The removal of the Cherokee from their native lands has had a lasting impact on the tribe. Those who survived left behind a life and culture that they had practiced for hundreds of years. The tribe later had no choice but to adopt new ways of living if they hoped to remain alive in a harsh, new environment.
Pressure To Remove Cherokee
The removal of Native Americans occurred during much of the 18th century and continued into the early 19th century. Between 1812 and 1830, however, the pressure for removal of more Native Americans including the Cherokee tribes, began to increase. The tribes inhabited the areas we now know as North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky and Virginia.[1]
This pressure was due mostly to the demand by white settlers, who because of booming changes in agriculture and transportation, were arriving in larger numbers for the fertile land that were currently occupied by the Native Americans. The fact that most white people also held the view that Native Americans were inferior to them, and thus they did not feel deserved the land they occupied nor should have any rights, also played a major part in the pressure for removal.[2]
The Impact Of The Discovery Of Gold On Tribe’s Land
The discovery of gold on Cherokee land in both Georgia and North Carolina only served to heighten the white man’s resolve to occupy the Native Americans’ land.[3] The rumors that a very productive gold mine existed on Cherokee land had persisted since 1540, when Ferdinand Desoto traveled through these areas.
Private John G. Burnette was present before and during the Cherokee removal. In the book “Cherokee Legends and Trail of Tears,” he wrote about attending a festival at Echata on Christmas night 1829. There he danced and played with Indian girls who wore ornaments around their necks similar to that of gold. He also wrote that in the year of 1828 he had known that an Indian boy had lived on Ward creek. This boy sold a Gold nugget to a white trader, which sealed the doom of the tribe.
The Indian Removal Act
In 1830, the Indian Removal Act was passed. The Indian Removal Act gave the executive branch of the U. S. Government the authority to negotiate with Native Americans for their lands[4] that were located in the Eastern United States to be exchanged for lands west of the Mississippi River.
Those Native Americans who currently occupied the Eastern lands involved in the exchange would be removed to the Western land locations. Many Native American tribes other than the Cherokee were removed from their lands; however, the one which attracted the most attention and ultimately was the most publicized was that of the Cherokee.[5]
Attempts To Repeal Act
Between 1830 and 1838, when the actual forced removal of the Cherokee began, the leaders of the Cherokee nation including Chief John Ross, his envoy Chief Junaluska and other well-educated, high-ranking members of the Cherokee, made several efforts to have the Indian Removal Act repealed or to at least have it changed to where the Cherokee would be able to remain on their native lands.[6] These efforts included actually pleading their case before the Supreme Court (United States v. Georgia (1831). The Cherokee nation actually scored a victory in this case when Chief Justice John Marshall, who wrote the decision for the Supreme Court majority, declared that Georgia State Law applied to the Cherokee nation since it was, in fact, a “domestic independent nation.”
The following year, however, saw a reversal of that decision, specifically through Worcester v. Georgia, which occurred as a result of the refusal of Missionaries Samuel A. Worcester and Elizur Butler to comply with an 1830 Georgia law which required all white people who were living in what was considered Cherokee country to obtain a license from the governor. They were also required to pledge an oath of allegiance to the State of Georgia. Their subsequent conviction and imprisonment led to Missionary Worcester to make an appeal to the Supreme Court.
This appeal led to the following findings being declared by the Supreme Court:
· Indian nations were capable of making treaties;
· According to the Constitution, treaties were the supreme law of the land;
· Exclusive jurisdiction within the boundaries of the Cherokee Nation belonged to the Federal Government; and
· State law had no force within the Cherokee boundaries.[7]
However, then-President Andrew Jackson’s refusal to enforce the Court’s decision, coupled with legal technicalities, would make it seem that the Cherokees’ fate was in the hands of the Federal Government. Even more distressing was the fact that the Cherokee had adopted many of the white man’s ways and cultural practices including using the white man’s court system twice.[8] None of this, however, was sufficient to stop the ultimate removal of the Cherokee from their Native lands.
