They were put in concentration camps, like animals, full of diseases, with no shelter, and no sanitary condition. Many deaths had occurred in the dangerous paths and tens of thousands of Indians picked up epidemics such as cholera and dysentery. They were also trapped in swamps, died from starvation, thirst, and brutally cold winters. In a journal written by Ethan Davis, he said, "the decade of the 1830s was one of immense upheaval for the American Indians." Indeed, it was one of the harshest conditions in which any Indian could live.
Andrew Jackson wanted to move the Indians out of their territory because he saw that they had great soil and gold, and that for him meant more money to the economic growth. For the Indians their lands were sacred soil, but for the people of President Jackson, Indian territory meant more money, more riches, and wealth. This soil was not to be sold or traded with anybody but yet it was. There were the so-called five civilized tribes that were forcibly removed from their lands by order of newly sworn-in president Andrew Jackson and his militia troops. Jackson wanted to expand economic growth westward and have power over the many tribes that existed in the United States. White people disliked the Indians; they thought they were ignorant, rebellious, reckless, wild, and nasty creatures that didn't deserve the lands on which they were living. Americans thought that the Indians would never equal the civilized people they were, with norms and values. The removal act to the further west, beyond the Mississippi River, and beyond frontiersman some Americans viewed civilization as the solution to the Indian population problem. This removal act became the most debated national issue of the late 1820s and early 1830s. .
Indians faced many deaths. "Faced with epidemics related to these new illnesses, the Cherokee populations declined in number, dwindling from approximately 30,000 prior to the initial European contact.