of the Native American spirit." -- Publisher's description
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 179-180) and index
Table of contents: title: The land and the people; title: "Civilizing" the Cherokees; title: Indian removal policy; title: Resisting removal; title: The Treaty of New Echota; title: The Trail of Tears; title: Rebuilding in the West