Other efforts to stop the removal included petitioning then-President of the United States Andrew Jackson for protection for the Cherokee people. Even after hearing Chief Junaluska’s impassioned plea for protection for his people, however, President Jackson told Junaluska, “Sir, your audience is ended, there is nothing I can do for you.”
Treaty Party & The Treaty of New Echota
To add further insult to injury it was a group of Cherokees known as the Treaty Party, led by Major Ridge and his son John as well as Elias Boudinot and his brother Stand Watie, who began meeting with the Federal Government for the purpose of negotiating a treaty with them. This treaty called for the sale of the eastern lands for $5 million, and was signed at New Echota in 1835 despite the fact the majority of the Cherokee Nations were opposed to this.[9] The strongest voice in this opposition movement was that of John Ross, Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nations.
The Senate’s ratification of this treaty, which occurred even with the full knowledge that it had been accepted by only a small minority of the Cherokee Nations meant that the Cherokees had agreed to move to the lands that lay west of the Mississippi in what was then known as Indian Territory. The removal would take place within two years of the ratification.[10]
The order to implement The Treaty of New Echota was given by President Martin Van Buren in 1838. At the time of the implementation, the Cherokee lived in North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, and Virginia, as mentioned earlier.
The Removal Begins
The population of the Cherokee Nations in certain specific states in the fall of 1836 (approximately two years before the actual removal), was as follows:
· North Carolina: 3,644;
· Georgia: 8,946
· Alabama: 1,424
· Tennessee: 2,528.
When the removal began, the Cherokee were gathered by U. S. Army troops operating under the command of General Winfield Scott. They were subsequently moved into stockades that had been built in North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee.
A total of 31 forts were constructed for the purpose of holding the Cherokee until the actual removal west to Indian Territory would begin. Of these 31 forts, 13 were located in Georgia, 5 in North Carolina, 8 in Tennessee, and 5 in Alabama. Each post was located near existing Cherokee towns, and served only as temporary housing facilities for the Cherokees. From these holding camps, the Cherokee were taken to internment camps. There were 11 of these – 10 in Tennessee and 1 in Alabama.[11]
Conditions in the camps were harsh, and made even more so by the intimidation and cruel acts that the Cherokee were subjected to by the troops who had been sent to round them up. In addition, local residents thought nothing of stealing property from the Cherokee or destroying what they couldn’t get or didn’t want.
Upon witnessing the treatment of his people, Chief John Ross made an appeal to President Van Buren, asking that the Cherokees be allowed to take charge of their own removal. Van Buren was agreeable to this, and under the administration of Chief Ross and his brother Lewis, the Cherokees were divided into 16 detachments, each containing approximately 1000 persons.[12]
Throughout the month of June, three different detachments, totaling about 2800 persons in all, left their internment camps and began the journey to Indian Territory by river. The first group departed on June 6 from Ross’s Landing on steamboats and barges.
The Trail Of Tears
Their route took them along the Tennessee River as its path took it through northern Alabama. Between Decatur and Tuscumbia Landing, it was necessary for the detachment to travel by railroad in order to detour around the shoals located in that area. From there, the first detachment traveled north, passing through central Tennessee and Kentucky until they came to the Ohio River. This body of water took the detachment to the Mississippi River, where they continued on via this water passageway to the mouth of the Arkansas River.
The Arkansas River’s northwest route brought the detachment to Indian Territory. They departed their steamboat near Fort Coffee, specifically at the mouth of Sallisaw Creek, on June 19, 1838. The other two detachments that left at the same time as the first one suffered more hardships than the first detachment. A severe drought was present at the time of their departure from their internment camps; further, the people, especially the children, were plagued with disease.[13] They did not reach Indian Territory until the end of the summer.
The remaining members of the Cherokee Nation followed an overland route, using existing roads, to get to Indian Territory. These people were also formed into detachments, the size of which could range from 700 to 1600 people. Individual detachments had a conductor and assistant conductor; these people had been appointed to these positions by John Ross.
