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In my own view, the life expectancy of Native Americans in the United States is one of the really great moral crises that we face.

Step by step a powerful and enterprising race has driven them back from the Atlantic to the West until at last there is scarcely a spot of ground upon which the Indians have any certainty of maintaining a permanent abode.

It is amazing to me that so little is still known about the Trail of Tears or the lives of the Cherokees themselves.

We have witnessed the most extraordinary devastation. The magnitude of the situation is unbelievable. It's just heartbreaking.

Here, we tell the story: why the people came here, what they did when they got here, going back to the Native Americans and coming all the way forward.

The Indians were well mounted and felt proud and elated because they had been made United States soldiers.

And Americans realized that native people are still here, that they have a moral standing, a legal standing.

All the tribes tell the same story. They are surrounded on all sides, the game is destroyed or driven away; they are left to starve, and there remains but one thing for them to do - fight while they can.

Few of us will forget the wail of mingled grief, rage and horror which rose from the camp when the Indians returned to it and recognized their slaughtered warriors, women, and children.

I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.