# Trail of Tears The forced relocation of approximately 60,000 Native Americans — primarily Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations — from their ancestral lands in the southeastern United States to territory west of the Mississippi River during the 1830s. Authorized by the [[Indian Removal Act of 1830]] signed by [[Andrew Jackson]] in 1830, the removals killed an estimated 15,000 people from exposure, disease, and starvation. The Trail of Tears stands as a foundational act of state-directed ethnic cleansing in American history and an early expression of the [[Manifest Destiny]] ideology that justified continental expansion.