There was also a separate detachment made up of those Cherokees who had signed the Treaty of New Echota. John Bell conducted this detachment; U. S. Army Lt. Edward Deas served as administrator. In addition to the conductors, assistant conductors, and in some cases, administrators, a physician and possibly a member of the clergy would accompany the detachments. As a general rule, the majority of the Cherokees walked; few rode horses or other draft animals that were being used for hauling and some transportation.
Although supplies of flour and corn, occasionally supplemented by salt pork, coffee and sugar had been obtained in advance, it was of general poor quality. Further, the same drought that had created so many hardships for two of the first three detachments made forage and other food for the animals very scarce.
The overland route that was used the most went in a northward direction, although other detachments, specifically those led by John Benge and John Bell, were taken along a more southerly route. The northern route, which started at Calhoun, Tennessee, passed through central Tennessee, Southwestern Kentucky, and Southern Illinois. These detachments crossed that part of the Mississippi River that was located north of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, the continued on across southern Missouri. They also passed through the northwest corner of Arkansas.[14]
Much of the journey was made during the winter. The cold weather, which actually delayed the crossing of the Mississippi until the ice had thawed sufficiently to allow the detachments to do so, along with poor road conditions and illness among the Cherokees, caused a high number of deaths. In fact, deaths occurred daily. The mortality rate, at the conclusion of the removal, and for a while during its aftermath, eventually totaled approximately 8000. It was no wonder, then, that the route taken by the Cherokee became known as the Trail of Tears.
The Trail of Tears had several different starting points in Tennessee and Alabama, where the internment camps were located, but the ultimate destination for those who survived the forced removal was Indian Territory, located in what is now known as the State of Oklahoma. The first detachment entered Indian Territory near Fort Coffee, specifically at the mouth of Sallisaw Creek, on June 19, 1838. The detachments that followed the primarily overland routes (some river crossings were necessary) entered Indian Territory near where present-day Westville, Oklahoma is now located. It was in this place that the displaced Cherokee Nations attempted to rebuild their lives in a strange, new land.[15]
The arriving detachments were often met by U. S. Army troop detachments from Fort Gibson, which was located on the Arkansas River. From there, some of the newly-arrived Cherokees went to live with those of the Cherokee Nation who had already arrived in Indian Territory; others waited to be assigned parcels of land. While they waited, they camped along the Illinois River, as well as its tributaries that flow east of present Tahlequah.
Life Before the Removal
The new land in the Indian Territory was vastly different than that of the rolling hills, mountains, and forests in which the Cherokee had formerly lived. This, along with the fact that so many lives had been lost along the Trail of Tears, made it hard for the Cherokee to resume the way of life they had known before the removal.
That way of life consisted of men and women having specific jobs. The men hunted while the women maintained the farms. Attention to these gender-specific tasks meant that the Cherokee people’s diet consisted of meat, corn and vegetables.
Each Cherokee family had its own homestead; however, the buildings comprising the homestead—a large wooden house, built on a rectangular shape for summer living and a small round house insulated by thick mud-plastered walls for winter living, along with outbuildings and sheds used for storage—were situated around a small plaza. The homesteads were close enough to each other to form a permanent village, which could be made up of more than a hundred families. In the midst of the village, most likely in a central location, would be a large round meeting place, known as a council or town house, which could accommodate the whole village.[16] When decisions that could affect the entire village needed to be made, all villagers were given the right to voice their opinion. While some opinions would carry more weight than others, ultimately a consensus would be reached, and a final outcome would be agreed upon.
Inside the individual homesteads, it was not uncommon for several generations to live together—the husband and wife, daughters and their husbands, and unmarried sons. Kinship, ancestry, and descendancy was based on the maternal line; in other words, when asked about your genealogy, you would have told the questioner who your mother’s people were, not your father’s.
As mentioned earlier, the women performed the farming duties. They worked both in the large fields that supplied the entire village as well as in the individual gardens that served their households.
