No better symbol exists of the pain and suffering of
the "Trail Where They Cried" than the Cherokee Rose. The mothers of the Cherokee grieved so much that the chiefs prayed for
a sign to lift the mother's spirits and give them strength to care for their children. From that day forward, a beautiful
new flower, a rose, grew wherever a mother's tear fell to the ground. The rose is white, for the mother's tears. It has a
gold center, for the gold taken from the Cherokee lands, and seven leaves on each stem that represent the seven Cherokee clans
that made the journey. To this day, the Cherokee Rose prospers along the route of the "Trail of Tears".
The Trail Where They Cried nu na hi du na tlo hi
lu i
View Map of "Trail of Tears"
"There were ten million Native Americans on this continent when
the first non-Indians arrived. Over the next 300 years, 90% of all Native American original population was either wiped out
by disease, famine, or warfare imported by the whites." By 1840 all the eastern tribes had been subdued, annihilated or
forcibly removed to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi. Richard White, Historian (taken from the Trail of Tears
National Historic Trail, Comprehensive Management and Use Plan, US Dept of Interior, National Park Service)
The discovery
of the New World by European explorers caused endless problems for American Indians, whose homelands were gradually taken
from them and whose cultures were dramatically altered, and in some cases destroyed, by the invasion. The first contact
between southeastern American Indians and Europeans was the expedition of Hernando de Soto in 1540. De Soto took captives
for use as slave labor, while others were abused because the Europeans deemed them savages. Epidemic diseases brought by the
Europeans spread through the Indian villages, decimating native populations.
Over the next two centuries more and
more white settlers arrived, and the native cultures responded to pressures to adopt the foreign ways, leading to the deterioration
of their own culture. During the colonial period Indian tribes often became embroiled in European colonial wars. If they were
on the losing side, they frequently had to give up parts of their homelands.
After the American Revolution the Indians
faced another set of problems. Even though it took time for the new government to establish a policy for dealing with the
Indians, the precedent had been set during the colonial period. The insatiable desire of white settlers for lands occupied
by Indian people inevitably led to the formulation of a general policy of removing the unwanted inhabitants.
Political
leaders including President Thomas Jefferson believed that the Indians should be civilized, which to him meant converting
them to Christianity and turning them into farmers. Many other whites agreed, and missionaries were sent among the tribes.
But when the transformation did not happen quickly enough, views changed about the Indian people's ability to be assimilated
into white culture.
"We, the great mass of the people think only of the love we have to our land for...we do love
the land where we were brought up. We will never let our hold to this land go...to let it go it will be like throwing away...[our]
mother that gave...[us] birth." (Letter from Aitooweyah, to John Ross, principal chief of the Cherokees.) Richard
White, Historian (taken from the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, Comprehensive Management and Use Plan, US Dept
of Interior, National Park Service)
National policy to move Indians west of the Mississippi developed after the Louisiana
Territory was purchased from the French in 1803. Whites moving onto these lands pressed the U.S. government to do something
about the Indian presence. In 1825 the U.S. government formally adopted a removal policy, which was carried out extensively
in the 1830's by Presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren. The result was particularly overwhelming for the Indians
of the southeastern United States - primarily the Cherokee, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles - who were finally
removed hundreds of miles to a new home.
Perhaps the most culturally devastating episode of this era is that concerning
the removal of the Cherokee Indians, who called themselves (Italicized- Ani Yun wiya.) Traditionally the Cherokees had lived
in villages in the southern Appalachians - present-day Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, western North Carolina,
and South Carolina, northern Georgia, and northeastern Alabama. Here in a land of valleys, ridges, mountains, and streams
they developed a culture based on farming, hunting, and fishing.
The Cherokees took on some of the ways of white society.
They built European-style homes and farmsteads, laid out European-style fields and farms, developed a written language, established
a newspaper, and wrote a constitution. But they found that they were not guaranteed equal protection under the law and that
they could not prevent whites from seizing their lands. They were driven from their homes, herded into internment camps, and
moved by force to a strange land.
Cherokee Relations With The U.S. Government Beginning in 1791 a series of treaties
between the United States and the Cherokees living in Georgia gave recognition to the Cherokees as a nation with their own
laws and customs. Nevertheless, treaties and agreements gradually whittled away at this land base, and in the late 1700's
some Cherokees sought refuge from white interference by moving to northwestern Arkansas between the White and Arkansas rivers.
