Account of the Trail of Tears

In the spring of 1838, the U.S. Army forced more than 15,000 Cherokee Indians from their homelands in North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. They were forced to travel over 1,000 miles to what is now Oklahoma. Many walked the entire trip without shoes or much clothing. Food was scarce; the little amount of food they did receive had gone bad and made many sick, killing thousands. Many more along the way died as a result of terrible illnesses. The bodies were buried in silent graves at each stop along the trail.

The Cherokee Indians called the journey Nunahi-Duna-Dlo-Hilu-l, which translates to Trail Where They Cried, now known as the Trail of Tears. The removal is a direct result of the Removal Act signed by President Andrew Jackson in 1830. The Act stated that no state could achieve proper culture, civilization, and progress, as long as Indians remained within its boundaries. Thereby forcing five Indian tribes to move to the Indian Territory, Oklahoma. The Cherokee Indians experienced a lifetime of hardships in just a few short years.

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From having their traditional lives that generations had grown accustomed to taken from them to enduring a painful journey to a foreign place, the Cherokees have come a long way.

The Cherokees lived in the valleys of the Appalachian Mountains. When they first inhabited this land the United States did not exist, but their lands could be described today as North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama (Perdue & Green, 1). More than sixty Cherokee villages and towns were located along the Great Smoky Mountains of Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina.

Most members of the tribe lived fairly well, like white settlers, in log cabins. For their means of survival they farmed, raised livestock, and worked on crafts such as weaving, basketry and pottery.

The Cherokee people divided the tasks on the basis of gender. The women farmed and men hunted, although the men helped clear fields and plant the crops and the women helped dress and tan deerskins. Young Cherokee men and women confirmed their marriages by an exchange of corn and deer meat (Perdue & Green, 2). Missionaries believed that, on average, the number of Cherokees who could rea! d was higher than that of their white neighbors (Gilbert, 8). The arrival of Europeans became the greatest challenge for the Cherokee people.

Before they ever saw their first white man, they felt the effects of the enemy that accompanied the settlers. The Native Americans contained little immunity to fight the deadly European diseases. They had no knowledge of how to treat them. The diseases took their toll on the Indians, reducing their populations from more than thirty thousand Cherokees before the introduction of diseases to as few as sixteen thousand afte. The Indians developed a deadly logic to the situation; all epidemic illness followed the white man into the country, therefore the white man is the cause of the epidemics. The first known contact with the Cherokees was from the Spaniards. The primary motives for early English exploration were trade and military alliances; it was not until later that land obtainment became an obsession.

Between the French and Indian War and the American Revolution, British hunters and settlers started to push westward into what the Cherokees saw as their land. The Cherokees eagerly welcomed the British Proclamation of 1763, which prohibited settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains.

The proclamation turned out to be no more than a paper blockade that the settlers ignored. The Cherokees soon began to regard the colonists as their enemy. On November 28, 1785, another treaty was signed with the Cherokees. The Treaty of Hopewell established relations between the Cherokees and the United States. It was primarily a peace treaty between the two nations; it defined the Cherokees boundaries and recognized their right to expel unwanted intruders. Georgia and North Carolina protested the treaty, neither respected it, and they continued to expand into Cherokee country. On several attempts the government tried to persuade the Cherokees into voluntarily moving we!

The government set aside land in the region west of Arkansas. This land later became known as the Indian Territory. Andrew Jackson, a supporter of the removal plan, won the presidential election of 1828. In 1830, Jackson pushed the Indian Removal Bill through Congress. The bill gave the president the authority to use force to remove Indians from their land if they did not go voluntarily.

David Crockett, a member of Congress from Tennessee, stated, If Im the only member of the House to vote against thisthe only man in the country to disapprove of it, I will and glory in having done so until the day I die. John Ross, Principle Chief of the Cherokee Nation, and his people believed that their years of peace, their achievements, and their contributions gave them the right to remain on the land that was legally theirs. Aside from the efforts of the Cherokees, the Indian Removal Act passed and was signed by the president on May 28, 1830!

The Cherokees had been united in their hostility to the thought of removal, but now the situation seemed hopeless to some. The United States treaty commissioner proposed a treaty conference at the abandoned Cherokee capital of New Echota in Georgia for December of 1835. At the conference a removal treaty was negotiated. The Treaty of New Echota provided cession of all the nations land in the East, and in return the Cherokees would receive payment of five million dollars, arrangement of transportation to the West, and aid from the United States government for one year. Most of the Cherokees, led by John Ross, protested the treaty. Despite their efforts the Senate ratified it in the spring of 1836. The treaty gave the Cherokees two years to prepare for removal.

