The Trail of Tears: Concert Band Conductor Score

The southeastern woodlands were abundant in game, water, lumber and rich earth. In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act in order to free more of this land for settlement, allowing the President to move eastern Native Americans to land west of the Mississippi River. Within 10 years, more than 70,000 Natives, mostly the Cherokee and Choctaw tribes, were moved across the Mississippi, many dying during the trip. The music attempts to describe, in sound, the terror and the pain of this radical shift, and the deaths of many Native Americans who were moved from their homelands to allow for the settlement of strangers to their land.