As more and more land cessions were forced on the Cherokees during the first two decades of the 1800's, the number moving
to Arkansas increased. Then in 1819 the Cherokee National council notified the federal government that it would no longer
cede land, thus hardening their resolve to remain on their dispute traditional homelands.
States' Rights Issue The
Cherokee situation was further complicated by the issue of state's rights and a prolonged dispute between Georgia and the
federal government. In 1802 Georgia was the last of the original colonies to cede its western lands to the federal government.
In doing so, Georgia expected all titles to the land held by Indians to be extinguished. However, that did not happen, and
the Principal People continued to occupy their ancestral homelands, which had been guaranteed to them by treaty.
"...Inclination
to remove from this land has no abiding place in our hearts, and when we move we shall move by the course of nature to sleep
under this ground which the Great Spirit gave to our ancestors and which now covers them in their undisturbed peace." Cherokee
Legislative Council New Echota July 1830 Georgia residents resented the Cherokees success in holding onto their tribal
lands and governing themselves. Settlers continued to encroach on Cherokee lands, as well as those belonging to the neighboring
Creek Indians. In 1828 Georgia passed a law pronouncing all laws of the Cherokee Nation to be null and void after June 1,
1830, forcing the issue of states' rights with the federal government. Because the state no longer recognized the rights of
the Cherokees, tribal meetings had to held just across the state line at Red Clay, Tennessee. When gold was discovered on
Cherokee land in northern Georgia in 1829, efforts to dislodge the Principal People from their lands were intensified. At
the same time President Andrew Jackson began to aggressively implement a broad policy of extinguishing Indian land titles
in affected states and relocating the Indian population.
"No eastern tribe had struggled harder or more successfully
to make white civilization their own. For generations the Cherokee had lived side by side with whites in Georgia. They had
devised a written language, published their own newspaper, adopted a constitution, and a Christian faith. But after gold was
discovered on their land, even they were told they would have to start over again in the West." The West, a documentary
by Ken Burns and Stephen Ives Supreme Court Cases In 1830 Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, which directed the
executive branch to negotiate for Indian lands. This act, in combination with the discovery of gold and an increasingly untenable
position with the state of Georgia, prompted the Cherokee Nation to bring suit in the U.S. Supreme Court. In Cherokee Nation
v. Georgia (1831) Chief Justice John Marshall, writing for the majority, held that the Cherokee Nation was a "domestic dependent
nation," and therefore Georgia state law applied to them. That decision, however, was reversed the following year in Worcester
v. Georgia. Under an 1830 law Georgia required all white residents in Cherokee country to secure a license from the governor
and to take an oath of allegiance to the state. Missionaries Samuel A. Worcester and Elizur Butler refused and were convicted
and imprisoned. Worcester appealed to the Supreme Court. This time the court found that Indian nations are capable of making
treaties, that under the Constitution treaties are the supreme law of the land, that the federal government had exclusive
jurisdiction within the boundaries of the Cherokee Nation, and that state law had no force within the Cherokee boundaries.
Worcester was ordered released from jail.
President Jackson refused to enforce the court's decision and along with
legal technicalities, the fate of the Principal People seemed to be in the hands of the federal government. Even though the
Cherokee people had adopted many practices of the white culture, and had used the court system in two major Supreme Court
cases, they were unable to halt the removal process.
"John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it."
President Andrew Jackson re: Worcester v. Georgia Treaty of New Echota The state of Georgia continued to press
for Indian lands, and a group of Cherokees known as the Treaty Party began negotiating a treaty with the federal government.
The group led by Major Ridge and including his son John, Elias Boudinot, and his brother Stand Watie, signed a treaty at New
Echota in 1835. Despite the majority opposition to this treaty - opposition led by Principal Chief John Ross - the eastern
lands were sold for $5 million, and the Cherokees agreed to move beyond the Mississippi River to Indian Territory. The Senate
ratified the treaty despite knowledge that only a minority of Cherokees had accepted it. Within two years the Principal People
were to move from their ancestral homelands. The Roundup "My friends, circumstances render it impossible that you
can flourish in the midst of a civilized community. You have but one remedy within your reach, and that is to remove to the
west. And the sooner you do this, the sooner you will commence your career of improvement and prosperity." Andrew Jackson
President Martin Van Buren ordered the implementation of the Treaty of New Echota in 1838, and U.S. Army troops under
the command of Gen. Winfield Scott began rounding up the Cherokees and moving them into stockades in North Carolina, Georgia,
Alabama, and Tennessee. Altogether 31 forts were constructed for this purpose - 13 in Georgia, five in North Carolina, eight
in Tennessee, and five in Alabama. All of the posts were near Cherokee towns, and they served only as temporary housing for
the Cherokees.
