The document summarizes the Trail of Tears, which was the forced relocation of Native American tribes from the Southeast U.S. to lands west of the Mississippi River in the 1830s. It discusses the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole tribes being removed from their homelands in Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, and Georgia and sent to Indian Territory due to the Indian Removal Act passed by Congress to open more lands for white settlement. During the forced march thousands of Native Americans died from exposure, disease, and starvation.