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NARRATOR: For thousands of years, these mountains were home to the Cherokee. But they were just a small piece of their vast nation, which covered 40,000 square miles here in the Appalachian Mountains. In 1819, as more and more Americans started encroaching on Indian land, the US Government signed a treaty that guaranteed that Cherokee land would be off-limits to white settlers forever. It clearly stated "all white people, who have intruded or may hereafter intrude on the lands reserved for the Cherokees, shall be removed by the United States."

Confident that the US government now recognized its sovereignty over its own lands, the Cherokee Nation proceeded to build itself a new capital in 1825, here in what's known as New Echota, Georgia. It had its own courthouse, council house, and post office. And even space for the first Indian language newspaper office in the nation.

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In 1829, Andrew Jackson was elected US president. He believed that Native Americans were savages and had no rights to their land and began proceedings to remove the Cherokee from the Southern states to clear the way for white settlement. The next year, he signed the 1830 Indian Removal Act, which set in motion one of the most brutal actions ever taken by the US government.

Thousands of Native Americans were pulled from their homes in Georgia and other states across the South. Many were shackled in chains and forced to walk at gunpoint more than 1,000 miles west on a series of routes that all led to Oklahoma. Up to a third of the 15,000 Cherokee who were forced to make the journey died on the way, which is one reason that journey came to be known as the Trail of Tears.

Their descendants are known today as the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and live here on sovereign Indian land in Cherokee, North Carolina.

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Today, young Cherokee here at the local high school learn the language of their forebearers. A vast stretch of their tribe's former land, right next to town, is now the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the most visited National Park in the nation.

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