The Indian Removal Act was a federal law that President Andrew Jackson promoted. Congress passed the law in 1830. Because Congress wanted to make more land in the Southeast available to white settlers, the law required Native Americans living east of the Mississippi River to move west of it. The law stated that Native Americans would be paid for this land, but it did not give them the choice of staying in that region. Members of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Creek tribes lived in the Southeast at this time and tried to fight the law. They did not succeed, however. Throughout the 1830s federal troops forced many members of these nations to move to the newly created Indian Territory, which later became Oklahoma. From 1838 to 1839, troops forced thousands of Cherokee and other Eastern Woodland Native Americans to walk hundreds of miles from their homelands to the Indian Territory. Conditions were so bad that about one-fourth of those who made the journey died. This forced journey became known as the Trail of Tears.