Writing Task Using the informational text provided to inform your writing, compose a journal entry from the point of view of John Ross, President Andrew Jackson, or Major Ridge.
Be sure your narrative establishes the story’s setting and point of view.

Narrative Writer’s Checklist
Be sure to:
• Write a narrative response that develops a real or imagined experience.
• Include a problem, situation, or observation.
• Establish one or more points of view.
• Introduce a narrator and/or characters.
• Organize events so that they progress smoothly.
◦ Use a variety of techniques to sequence events that build on one another.
• Use dialogue, description, pacing, reflection, and/or multiple plot lines to:
◦ develop events.
◦ develop characters.
◦ develop experiences.
• Use precise words and phrases, telling details, and sensory language to create a vivid picture of
the events, setting, and/or characters.
• Include a conclusion that reflects on what has been resolved, experienced, or observed in your
narrative.
• Use ideas and/or details from the passage(s) to inform your narrative.
• Check your work for correct usage, grammar, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation.

Provide your response in the space provided. Refer to the Writer’s Checklist as you write
and proofread your narrative.

Informational Text

Historical Text

(1) John Ross was worried. It was 1830, and President Andrew Jackson had signed the Indian Removal Act, which meant his tribe, the Cherokee Indians, would have to leave Georgia and head West across the Mississippi. As the leader of the Cherokee, Ross was able to move in both Native American and European-descended worlds because he had a Cherokee mother and a Scottish father. Ross told President Jackson that the government had no right to remove his people from their land, but Jackson was not swayed by Ross’s arguments. WhenJackson refused to back down, Ross took his grievances to the U. S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court sided with John Ross and the Cherokee, but Jackson refused to follow the Court’s orders.

(2) Ross struggled to keep his tribe together, but there was another faction of Cherokee who disrupted his efforts. This faction was led by Ross’s close friend, Major Ridge. Ridge told the tribe that they had lost too much already, and if they signed a treaty with President Jackson, they would at least get money for their land. Ross fought against any treaty, but in the end, Ridge and his followers signed the treaty that gave the Cherokee $5 million in exchange for leaving their land in two years.

(3) Ross wanted to keep fighting, but his hands were tied. The Cherokee had to leave their land, which the white settlers craved not only for the land itself, but also for the gold that had been discovered there. The government sent soldiers to remove the Cherokee by force, throwing them out of their homes. Taking only what they could carry, the Cherokee were sent on an eight-hundred mile trail west. Because of the harsh weather conditions, many Cherokee died on the move west. The Cherokee called this terrible journey the “Trail of Tears.”