|
Trail of Tears was an illegal forced removal of American Indian tribes by the United States government in the 19th century. The most famous Trail of Tears was that of the Cherokee of Georgia to what was called Indian
Territory (present-day Oklahoma) in 1838-39. In Cherokee, the event is
called Nunna daul Tsuny, literally "the trail where they cried". Several other of the five civilized tribes had their own Trails of Tears, also called
so.
Demand for land from non-native population growth led to pressure on Native American lands. After the Creek tribe
was decimated in 1828, the pressure fell on the Cherokee living in northern Georgia.
Georgia passed a series of anti-Cherokee measures, confiscating property, preventing natives from testifying in court, making it
illegal for an Indian to speak out against immigration west, and providing for a survey of Cherokee land and a lottery to
distribute such lands to whites in Georgia.
In 1830, the US Congress passed the
Indian Removal Act which President Andrew Jackson signed into law. Georgia was confiscating land before 1831, and in the spring of 1834 confiscated Cherokee chief
John Ross's estate while he was away at
Washington attempting to negotiate. The US Supreme Court reversed
itself in 1832 when it ruled in favor of the Cherokee Nation in Worcester v. State of Georgia. After
Jackson's re-election in 1832 some Cherokee, of their own volition, moved west to join the
Old Settlers.
Despite the Supreme Court decision, Jackson took no action to uphold the Court verdict, and in fact openly defied it. He
famously said, "John Marshall has made his law, now let him enforce it."
As the court has no executive powers to enforce its decisions, Jackson's executive disregard of the court marked a time when the
Judicial branch of government was very weak.
The Cherokee began to be divided, some of the most strident opponents of removal abruptly changed their minds, led by Major
Ridge, his son, and his nephew, Elias Boudinot (also called Buck Watie) and his son Stand Watie, they became known as the Ridge
Party, or the Treaty Party. The Ridge party had very little support within the Cherokee nation. Both the elected Cherokee
government and the Ridge party sent independent delegations to Washington. In 1835, with
the Ridge Party completely in favor of removal, Jackson appointed Rev. John F. Schermerhorn as a
treaty commissioner, and the treaty that was proposed was rejected in October 1835 by Cherokee Nation meeting in full council.
While Chief Ross was in Washington attempting a new discussion, Schermerhorn organized a parley of the pro-removal council
members at New Echota. Five hundred
Cherokees of a tribal population of at least seventeen thousand responded to the summons, and 21 proponents of Cherokee removal,
among them Elias Boudinot, Stand Waite, Major Ridge and his son John, signed or left X marks on the Treaty of New Echota
[1] . All of these signators were
violating a Cherokee Nation statute drafted by John Ridge, which had been passed in 1829.
Not a single elected tribal official signed this document. This treaty gave up all the Cherokee land east of the Mississippi. Despite the protests by the Cherokee National Council and
principal Chief Ross that the document was a pure fraud, Congress ratified the treaty on May 23 1836, by one vote. A number of
members of the Treaty Party left for the west at this time.
When the spring deadline had passed, President Martin Van Buren
assigned General Winfield Scott to head the forcible removal operation.
He arrived in May 1838 with 7,000 soldiers. Some 17-18,000 Cherokee of northern Georgia, Arkansas (the former Cherokee of Kentucky), Tennessee, and Alabama, along with their
approximately 2,000 slaves, were removed at gunpoint from their land over three weeks and gathered together in camps with usually
only the clothes on their backs. They were then transferred to departure points at Rattlesnake Springs and Ross's Landing in
Tennessee. From there, they had to walk (or ride, but most people had to walk) to the Indian Territory which comprised all of Oklahoma. The Cherokee initially settled near Tahlequah, Oklahoma, a distance of around 1,200 miles along one of
three routes. Around 2,500 were transferred by river - Tennessee
River to the Ohio River to the Mississippi to the Arkansas River to Fort Smith on the border of the Indian Territory. Sent in twenty distinct groups, initial
human losses in transit were very high and in all between 4,000-8,000 Cherokee died.
There were some notable exceptions to removal. Some Cherokee evaded removal and lived off the land in Georgia and former
states. Another band, called the Eastern Cherokee, due to an interaction with William Holland Thomas, already had land in the
Great Smoky Mountains and some limited state recognition,
and are the Eastern
Band Cherokee of today.
See also
External links
|