In 1831 , Alexis de Tocqueville , the French historian and political thinker , witnessed an exhausted group of Choctaw men , women and children emerging from the forest during an exceptionally cold winter near Memphis , Tennessee , on their way to the Mississippi to be loaded onto a steamboat , and wrote : While the Indian Removal Act made the move of the tribes voluntary , it was often abused by government officials . The best-known example is the Treaty of New Echota , which was negotiated and signed by a small faction of only twenty Cherokee tribal members , not the tribal leadership , on December 29 , 1835 . Most of the Cherokees later blamed them and the treaty for the forced relocation of the tribe in 1838 . An estimated 4,000 Cherokees died in the march , now known as the Trail of Tears . Missionary organizer Jeremiah Evarts urged the Cherokee Nation to take their case to the U.S. Supreme Court
Trail of Tears
Trail of Tears
Indian removal