As soon as practical, the Indians were transferred from the removal forts to 11 internment camps that
were more centrally located - 10 in Tennessee and one in Alabama. In North Carolina, for example, Cherokees at the removal
forts were sent to Fort Butler, and by the second week in July on to the principal agency at Fort Cass. By late July 1838,
with the exception of the Oconaluftee Citizen Indians, the fugitives hiding in the mountains, and some scattered families,
virtually all other Cherokees remaining in the East were in the internment camps.
According to a military report for
July 1838, the seven camps in and around Charleston, Tennessee, contained more than 4,800 Cherokees: 700 at the agency post,
600 at Rattlesnake Spring, 870 at the first encampment on Mouse Creek, 1,600 at the second encampment of Mouse Creek, 900
at Bedwell Springs, 1,300 on Chestooee, 700 on the ridge east of the agency, and 600 on the Upper Chatate. Some 2,000 Cherokees
were camped at Gunstocker Spring 13 miles from Calhoun, Tennessee.
One group of Cherokees did not leave the mountains
of North Carolina. This group traced their origin to an 1819 treaty that gave them an allotment of land and American citizenship
on lands not belonging to the Cherokee Nation. When the forced removal came in 1838, this group--now called the Oconaluftee
Cherokees - claimed the 1835 treaty did not apply to them as they no longer lived on Cherokee lands. Tsali and his sons were
involved in raids on the U.S. soldiers who were sent to drive the Cherokees to the stockades. The responsible Indians were
punished by the army, but the rest of the group gained permission to stay, and North Carolina ultimately recognized their
rights. Fugitive Cherokees from the nation also joined the Oconaluftee Cherokees, and in time this group became the Eastern
Band of Cherokees, who still reside in North Carolina.
nu na hi du na tlo hi lu i Trail Where They Cried "One
by one Indian peoples were removed to the West. The Delaware, the Ottawa, Shawnee, Pawnee and Potawatomi, the Sauk and Fox,
Miami and Kickapoo, the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole. In all some 90 thousand Indians were relocated. The Cherokee
were among the last to go. Some reluctantly agreed to move. Others were driven from their homes at bayonet point. Almost two
thousand of them died along the route they remembered as the Trail of Tears." Documentary: The West (Ken Burns/Stephen
Ives) During the roundup intimidation and acts of cruelty at the hands of the troops, along with the theft and destruction
of property by local residents, further alienated the Cherokees. Finally, Chief Ross appealed to President Van Buren to permit
the Cherokees to oversee their own removal. Van Buren consented, and Ross and his brother Lewis administered the effort. The
Cherokees were divided into 16 detachments of about 1,000 each.
Water Route Three detachments of Cherokees, totaling
about 2,800 persons, traveled by river to Indian Territory. The first of these groups left on June 6 by steamboat and barge
from Ross's Landing on the Tennessee River (present-day Chattanooga). They followed the Tennessee as it wound across northern
Alabama, including a short railroad detour around the shoals between Decatur and Tuscumbia Landing. The route then headed
north through central Tennessee and Kentucky to the Ohio River. The Ohio took them to the Mississippi River, which they followed
to the mouth of the Arkansas River. The Arkansas led northwest to Indian Territory, and they arrived aboard a steamboat at
the mouth of Salisaw Creek near Fort Coffee on June 19, 1838. The other two groups suffered more because of a severe drought
and disease (especially among the children), and they did not arrive in Indian Territory until the end of the summer. Land
Routes The rest of the Principal People traveled to Indian Territory overland on existing roads. They were organized into
detachments ranging in size from 700 to 1,600, with each detachment headed by a conductor and an assistant conductor appointed
by John Ross. The Cherokees who had signed the treaty of New Echota were moved in a separate detachment conducted by John
Bell and administered by US. Army Lt. Edward Deas. A physician, and perhaps a clergyman, usually accompanied each detachment.