Contact with European Society
The way of life just described continued until the Europeans began to arrive, bringing with them diseases such as smallpox, typhus, and measles-none of which the Cherokee had been previously exposed. By 1700, the introduction of these diseases had brought the population of the Cherokee down from more than 30,000 to 16,000.[17]
Among those who died were revered elders with whom the wisdom and knowledge that had made the Cherokee Nations the strong, harmonious people they were. As the European influence continued, leading to the demise of traditional Cherokee societies, and the disharmony between tribes and clans continued to diminish, the Cherokee would actually begin to make war between themselves.
The changes that affected the United States as a whole after the Revolutionary War would also affect the Cherokee, who, incidentally, were allies with the British during that time, as well as with them and the French during the French/Indian War. The Treaty of Paris (1783) that signaled the end of the Revolutionary War, and gave the United States “right of conquest” to British colonies was also extended to include relations with Indians. This, coupled with the “right of discovery” that Christian Europeans exercised in order to claim and occupy the lands of those considered by them to be “non-Christian” and “non-civilized” served to deprive the Cherokee of more and more of their land.
This would not change until the end of the 1780’s when the United States finally abandoned the idea of considering Native American tribes “conquered enemies”. Further, the U. S. Constitution played a part in the way Native Americans were thought of and treated. As a result of these changes, Henry Knox, the first U. S. Secretary of War, developed an Indian policy, which stated that Native American tribes were to be considered as sovereign, independent nations who could exercise self-government within their specific tribes.[18]
All of this, along with the continued European influences and changes in the Cherokee economic system brought about a further diminishment of the Cherokee’s former way of life. In some ways, the diminishment had positive aspects, as evidenced in the changes to the ways the Cherokees governed themselves, as well as in the introduction of a written Cherokee language in the 1820s and the publication of the first Cherokee newspaper: “The Cherokee Phoenix” in 1828.
Life Immediately After the Removal
Just as it seemed that the Cherokee lifestyle was beginning to adapt to all the changes that had occurred as a result of European contact and influence, and the Cherokee were settling into a new routine, the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and subsequent removal of Indian Tribes including the Cherokee between then and 1838, would bring about a whole new way of living-one that was strikingly different, and not for the better, from any of the previous ways of living the Cherokee had practiced. This became evident immediately after the removal and the arrival of the last Trail of Tears survivors in Indian Territory.
Problems between those Cherokee who had already settled in Indian Territory and those who had just arrived began almost immediately. Those who had signed the Treaty of New Echota saw acts of reprisal taken against them by the new arrivals.[19]
In addition, those Cherokee who had arrived before those in 1839, and were now being referred to as the “Old Settlers” and those who arrived in 1839, who themselves actually constituted the main body of the Cherokee tribe, faced their own unique problem. There were now two separate factions of the Cherokee Nation who, although they shared common territory, still had their separate tribal chiefs and government. Neither group was willing to give up its leaders and laws for the other’s.[20]
However, negotiations for the purpose of uniting the “Old Settlers” and the “Eastern Cherokees,” as the last-arriving group was referred to, began quickly. A series of conferences eventually led to an “act of union” being established and drafted at Illinois Camp Ground on July 12, 1839.[21] The following September saw the adoption of a new constitution, a move which further cemented the union between the two factions. The new constitution paved the way for the establishment of tribal courts, the holding of tribal elections, and other things which signified that the new government was or would soon be fully operational.
East further met West with the election of John Ross, the Principal Chief of the Eastern Cherokee as Principal Chief of the “new” Cherokee nation. His assistant chief would be Joseph Vann, who had previously held a position as one of the Chiefs of the Western Cherokee.
The Real Truth about the Trail of Tears
Surprisingly, not all Cherokees were forced to leave their homes. Approximately 100 evaded the troops and lived off the land in Georgia and other states. Others, who owned private land and did not live on land that was communally owned by the tribe, were allowed to remain.
In North Carolina, approximately 400 Cherokee, known as the Ocanaluftee Cherokee, lived on land that belonged to William Holland Thomas, a white man who had been adopted as a small boy by the Cherokee. Because they were considered individual landowners, they were allowed to stay.
