Product Code Database
The Cherokee removal (May 25, 18381839), part of the Indian removal, refers to the forced displacement of an estimated 15,500 and 1,500 African-American slaves from the U.S. states of Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama to the Indian Territory according to the terms of the 1835 Treaty of New Echota. It is estimated that 3,500 Cherokees and African-American slaves died en route.
The Cherokee have come to call the event Nu na da ul tsun yi (the place where they cried); another term is Tlo va sa (our removal). Neither phrase was used at the time, and both seem to be of Choctaw origin. Other American Indian groups in the American South, North, Midwest, Southwest, and the Great Plains regions were removed, some voluntarily, some reluctantly, and some by force. The Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek Indian), and Cherokee were removed reluctantly. The Seminole in Florida resisted removal by the United States Army for decades (1817–1850) with guerrilla warfare, part of the intermittent Native American Wars that lasted from 1540 to 1924. Some Seminole remained in their Florida home country, while others were transported to Indian Territory in shackles.
The phrase "Trail of Tears" is used to refer to similar events endured by other Indian groups, especially among the "Five Civilized Tribes". The phrase originated as a description of the involuntary removal of the Choctaw in 1831.
John Ross estimated the value of Cherokee Land at $7.23 million. A conservative estimate by Matthew T. Gregg in 2009 puts Cherokee's land value for the 1838 market at $7,055,469.70, more than $2 million over the $5 million the senate agreed to pay. In this power vacuum, U.S. Agent John F. Schermerhorn gathered a group of dissident Cherokee in the home of Elias Boudinot at the tribal capital, New Echota. There on December 29, 1835, this rump group signed the unauthorized Treaty of New Echota, which exchanged Cherokee land in the East for lands west of the Mississippi River in Indian Territory. This agreement was never accepted by the elected tribal leadership or a majority of the Cherokee people. In February 1836, two councils convened at Red Clay, Tennessee and at Valley Town, North Carolina (now Murphy, North Carolina) and produced two lists totaling some 13,000 names written in the Sequoyah writing script of Cherokee opposed to the Treaty. The lists were dispatched to Washington, DC and presented by Chief Ross to Congress. Nevertheless, a slightly modified version of the Treaty was ratified by the U.S. Senate by a single vote on May 23, 1836, and signed into law by President Jackson. The Treaty provided a grace period until May 1838 for the tribe to voluntarily remove themselves to Indian Territory.
With the Compact of 1802, the state of Georgia relinquished to the national government its western land claims (which became the states of Alabama and Mississippi). In exchange, the national government promised to eventually conduct treaties to relocate those Indian tribes living within Georgia, thus giving Georgia control of all land within its borders.
However, the Cherokee, whose ancestral tribal lands overlapped the boundaries of Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Alabama, declined to move. They established a capital in 1825 at New Echota near present-day Calhoun, Georgia. Furthermore, led by principal Chief John Ross and Major Ridge, the speaker of the Cherokee National Council, the Cherokee adopted a written constitution on July 26, 1827, declaring the Cherokee Nation to be a sovereign and independent nation.
With this constitution, an election was held for Principal Chief. John Ross won the first election and became the leader and representative of the tribe. In 1828, the Cherokee government established a law that addressed the issue of removal. The law stated that anyone who signed an agreement with the United States that addressed the Cherokee land without consent of the Cherokee government would be considered treasonous and could be punishable by death.
The Cherokee land that was lost proved to be extremely valuable. Upon these lands were the alignments for the future rights-of-way for rail and road communications between the eastern Piedmont slopes of the Appalachian Mountains, the Ohio River in Kentucky and the Tennessee River Valley at Chattanooga. This location is still a strategic economic asset and is the basis for the tremendous success of Atlanta, Georgia, as a regional transportation and logistics center. Georgia's appropriation of these lands from the Cherokee kept the wealth out of the hands of the Cherokee Nation.
