"I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven at the bayonet point into the stockades. And in the chill of a drizzling rain on an October
morning, I saw them loaded like cattle or sheep into six hundred and forty-five wagons
and started toward the west... Many of these helpless people did not have blankets, and
many of them had been driven from home barefooted."
Private John G. Burnett, 1838
What event is described in the excerpt above?