In the early nineteenth century, the U.S. government shifted its policy
from trying to assimilate American Indians to relocating them, and
proceeded to forcibly drive seventeen thousand Cherokees from their
homelands. This journey of exile became known as the Trail of Tears.
Historians Perdue and Green reveal the government's betrayals and the
divisions within the Cherokee Nation, follow the exiles along the Trail
of Tears, and chronicle the hardships found in the West. In its trauma
and tragedy, the Cherokee diaspora has come to represent the irreparable
injustice done to Native Americans in the name of nation building-and in
their determined survival, it represents the resilience of the Native
American spirit.