Brief History of The
Trail of Tears
Source: Cherokee
Nation
Since first
contact with European explorers in the 1500s, the Cherokee Nation has been
recognized as one of the most progressive among American Indian tribes. Before
contact, Cherokee culture had developed and thrived for almost 1,000 years in
the southeastern United States—the lower Appalachian states of Georgia,
Tennessee, North and South Carolina, and parts of Kentucky and Alabama. Life of
the traditional Cherokee remained unchanged as late as 1710, which is marked as
the beginning of Cherokee trade with the whites. White influence came slowly in
the Cherokee Country, but the changes were swift and dramatic.
The period of
frontier contact from 1540-1786, was marked by white expansion and the cession
of Cherokee lands to the colonies in exchange for trade goods. After contact,
the Cherokees acquired many aspects of the white neighbors with whom many had
intermarried. Soon they had shaped a government and a society that matched the
most “civilized” of the time.
Migration from
the original Cherokee Nation began in the early 1800s as Cherokees wary of
white encroachment moved west and settled in other areas of the country’s vast
frontier. White resentment of the Cherokees had been building as other needs
were seen for the Cherokee homelands. One of those needs was the desire for
gold that had been discovered in Georgia. Besieged with gold fever
and with a thirst for expansion, the white communities turned on their Indian
neighbors and the U.S. Government decided it was time for the Cherokees to
leave behind their farms, their land and their homes.
A group known as
the Old Settlers had moved in 1817 to lands given to them in Arkansas, where again they established a
government and a peaceful way of life. Later they, too, were forced into Indian Territory.
Once an ally of
the Cherokees, President Andrew Jackson authorized the Indian Removal Act of
1830, following the recommendation of President James Monroe in his final
address to Congress in 1825. Jackson
sanctioned an attitude that had persisted for many years among many white
immigrants. Even Thomas Jefferson, who often cited the Great Law of Peace of
the Iroquois Confederacy as the model for the U.S. Constitution, supported
Indian Removal as early as 1802.
The displacement
of native people was not wanting for eloquent opposition. Senators Daniel
Webster and Henry Clay spoke out against removal. Reverend Samuel Worcester,
missionary to the Cherokees, challenged Georgia’s attempt to extinguish
Indian title to land in the state, winning the case before the Supreme Court.
Worcester vs. Georgia, 1832, and Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia, 1831,
are considered the two most influential decisions in Indian law. In effect, the
opinions challenged the constitutionality of the Removal Act and the US. Government
precedent for unapplied Indian-federal law was established by Jackson’s defiant enforcement of the removal.
The U.S.
Government used the Treaty of New Echota in 1835 to justify the removal.
The
treaty, signed by about 100 Cherokees and known as the Treaty Party, relinquished
all lands east of the Mississippi River in exchange for land in Indian Territory and the promise of money, livestock, and
various provisions and tools.
When the
pro-removal Cherokee leaders signed that treaty, they also signed their own
death warrants. The Cherokee National Council earlier had passed a law that
called for the death penalty for anyone who agreed to give up tribal land. The
signing and the removal led to bitter factionalism and the deaths of most of
the Treaty Party leaders in Indian Territory.
Opposition to
the removal was led by Chief John Ross, a mixed-blood of Scottish and
one-eighth Cherokee descent. The Ross party and most Cherokees opposed the New
Echota Treaty, but Georgia and the U.S. Government prevailed and used it as
justification to force almost all of the 17,000 Cherokees from the southeastern
homelands.
Under orders
from President Jackson, the U.S. Army began enforcement of the Removal Act.
Around 3,000 Cherokees were rounded up in the summer of 1838 and loaded onto
boats that traveled the Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi, and Arkansas Rivers
into Indian Territory. Many were held in
prison camps awaiting their fate. In the winter of 1838-39, 14,000 were marched
1,200 miles through Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas
into rugged Indian Territory.
An estimated
4,000 died from hunger, exposure and disease. The journey became an eternal
memory as the “trail where they cried” for the Cherokees and other removed
tribes. Today it is remembered as the Trail of Tears.
Those who were
able to hide in the mountains of North Carolina
or who had agreed to exchange Cherokee citizenship for U.S.
citizenship later emerged as the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians of Cherokee,
N.C. The descendants of the survivors of the Trail of Tears comprise today’s
Cherokee Nation with membership of more than 165,000
