It was US President Andrew Jackson's policy to remove Native Americans from their ancestral lands to make way for settlers and speculators that led to the infamous Trail of Tears in the 1830s.

The Cherokees of Georgia initially tried legal means to resist the policy and actually won their case in the US Supreme Court. However, President Jackson refused to acknowledge the judgment, and 20,000 were eventually marched west at gunpoint. A quarter of their number would perish on the journey.