Further, nearly 200 Cherokee who assisted the army in hunting down and capturing the family of Tsali, a Cherokee tribesman who was responsible for leading raids on some of the garrisons and troops that had arrived to oversee the removal, were allowed to remain on their homeland. The descendants of these approximately 600 Cherokee who were not forced to leave still live on the Cherokee reservation in Cherokee, NC today, and are known as the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indian Nation.[22]
REFERENCE LIST
Ed. Theda Perdue + Michael D. Green, “The Cherokee Removal: a Brief History with Document,” http://virtual.yosemite.cc.ca.us/rlamont/EconHist/Natives_Strangers/The%20Cherokee%20Removal%20Notes.htm (Accessed June 3, 2010).
Gaston L. Little, “Chronicles of Oklahoma, Volume 15, No. 3, September, 1937: The Principal Chiefs of the Cherokee Nation.” Oklahoma Historical Society. http://digital.library.okstate.edu/Chronicles/v015/v015p253.html (Accessed June 3, 2010).
Global Security. “Trail of Tears,” Global Security. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/trail-of-tears.htm (Accessed June 4, 2010).
Rozema, Vicki. “Voices From the Trail of Tears,” John David Blair Publishing
Company. http://www.blairpub.com/history/voicesfromtrailoftears.htm
(Accessed June 3, 2010).
Thomas Bryan Underwood, Moselle Stack Sandlin, “Cherokee Legends and the Trail of Tears. From the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology,” The Museum of the Cherokee Indian. http://books.google.com/books?id=irsmZU0xT2AC&printsec=frontcover&dq=cherokee+legends+and+the+trail+of+tears&source=bl&ots=3rZ4eXxmCG&sig=jeIvSIQ8m-qlVEuVLDwRi5XQuPI&hl=en&ei=y50HTJu3AoXGlQeZ5PSdDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false
(Accessed June 3, 2010).
[1] Ed. Theda Perdue + Michael D. Green, “The Cherokee Removal: a Brief History with Document.”
[2] Ed. Theda Perdue + Michael D. Green, “The Cherokee Removal: a Brief History with Document.”
[3] Thomas Bryan Underwood, Moselle Stack Sandlin, “Cherokee Legends and the Trail of Tears from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology.”
[4] Global Security. “Trail of Tears,” Global Security.
[5] Vicki Rozema, “Voices From the Trail of Tears,” John David Blair Publishing Company.
[6] Global Security. “Trail of Tears,” Global Security.
[7] Thomas Bryan Underwood, Moselle Stack Sandlin, “Cherokee Legends and the Trail of Tears. From the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology,” The Museum of the Cherokee Indian.
[8] Thomas Bryan Underwood, Moselle Stack Sandlin, “Cherokee Legends and the Trail of Tears. From the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology,” The Museum of the Cherokee Indian.
[9] Global Security. “Trail of Tears,” Global Security.
[10] Global Security. “Trail of Tears,” Global Security.
[11] Global Security. “Trail of Tears,” Global Security.
[12] Global Security. “Trail of Tears,” Global Security.
[13] Global Security. “Trail of Tears,” Global Security.
[14] Global Security. “Trail of Tears,” Global Security.
[15] Global Security. “Trail of Tears,” Global Security.
[16] Ed. Theda Perdue + Michael D. Green, “The Cherokee Removal: a Brief History with Document.”
[17] Ed. Theda Perdue + Michael D. Green, “The Cherokee Removal: a Brief History with Document.”
[18] Ed. Theda Perdue + Michael D. Green, “The Cherokee Removal: a Brief History with Document.”
[19] Global Security. “Trail of Tears,” Global Security.
[20] Gaston L. Little, “Chronicles of Oklahoma, Volume 15, No. 3, September, 1937: The Principal Chiefs of the Cherokee Nation.”
[21] Gaston L. Little, “Chronicles of Oklahoma, Volume 15, No. 3, September, 1937: The Principal Chiefs of the Cherokee Nation.”
[22] Global Security. “Trail of Tears,” Global Security.
