This book covers a critical event in U.S. history: the period of Indian removal and resistance from 1817 to 1839, documenting the Cherokee experience as well as Jacksonian policy and Native-U.S. relations.• Written by a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, the volume provides current, informed perspectives on the Cherokee experience• Provides biographical sketches that introduce the reader to the key players on all sides of the event• Explains how intensified contact with Europeans through trading relationships and developing technological dependency changed Cherokee society and created a new "global economy"• Supplies primary document excerpts that offer additional insight and perspective on historical events, incorporating legislation, petitions, newspaper articles, court decisions, letters, and treaties• Examines a key curricular topic for high school and undergraduate student researchers―Indian removal and resistance in the 1800s• Includes portraits of important figures, such as Major Ridge, John Ridge, and John Ross as well as maps of Cherokee territory in the southeast and routes of the Trail of Tears