On May 28, 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law, authorizing the forced relocation of Native American tribes from their ancestral homelands in the southeastern United States to lands west of the Mississippi River. The act led to the removal of approximately 60,000 members of the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations. The most infamous removal was the Cherokee Trail of Tears in 1838, during which some 4,000 Cherokee died on the grueling march to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma).

The Trail of Tears and the Indian Removal Act have been powerful subjects in American poetry and literature, serving as a symbol of injustice and the failure of the nation's founding ideals. Works like John G. Neihardt's 'The Song of the Indian' and contemporary Native American poetry explore the profound loss, resilience, and cultural survival of the tribes. The event is a recurring theme in the literature of indigenous peoples, offering a counter-narrative to the myth of westward expansion.