Invalid Tears “The Trail Where they Cried,” was the suitable name given to the devastating ten year journey, in which a certain people were forced to endure, at the expense of a separate people’s greed. This was greed that knew no limits, and would stop at nothing to prosper, even if it meant the annihilation of a complete race of people. This was the experience of the Native American tribe, the Cherokee. In the 1830s, the Indian Removal Act was passed, giving President Andrew Jackson the freedom to force the Cherokee to be exiled beyond the state of Mississippi. During that time the Cherokee nation was violently forced from their homes and made to leave behind the only life they had ever known. Stricken by harsh weather, sickness, and surrounded by death and sadness, the Cherokee people made the long march from Georgia to Oklahoma. The Cherokee Indians should not have been forced to leave their land, given the consideration that it was in complete violation of their political, constitutional, and natural rights. A significant way the Cherokee people were violated was politically. In the “Memorial of The Cherokee Nation,” the Cherokees wrote, “We wish to remain on the land of our fathers. We have a perfect and original right to remain without interruption or molestation. The treaties with us, and laws of the United States made in pursuance of treaties, guarantee our residence and our privileges, and secure us against intruders. Our only request is, that these treaties may be fulfilled, and these laws executed…” Time and time again America had made promises to the Cherokee that they unlawfully broke. They had signed treaties with the Cherokee people, and gave them positive words of encouragement and false hope that one day they would be seen as equals by their European neighbors. To force people from their land, and order them to undergo the type of suffering and pain the Native Americans had to bear was to defecate on any agreement the Americans may have had with the Cherokee, whether verbal or written. Another reason the Cherokees should have been allowed to stay on their land is because the Movement Act defied all sense of their constitutional rights. The Supreme Court’s Assertion of National Sovereignty states, “The settled doctrine of the law of nations is, that a weaker power does not surrender its independence-its right to self-government, by associating with a stronger, and taking its protection. A weak state, in order to provide for its safety, may place itself under the protection of one more powerful, without stripping itself of the right of government, and ceasing to be a state…” The Cherokee were of a weaker state than Georgia, so why not then would they be granted as the Supreme Court suggested protection. The negligent act of The Cherokee Movement is just one example of how America neglected to support the Cherokee’s constitutional rights as a people, by having the right to self-govern stripped away from them during the time that they needed it most. However bad the offenses that took place against the American Indians, both political and constitutional may have been, nothing compares to the defacement that took place against their natural rights. Any human being of sound mind and good health, has emotions, feels heartache, and understands the unpleasant feelings that come from the act of betrayal. One can only imagine the emotion that took place in the heart of the Cherokee people, when that cold knife of deception was stabbed into their nation’s back. In the “Memorial of the Cherokee Nation,” the Cherokee state, “But there is not a man within our limits so ignorant as not to know that he has a right to live on the land of his fathers, in the possession of his immemorial privileges, and that this right has been acknowledged and guaranteed by the United States; nor is there a man so degraded as not to feel a keen sense of injury, on being deprived of his rights and driven into exile.” The Americans took no pity on the Cherokee; they simply degraded and mistreated them. It is a disgraceful failure that there was so much obliviousness in the time that the Cherokee Indian’s population was at its peak. It is also a shame that there were people who actually supported the Indian Removal Act. Take for instance the ignorance of one supporter of, John C. Calhoun, who wrote, “One of the greatest evils to which they are subject is that incessant pressure of our population, which forces them from seat to seat, without allowing time for that moral and intellectual improvement.” It seems very evident that Calhoun wanted the readers to feel the sense that he was concerned for the Cherokee and that their movement was a way for them to be more content as a people. If Calhoun had truly been concerned for the Cherokee’s well-being he would have chosen the simple and logical solution that would have solved the Native American’s unlikely “lack” of ethical and academic enhancement. The simple solution would have been for the Americans to have simply left them where they were, uninterrupted. Another supporter of the Indian Removal Act and also the man responsible for it ever occurring in the first place was Andrew Jackson. In a letter Andrew Jackson wrote to congress he states, “It will separate the Indians from immediate contact with settlement of whites; free them from the power of the States; enable them pursue happiness in their own way and under their own rude institutions; will retard the progress of decay, which is lessening their numbers, and perhaps cause them gradually, under the protection of the Government and through the influence of good counsels, to cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community.” To refer to the Native Americans as savages is deceitful and incorrect. To be a savage, one would have to be undomesticated, fierce, and unrestrained. The Cherokee were nothing of the sort. At the time of their removal many of the tribe members were dressing like the European, reading books that had been translated into the Cherokee language, and overall leaving their own beloved way of life behind them and making strides to move forward as to mesh better with the Europeans. “The Missionary Herald” reads, “At present many of the Cherokees are dressed as well as the whites around them, and of most of them the manner of dress is substantially the same…We have before us the names of 200 Cherokee men and youths who are believed to have obtained an English education sufficient for the transaction of ordinary business.” It was appalling for the Andrew Jackson to push the Cherokees from their homes when they were on their way to being of equal, if not finer dress and manner as the Europeans.