The Cherokees were herded violently into internment camps where they were kept for the summer of 1838. The actual transportation west was delayed by intense heat and drought, but they were forcibly marched west in the fall. Under the treaty, the government was supposed to provide wagons, rations, and even medical doctors, but it did not. Some 20,000 people were relocated against their will during the Cherokee removal, part of the Trail of Tears. Notably, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who would go on to become America's foremost man of letters, wrote Van Buren a letter protesting his treatment of the Cherokee.