that time). Communicable diseases spread quickly through these closely quartered groups, killing many. These groups were among the last to move, but following the same routes the others had taken; the areas they were going through had been depleted of supplies due to the vast numbers that had gone before them. The marchers were subject to extortion and violence along the route. In addition, these final contingents were forced to set out during the hottest and coldest months of the year, killing many. Exposure to the elements, disease, starvation, harassment by local frontiersmen, and insufficient rations similarly killed up to one-third of the Choctaw and other nations on the march. There exists some debate among historians and the affected nations as to whether the term "Trail of Tears" should be used to refer to the entire history of forced relocations from the Eastern United States into Indian Territory, to the relocations of specifically the Five Civilized Tribes, to the route of the march, or to specific marches in which the remaining holdouts from each area were rounded up. Classification as genocide There has been debate among scholars about whether Indian removal and the Trail of Tears were genocidal acts. Historian Jeffrey Ostler argues that even when genocide was not unequivocally carried out, the threat of genocide was used to ensure Natives' compliance with removal policies, and concludes that, "In its outcome and in the means used to gain compliance, the policy had genocidal dimensions." Patrick Wolfe argues that settler colonialism and genocide are interrelated but should be distinguished from each other, writing that settler colonialism is "more than the summary liquidation of Indigenous people, though it includes that." Wolfe describes the assimilation of Indigenous people who escaped relocation (and particularly their abandonment of collectivity) as a form of cultural genocide, though he emphasises that cultural genocide is “the real thing” in that it resulted in large numbers of deaths. The Trail of Tears was thus a settler-colonial replacement of Indigenous people and culture in addition to a genocidal mass-killing according to Wolfe. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz describes the policy as genocide, quoting Cherokee principal chief Wilma Mankiller:The fledgling United States government's method of dealing with native people—a process which then included systematic genocide, property theft, and total subjugation—reached its nadir in 1830 under the federal policy of President Andrew Jackson.Mankiller emphasises that Jackson's policies were the natural extension of earlier policies of