Today we are going to talk about the Trail of Tears, specifically my grandmother’s family’s experience on the journey. We start in Georgia, where tens of thousands of acres of land had been occupied and cultivated since the 8000s BC by the indigenous people. During the Manifest Destiny “delusion”, some American officials thought that the best way to solve what they were disgracefully calling an “Indian problem” was to “civilize” the Native Americans. To do this, they encouraged them convert to Christianity, taught them to speak and read English and had them adopt to European-style practices such as individual ownership of land and other property, such as owning African slaves. So, here is a big shocker, in the winter of 1829, gold was discovered in great abundance upon Cherokee soil in Georgia after a little Cherokee boy living on Ward creek had sold a gold nugget to a white trader the year prior. Mining operations quickly sprang up. As prospectors rushed in, so did armed br...