Supplies of flour and corn, and occasionally salt pork, coffee, and sugar, were obtained in advance, but were generally of
poor quality. Drought and the number of people being moved reduced forage for draft animals, which often were used to haul
possessions, while the people routinely walked. The most commonly used overland route followed a northern alignment, while
other detachments (notably those led by John Being and John Bell) followed more southern routes, and some followed slight
variations. The northern route started at, Tennessee, and crossed central Tennessee, southwestern Kentucky, and southern Illinois.
After crossing the Mississippi River north of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, these detachments trekked across southern Missouri
and the northwest corner of Arkansas.
Road conditions, illness, and the distress of winter, particularly in southern
Illinois while detachments waited to cross the ice-choked Mississippi, made death a daily occurrence. Mortality rates for
the entire removal and its aftermath were substantial, totaling approximately 8,000.
"I saw the helpless Cherokees
arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven at the bayonet point into the stockades. And in the chill of a drizzling
rain on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle or sheep into six hundred and forty-five wagons and started toward
the west....On the morning of November the 17th we encountered a terrific sleet and snow storm with freezing temperatures
and from that day until we reached the end of the fateful journey on March the 26th 1839, the sufferings of the Cherokees
were awful. The trail of the exiles was a trail of death. They had to sleep in the wagons and on the ground without fire.
And I have known as many as twenty-two of them to die in one night of pneumonia due to ill treatment, cold and exposure..."
Private John G. Burnett Captain Abraham McClellan's Company, 2nd Regiment, 2nd Brigade, Mounted Infantry Cherokee
Indian Removal 1838-39 Most of the land route detachments entered present-day Oklahoma near Westville and were often met
by a detachment of US. troops from Fort Gibson and the Arkansas River. The army officially received the Cherokees, who generally
went to live with those who had already arrived, or awaited land assignments while camped alone the Illinois River and its
tributaries east of present-day Tahlequah.
Aftermath In the Indian Territory problems quickly developed among
the new arrivals and Cherokees who had already settled, especially as reprisals were taken against the contingent who had
signed the Treaty of New Echota. As these problems were resolved, the Cherokees proceeded to adapt to their new homeland,
and they reestablished their own system of government, which was modeled on that of the United States.
"A common ancestry
promotes understanding between Cherokee full bloods and the mixed bloods. They are poles apart in many respects but, under
the skin, are still brothers. For one thing, they have Cherokee traditions in common, and no amount of white blood can dilute
the remembrance of what happened in centuries past to the Cherokee people." Grace Steele Woodward Tribal government
was headquartered in Tahlequah and adhered to a constitution that divided responsibilities among an elected principal chief,
an elected legislature know as the National Council, and a supreme court with lesser courts. Local districts with elected
officials, similar to counties, formed the basis of the nation. The Cherokees maintained a bilingual school system, and missionaries
from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions were active in the nation.
This autonomy remained reasonably
strong until the Civil War, when a faction of the Cherokees sided with the Confederacy. During Reconstruction they suffered
a loss of self-government and, more importantly, their land base. Government annuities were reduced, and lands were sold to
newly arrived tribes. Cessions of land continued during the later 19th century, and the federal government emerged as the
major force for land cessions under the Dawes Act of 1887, which divided up tribal lands. The establishment of the state of
Oklahoma in 1907 increased pressure for land cessions. Many people of questionable Cherokee ancestry managed to get on the
tribal rolls and participate in the allotment of these lands to individuals. By the early 1970's the Western Cherokees had
lost title to over 19 million acres of land.
Difficult times continued because of the effects of the 1930's depression
and the government policy to relocate Indians from tribal areas to urban America. Many Cherokees found themselves in urban
slums with a lack of basic needs. Differences also emerged between traditionalists and those who adapted to mainstream society.
During the 1970's and after, however, the Cherokees' situation improved because of self rule and economic programs.
Throughout
the years, the Cherokees have sought to maintain much of their original cultural identity. To increase public awareness of
their heritage, many of them have advocated the designation of the Trail of Tears as a historic trail.
"The Cherokee
are probably the most tragic instance of what could have succeeded in American Indian policy and didn't. All these things
that Americans would proudly see as the hallmarks of civilization are going to the West by Indian people. They do everything
they were asked except one thing. What the Cherokees ultimately are, they may be Christian, they may be literate, they may
have a government like ours, but ultimately they are Indian. And in the end, being Indian is what kills them."
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