15 Best Children’s Books About The Trail Of Tears

Explore the buildup to the relocation, the terrible conditions the natives were forced to suffer, and the event's impact on U.S.-Indian relations in the following years.

Even before the first glorious ring of the Liberty Bell, America was a land of freedom and promise. The Cornerstones of Freedom series explores what inspires people from all over the world to start life anew here, endure the economic and social upheavals, and defend the land and rights that are unique to the United States of America. As the United States continued to grow in the early nineteenth century, its people began to covet the land of their native neighbors. This greed led to a horrific forced relocation that we now call the Trail of Tears.

A descendant of the Cherokee recounts his experiences walking the nine-hundred-mile Trail of Tears, describing how he grew to understand his people's tragic history

Removal of the Cherokees from Georgia with maps

During the first half of the 19th century, as many as 100,000 Native Americans were relocated west of the Mississippi River from their homelands in the East. The best known of these forced emigrations was the Cherokee Removal of 1838. Christened Nu-No-Du-Na-Tlo-Hi-Lu―literally “the Trail Where They Cried”―by the Cherokees, it is remembered today as the Trail of Tears. In Voices from the Trail of Tears, editor Vicki Rozema re-creates this tragic period in American history by letting eyewitnesses speak for themselves. Using newspaper articles and editorials, journal excerpts, correspondence, and official documents, she presents a comprehensive overview of the Trail of Tears―the events leading to the Indian Removal Act, the Cherokees’ conflicting attitudes toward removal, life in the emigrant camps, the routes westward by land and water, the rampant deaths in camp and along the trail, the experiences of the United States military and of the missionaries and physicians attending the Cherokees, and the difficulties faced by the tribe in the West.

I love the fact that at this age, it should not give the ugly side yet of the way the U.S. treated Native Americans.  It should introduce them to a love of the culture.  All three of my boys read this book when they were younger.

In 1830, a treaty was signed. In 1830, hearts broke. Tears fell on the long journey for twenty thousand. The Choctaw Nation was forced to leave their homelands to preserve their people. But they could not save them all.

For this collection of short stories, Choctaw authors from five U.S. states come together to present a part of their ancestors’ journey, a way to honor those who walked the trail for their future. These stories not only capture a history and a culture, but the spirit, faith, and resilience of the Choctaw people.

Time Period:  Begins 1838  In 1838, Nellie Starr, a young Cherokee girl, is caught in the political upheaval of America's westward expansion. Forced by U.S. soldiers to leave their home in Tennessee, Nellie, her family, and thousands of other Cherokees travel the long, dangerous "Trail of Tears" to a new home in the Indian Territory of modern-day Oklahoma. Using actual historical events as a backdrop, this brand-new children's novel teaches lessons of American history and the Christian faith. Can Nellie learn to forgive the people who've turned her world upside down? Nellie the Brave is a compelling read for girls ages eight to twelve.

It all begins when Soft Rain's teacher reads a letter stating that as of May 23, 1838, all Cherokee people are to leave their land and move to what many Cherokees called "the land of darkness". . .the west. Soft Rain is confident that her family will not have to move, because they have just planted corn for the next harvest but soon thereafter, soldiers arrive to take nine-year-old, Soft Rain, and her mother to walk the Trail of Tears, leaving the rest of her family behind. 

In 1838 in Tennessee, the Cherokee Nation is on the brink of being changed forever as they face the Removal -- being forcibly moved from their homes and land, in part because of a treaty signed by a group of their own people. Sixteen-year-old Jesse Smoke has been studying at the Mission School, but it has been shut down and turned into a fort for the ever-increasing number of soldiers entering the territory. Now Jesse has returned to his home to live with his widowed mother and two younger sisters. All hope lies on the Cherokee chief, John Ross, who is in Washington, D.C., trying to delay the Removal. Then one night, family members are suddenly awakened, dragged from their homes, and brought at gunpoint to a stockade camp.

Describes why the Cherokee Native Americans were forced from their
native lands and the journey they experienced to the Indian Territory
established by the U.S. government in Oklahoma.

Reveals the lives of the Cherokee people who were forced to travel to an Oklahoma reservation in the winter of 1838, discussing their lives before leaving their homes as well as the hardships faced on the trail.

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.This book provides an outstanding resource that introduces readers to Indian removal and resistance, and supports high school curricula as well as the National Standards for U.S. History (Era 4: Expansion and Reform). Focusing specifically on the Trail of Tears and the experiences of the Cherokee Nation while also covering earlier events and the aftermath of removal, the clearly written, topical chapters follow the events as they unfolded in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, as well as the New England region and Washington, DC.

A Choctaw boy tells the story of his tribe's removal from the only land his people had ever known, and how their journey to Oklahoma led him to become a ghost--one with the ability to help those he left behind.

Thirteen-year-old Uwohali has not seen his father, Sequoyah, for many years. So when Sequoyah returns to the village, Uwohali is eager to reconnect. But Sequoyah’s new obsession with making strange markings causes friends and neighbors in their tribe to wonder whether he is crazy, or worse—practicing witchcraft. What they don’t know, and what Uwohali discovers, is that Sequoyah is a genius and his strange markings are actually an alphabet representing the sounds of the Cherokee language. 

Tells of everyday life in the Cherokee Nation and how it changed with the coming of the white man