The Cherokee lands in Georgia were settled upon by the Cherokee for the simple reason that they were and still are the shortest and most easily traversed route between the only fresh water sourced settlement location at the southeastern tip of the Appalachian range (the Chattahoochee River), and the natural passes, ridges, and valleys which lead to the Tennessee River at what is today, Chattanooga. From Chattanooga there was and is the potential for a year-round water transport to St. Louis and the west (via the Ohio and Mississippi rivers), or to as far east as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
These tensions between Georgia and the Cherokee Nation were brought to a crisis by the discovery of gold near Dahlonega, Georgia, in 1828, resulting in the Georgia Gold Rush, the second gold rush in U.S. history. Hopeful gold speculators began trespassing on Cherokee lands, and pressure began to mount on the Georgia government to fulfill the promises of the Compact of 1802.
When Georgia moved to extend state laws over Cherokee tribal lands in 1830, the matter went to the U.S. Supreme Court. In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), the John Marshall ruled that the Cherokee were not a sovereign and independent nation, and therefore refused to hear the case. However, in Worcester v. State of Georgia (1832), the Court ruled that Georgia could not impose laws in Cherokee territory, since only the national government – not state governments – had authority in Indian affairs.
President Andrew Jackson has often been quoted as defying the Supreme Court with the words, "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!" Jackson probably never said this, but he was fully committed to the policy. He had no desire to use the power of the national government to protect the Cherokee from Georgia, since he was already entangled with states' rights issues in what became known as the nullification crisis. With the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the U.S. Congress had given Jackson authority to negotiate removal treaties, exchanging Indian land in the East for land west of the Mississippi River. Jackson used the dispute with Georgia to put pressure on the Cherokee to sign a removal treaty.Remini, Andrew Jackson, p. 257, Prucha, Great Father, p. 212.
Due to laws passed by the State of Georgia encroaching on Cherokee lands, the Cherokee Nation moved their capitol to the Red Clay Council Grounds a few hundred yards north of the state line in present-day Bradley County, Tennessee.
However, Principal Chief John Ross and the majority of the Cherokee people remained adamantly opposed to removal. Chief Ross canceled the tribal elections in 1832, the Council threatened to impeach the Ridges, and a prominent member of the Treaty Party, John "Jack" Walker, Jr., was murdered. The Ridges responded by eventually forming their own council, representing only a fraction of the Cherokee people. This split the Cherokee Nation into two factions: those following Ross, known as the National Party, and those of the Treaty Party, who elected William A. Hicks, who had briefly succeeded his brother Charles R. Hicks as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation to act as titular leader of the pro-Treaty faction, with former National Council clerk Alexander McCoy as his assistant.
John states in his letter to congress, "By the stipulations of this instrument, we are despoiled of our private possessions, the indefeasible property of individuals. We are stripped of every attribute of freedom and eligibility for legal self-defence. Our property may be plundered before our eyes; violence may be committed on our persons; even our lives may be taken away, and there is none to regard our complaints. We are denationalized; we are disfranchised. We are deprived of membership in the human family! We have neither land nor home, nor resting place that can be called our own. And this is effected by the provisions of a compact which assumes the venerated, the sacred appellation of treaty. We are overwhelmed! Our hearts are sickened, our utterance is paralyzed, when we reflect on the condition in which we are placed, by the audacious practices of unprincipled men, who have managed their stratagems with so much dexterity as to impose on the Government of the United States, in the face of our earnest, solemn, and reiterated protestations."
In 1835, Jackson appointed Reverend John F. Schermerhorn as one of the commissioners for the Treaty. The U.S. government proposed to pay the Cherokee Nation US$4.5 million (among other considerations) to remove themselves. These terms were rejected in October 1835 by the Cherokee Nation Council meeting at Red Clay. Chief Ross, attempting to bridge the gap between his administration and the Treaty Party, traveled to Washington with a party that included John Ridge and Stand Watie to open new negotiations, but they were turned away and told to deal with Schermerhorn.
Meanwhile, Schermerhorn organized a meeting with the pro-removal council members at New Echota. oklahoma Only five hundred Cherokee out of thousands responded to the summons, and, on December 30, 1835, twenty-one proponents of Cherokee removal, Major Ridge, Elias Boudinot, James Foster, Testaesky, Charles Moore, George Chambers, Tahyeske, Archilla Smith, Andrew Ross (younger brother of Chief John Ross), William Lassley, Caetehee, Tegaheske, Robert Rogers, John Gunter, John A. Bell, Charles Foreman, William Rogers, George W. Adair, James Starr, and Jesse Halfbreed, signed or left "X" marks on the Treaty of New Echota after those present voted unanimously for its approval. John Ridge and Stand Watie signed the Treaty when it was brought to Washington. Chief Ross, as expected, refused.
