The Trail of Tears was a series of relocations of Native Americans in the United States following the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The relocated people suffered from exposure, disease, and starvation while en route, and more than ten thousand died before reaching their various destinations. The removal included members of the Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw Indian village, from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States to an area west of the Mississippi River that had been designated as Indian Territory. The phrase "Trail of Tears" originated from a description of the removal of the Choctaw Nation in 1831.