The short answer is by and large they didn't restart their lives. The long answer is it depended a lot on what Cherokee group you were from and when you left.

One of the reasons the Indian Removal Act and resettlement (in Arkansas and Oklahoma) of the Tennessee Valley and Georgia Cherokee, was so genocidal was because the Cherokee way of life was totally unsuited for the Oklahoma plains. For tens of thousands of years, Cherokee in the Tennessee valley had enjoyed true superabundance: fish and crawfish from streams; elk, deer, and bear meat from the forests; garden plantings of gourds and beans in large riverside villages. Warm summers and mild winters. When game became scarcer, the village would move before one area was totally depleted. Oklahoma, where game was far less abundant and forest a smaller part of the ecosystem, was also far colder and less fertile, demanding agricultural expertise from a people with almost no background in large-scale farming. On top of that, European diseases were rampant, and many Cherokee were too weak to work. The IRA was a disaster: famine, freezing temperatures, and disease killed 30-40% of the Cherokee removed. However, some were more fortunate.

By 1800, a small fraction of acculturated Cherokee tribes in the Tennessee river valley had built a society modeled after the southern cotton plantation economy, complete with a wealthy planter aristocracy. Some Cherokee owned hundreds of slaves. East coast missionaries opened schools and taught English to Cherokee children; the Federal government built roads and enterprising Cherokees even started a steamship line on the Tennessee river. Starting in 1800, some of these Cherokee took advantage of Federal incentives to move to Arkansas, which included matching land grants and starting capital. They were called the:

1. 'Old Settler' Cherokee, today represented by the United Keetowah Cherokee. Acculturated Cherokee Americans were disproportionately Old Settlers. They brought along their slaves and planting experience, and because they moved first, were able to select the most fertile land. While they faced incalculable new hardships in the Arkansas and Oklahoma territory, Old Settlers fared far better than the next wave.

2. 'Trail of Tears' Cherokee, forced to Arkansas and Oklahoma via the Indian Removal Act of 1830, today represented by the Cherokee Nation - by far the largest group. This group, made up largely of traditional Cherokee, fared the worst of the three groups. Their seminomadic tribal life, so perfectly suited to the warm winters and nutritional superabundance of the Mississippi and Tennessee river valleys, was useless in Oklahoma, where freezing winters and poor hunting caused mass starvation and disease. The Federal Government provided some staple subsidies to prevent mass starvation, but in general the Cherokee in Oklahoma would live in extreme poverty, poor health, and government dependence, for the next 100 years. These patterns continue to the very day, where Native American communities in general are the poorest, sickest, least well-fed in the country, and suffer the highest rates of substance abuse and domestic violence.

3. Those Cherokee who hid, resisted, or finagled land from the Federal Government, and therefore managed to stay in their ancestral homeland in the Tennessee valley, today represented by the Eastern Band Cherokee.