The following is an excerpt from the journal of the French nobleman Alexis de Tocqueville, who, along with his companion Gustave de Beaumont, traveled through the United States in 1831-1832. Some of the journal's most moving passages concern Tocqueville's observations of Eastern Indians' removal west of the Mississippi:
The Chactas [Choctaws] were a powerful nation living on the frontiers of the States of Alabama and Georgia. After long negotiations [the U.S. government] finally, this year, succeeded in persuading them to leave their country and emigrate to the right bank of the Mississippi. Six to seven thousand Indians have already crossed * the great river; those arriving in Memphis came there with the object of following their compatriots. The agent of the American government, who was accompanying them and was responsible for paying their passage, when he learned that a steamboat had just arrived...