Task: Read and analyze the following documents, applying your social studies knowledge and skills to write a short essay of two or three paragraphs in which you: ● Describe the historical context surrounding documents 1 and 2 ● Analyze Document 2 and explain how audience , or purpose , or bias , or point of view affects this document’s use as a reliable source of evidence In developing your short essay answer of two or three paragraphs, be sure to keep these explanations in mind: Describe means “to illustrate something in words or tell about it” Historical Context refers to “the relevant historical circumstances surrounding or connecting the events, ideas, or developments in these documents” Analyze means “to examine a document and determine its elements and its relationships” Explain means “to make plain or understandable; to give reasons for or causes of; to show the logical development or relationship of” Reliability is determined by how accurate and useful the information found in a source is for a specific purpose
Document 1:
An Act to provide for an exchange of lands with the Indians residing in any of the states or territories, and for their removal west of the river Mississippi. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That it shall and may be lawful for the President of the United States to cause so much of any territory belonging to the United States, west of the river Mississippi, not included in any state or organized territory, and to which the Indian title has been extinguished [ended], as he may judge necessary, to be divided into a suitable number of districts, for the reception of such tribes or nations of Indians as may choose to exchange the lands where they now reside, and remove there; and to cause each of said districts to be so described by natural or artificial marks, as to be easily distinguished from every other....
Source: Excerpt from the Indian Removal Act of 1830, passed by Congress and signed into law by Andrew Jackson on May 28. 1830.

Document 2:
This excerpt is from a speech by Major Ridge to his fellow Cherokees in support of the 1835 Treaty of New Echota. Major Ridge and his son John were Cherokee leaders who negotiated the Treaty of New Echota with the U.S. Government to leave traditional Cherokee lands in the Southeast without the support of most Cherokee people.
I am one of the native sons of these wild woods. I have hunted the deer and turkey here, more than fifty years. I have fought your battles, have defended your truth and honesty, and fair trading. The Georgians have shown a grasping spirit lately; they have extended their laws, to which we are unaccustomed, which harass our braves and make the children suffer and cry. I know the Indians have an older title than theirs. We obtained the land from the living God above. They got their title from the British. Yet they are strong and we are weak. We are few, they are many. We cannot remain here in safety and comfort. I know we love the graves of our fathers. We can never forget these homes, but an unbending, iron necessity tells us we must leave them. I would willingly die to preserve them, but any forcible effort to keep them will cost us our lands, our lives and the lives of our children. There is but one path of safety, one road to future existence as a Nation. That path is open before you. Make a treaty of cession. Give up these lands and go over beyond the great Father of Waters.
Source: Quoted in John Ehle, Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation , (New York: Doubleday, 1988).