It’s hard to have sympathy for the displaced people of Appalachia in “Appalachian Trail of Tears” (2/28). These people accepted their form of government, a government that took the same land from the original Native Americans for use by the people of that government.

That same government called the Native Americans “heathens,” which seemed to give government agents the right to kill Native Americans and to relocate them, which led to the deaths of thousands of Native Americans and the attempted extermination of their families and culture. How can I have sympathy for those who only got a dose of what they accepted as moral treatment handed to others on a much larger scale?

Greenbelt, Md.