This Treaty, which was not approved by National Council, gave up all the Cherokee land east of the Mississippi River in return for five million dollars to be disbursed on a per capita basis, an additional half-million dollars for educational funds, title in perpetuity to an amount of land in Indian Territory equal to that given up, and full compensation for all property left in the East. There was also a clause in the treaty as signed allowing Cherokee who so desired to remain and become citizens of the states in which they resided on of land, but that was later stricken out by President Jackson.
Despite the protests by the Cherokee National Council and principal Chief Ross that the document was a fraud, Congress ratified the Treaty on May 23, 1836 by one vote.
There are muster rolls for groups # 1, 3 – 6 and daily journals of conductors for groups # 2 and 5 among records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the National Archives. Despite the government blandishments, only a few hundred volunteered to accept terms for removal of the Treaty.
Nevertheless, as the May 23, 1838, deadline for voluntary removal approached, President Van Buren assigned General Winfield Scott to head the forcible removal operation. He established military operational headquarters at Fort Cass in Charleston, Tennessee at the site of the Indian Agency, and arrived at New Echota on May 17, 1838, in command of U.S. Army and state militia totaling about 7,000 soldiers. Scott discouraged mistreatment of the Native Americans, ordering his troops to "show every possible kindness to the Cherokee and to arrest any soldier who inflicted a wanton injury or insult on any Cherokee man, woman, or child."
Note: The Private John G. Burnett Letter has been irrefutably proven to be a fabricated artifact and a purely fictitious hoax that has created damaging, false myths about the Trail of Tears.Duffield, Lathel, Cherokee Emigration: Reconstructing Reality, The Chronicles of Oklahoma Volume LXXX, Number Three, Fall 2002, pp 314-347;
Higginbotham, William R, Trail of Tears, Death Toll Myths Dispelled, The Oklahoman, Sun, February 28, 1988;
Vogt, Larry A, Seeking the Origins of the Trail of Tears, Oct 2020, pp 29-42
Unfortunately, many readers, including some historians, have been fooled by this totally fictitious account of the Trail of Tears.
(1995). 9780895871336, John F. Blair. ISBN 9780895871336 They began rounding up Cherokee in Georgia on May 26, 1838; ten days later, operations began in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Alabama. Men, women, and children were removed at gunpoint from their homes over three weeks and gathered together in concentration camps, often with very few of their possessions. About 1,000 Cherokee took refuge in the mountains to the east, and some who owned private property also escaped the evacuation. Private John G. Burnett later wrote "Future generations will read and condemn the act and I do hope posterity will remember that private soldiers like myself, and like the four Cherokee who were forced by General Scott to shoot an Indian Chief and his children, had to execute the orders of our superiors. We had no choice in the matter."
or (Note: There are several other versions/bindings of Annual report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1837-1838, 1838-1839, 1838. In the yearly report copies, the relevant pages fall in the range of pp ~20-30.)
, United States Congress, “MCCLELLAN, Abraham,”
This story is perhaps a garbled version of the episode when a Cherokee named Tsali or Charley and three others killed two soldiers in the North Carolina mountains during the round-up. The two Indians were subsequently tracked down and executed by Chief Euchella's band of Cherokee in exchange for a deal with the Army to avoid their own removal. The Cherokee were then marched overland to departure points at Ross's Landing (Chattanooga) and Gunter's Landing (Guntersville, Alabama) on the Tennessee River, and forced on to flatboats and the steamers "Smelter" and "Little Rock". Unfortunately, a drought brought low water levels on the rivers, requiring frequent unloading of vessels to evade river obstacles and shoals. The Army directed removal was characterized by many deaths and desertions, and this part of the Cherokee removal proved to be a fiasco and Gen. Scott ordered suspension of further removal efforts. The Army-operated groups were :
Muster rolls for groups # 1 and 4 are in the records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and # 2 in records of the Army Continental Commands (Eastern Division, Gen. Winfield Scott's papers) in the National Archives. There are daily journals of conductors for groups # 1 and 3 among Special Files of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The deaths and desertions in the Army's boat detachments caused Gen Scott to suspend the Army's removal efforts, and the remaining Cherokee were put into eleven internment camps, located at Fort Cass, Ross's Landing in present-day Chattanooga, Red Clay, Bedwell Springs, Chatata, Mouse Creek, Rattlesnake Springs, Chestoee, and Calhoun, and one camp near Fort Payne in Alabama. From the camps, the Cherokee were then relocated to three emigration depots, which were located at Fort Cass, Ross's Landing, and Gunter's Landing near Guntersville, Alabama.