Some of the Cherokees voluntarily started emigrating in 1837. The travelers suffered many hardships as the weather got worse throughout the year. Letters and messages sent back from the groups about deaths, illnesses, lack of supplies, delays, and other problems made the Cherokees back home even more reluctant to the move. On May 23, 1838, General Winfield Scott sent his troops of about seven thousand soldiers to round up Cherokees who had not yet left their homes. He ordered his officers to be kind, though many were rushed out of their homes with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. In some instances, time was not always allowed to get children in from play or work. Some husbands came home to find their entire families gone. Evan Jones, a Baptist missionary that worked among the Cherokees, kept a journal; her entry of June 16, 1838 described the scene,

It is a painful sight poor captive, in a state of distressing agitation, his weeping wife almost frantic with terror, surrounded by a group of crying, terrified children, without a friend to speak a consoling word, is in a poor condition to make a good disposition of his property and is in most cases stripped of the whole, at one blow. And this is not a description of extreme cases. It is altogether a faint representation of the work, which has been perpetrated on the unoffending, unarmed, and unresisting Cherokees. They are prisoners, without a crime to justify the fact.

As the people were being moved to stockades, the soldiers acted as if they were herding cattle, hooting and shouting insults. Some would be hit or pricked with bayonets if they were having trouble keeping up. In June General Scott announced that he had fifteen thousand Cherokees in his stockades. Some of them were so crowded most had no more than a spot on the ground were they could sit. Conditions soon became unhealthy, there was poor sanitation and a limited water supply. Many died in the stockades from exhaustion, shock, diseases that broke out, and poor food.

After an attempt by General Scott to move several groups west resulted in many deaths and protests by onlookers; the largest group of Cherokees decided to remove themselves. John Ross and other leaders took responsibility (34). To make the trip more feasible the people were divided into groups of approximately one thousand. Gaps of a few days were left between the departures of the groups. Accordin! g to the reports of John Burnett, as the groups departed, children stood up in the wagons and waved good-bye to their mountain homes. The only supplies provided by the government were one wagon for every twenty people, one saddle horse for every four. The wagons carried belongings, the old, the ill, the disabled, and small children. Able-bodied women, men and older children walked beside the wagon the entire trip.

The journey soon became known as The Trail Where They Cried, or The Trail of Tears. The Cherokees became angry when the blankets, shoes, and winter clothing they were promised had not arrived. The Cherokees were not exactly welcomed in the lands they passed through on their journey. Some large landowners demanded payment from them for crossing their land. Often times the food that was supposed to be supplied for the people was delivered late.

They became very hungry. The food that was left by the suppliers was often spoiled meat, ! cornmeal that was full of worms, and moldy hay. Some hunted simultaneously while they were traveling to provide food for the tribe. People who lived near the roads where the Cherokees passed reported that they buried fourteen or fifteen bodies at every stopping place. As their journey overlapped into the winter, they were faced with different weather than the mild winters of their old home. They were shocked at how harsh late fall weather could be.

Winter was at its worst; the travelers faced relentless blizzards, frozen rivers, disease, exhaustion, and depression. They had no shelter from the cold and wet. John Burnett wrote, The trail of 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-twoto die in one night from pneumonia. The unfortunate Cherokees died so fast they could not be buried, they had to cover their bodies with branches. None of the groups made the trip in ! the 80 estimated days.

Travel time ranged from 93 to 139 days, an average of 116 (Wilkins, 315). When the tribes finally arrived in the West, few families had the money, tools, or animals they needed to start over. They found little, if any, warm welcome from the inhabitants. The soil and weather were very different from the fertile lands and mild climate of their homelands. Although it was extremely difficult the Cherokees were determined to start over and build a new homeland.

The Cherokees forced removal from their homes in southeastern United States had not been planned carefully enough. The journey was only supposed to take three months but ended up taking four. Federal and state officials had been mistaken about the number of people going and they were not prepared to supply the Cherokees with all of the supplies they promised. There is no way of knowing exactly how many people died in the stockades were they were held before they left or how many died on the trail.

Cherokee historians say that more than four thousand died, which was about one-fourth of the tribe at the time of removal. The Cherokee people, known for their unity of purpose and spirit, were divided by their forced removal. The Cherokees endured a journey of almost a thousand miles during late fall through winter. Many government officials did not care what happened to the Cherokees. They were impatient to get the Indian lands for white settlers and investors. The Che! rokee Indians were overwhelmed with grief and sadness from losing their homelands and thousands of their people, and having to endure a treacherous journey for the happiness of white settlers who invaded the Cherokee lands and called it their own.