Why did the goverment force the Cherokee to leave Georgia?

The government forced the Cherokee Indians to leave Georgia because of the need for arable land during the increasing growth of cotton agriculture in the Southeast, discovery of gold on the Cherokee land and the racial prejudice that many white southerners harbored toward American Indians. This Cherokee Removal happened in 1838 and 1839. The US troops expelled Cherokee Indians from their ancestral homeland in the Southeast and removed them to the Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma.