The Trail of Tears was a series of forced removals of Native American nations from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States to an area west of the Mississippi River that had been designated as Native Territory. The forced relocations were carried out by various government authorities following the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. The relocated people suffered from exposure, disease, and starvation while en route, and more than four thousand died before reaching their various destinations. The removal included members of the Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, Shawnee, and Choctaw nations. The phrase "Trail of Tears" originated from a description of the removal of the Cherokee Nation in 1838
Jack Bannon, who plays Johnson, is completely bald and wears a thick mustache. He looks a lot like G. Gordon Liddy, one of the people involved in the infamous Watergate break-in. This connection is probably lost on viewers now but would have been a lot more obvious to people in 1991.
The second MacGyver story to deal with Native American tradition.
Series star Richard Dean Anderson and guest star Michael Gregory had played brothers Dr. Jeff Webber and Dr. Rick Webber on General Hospital.
The judge for the court case would later become known as Cigarette Smoking Man in the X-Files.