Cherokee remained in the camps during the summer of 1838 and were plagued by dysentery and other illnesses, which led to 353 deaths. A group of Cherokee petitioned General Scott for a delay until cooler weather made the journey less hazardous. This was granted; meanwhile Chief Ross, finally accepting defeat, managed to have the remainder of the removal turned over to the supervision of the Cherokee Council. Although there were some objections within the U.S. government because of the additional cost, General Scott awarded a contract for removing the remaining 11,000 Cherokee under the supervision of Principal Chief Ross, with expenses to be paid by the Army, which outraged President Van Buren and surprised many.
These detachments were forced to trek through various trails, crossing through Kentucky, Illinois, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Missouri to the final destination of Oklahoma. One of the main routes began in Chattanooga, TN and took a northwestern route through eastern Kentucky and southern Illinois before bearing to the southwest near the center of Missouri. The entire trip was roughly 2,200 miles. The Cherokee endured freezing temperatures, snowstorms, and pneumonia. The harshness of the trail and the intense weather conditions claimed around 4,000 lives, although estimates vary.
There exist muster rolls for four (Benge, Chuwaluka, G. Hicks, and Hildebrand) of the 12 wagon trains and payrolls of officials for all 13 detachments among the personal papers of Principal Chief John Ross in the Gilcrease Institution in Tulsa, OK.
An accounting of the exact number of fatalities during the removal is also related to discrepancies in expense accounts submitted by Chief John Ross after the removal that the Army considered inflated and possibly fraudulent. Ross claimed rations for 1600 more Cherokee than were counted by an Army officer, Captain Page, at Ross's Landing as Cherokee groups left their homeland and another Army officer, Captain Stephenson, at Fort Gibson counted them as they arrived in Indian Territory. Ross's accounts are consistently higher numbers than that of the Army disbursing agents. Cherokee Indian Removal. Encyclopedia of Alabama. (retrieved 28 Sept 2009) The Van Buren administration refused to pay Ross, but the later Tyler administration eventually approved disbursing more than $500,000 (~$ in ) to the Principal Chief in 1842.
In addition, some Cherokee traveled from east to west more than once. Many deserters from the Army's boat detachments in June 1838 later emigrated in the twelve Ross wagon trains. There were transfers between groups, and later join ups and desertions were not always recorded. Jesse Mayfield was a white man with a Cherokee family went twice (first voluntarily in B.B. Cannon's detachment in 1837 to Indian Territory; unhappy there, he returned to the Cherokee Nation; and in Oct. 1838 was Wagon Master for the Bushyhead Detachment). An Army disbursing agent discovered that a Cherokee named Justis Fields travelled with government funds three times under different aliases. A mixed-blood named James Bigby, Jr. travelled to Indian Territory five times (three as government interpreter for different detachments, as Commissary for the Colston detachment, and as an individual in 1840). In addition, a small but significant number of mixed-bloods and whites with Cherokee families petitioned to become citizens of Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, or Tennessee and thus ceased to be considered Cherokee.
During the journey, it is said that the people would sing "Amazing Grace", using its inspiration to improve morale. The traditional Christian hymn had previously been translated into Cherokee by the missionary Samuel Worcester with Cherokee assistance. The song has since become a sort of anthem for the Cherokee people.Steve Turner, Amazing Grace: The Story of America's Most Beloved Song (Harper Collins, 2003), p. 167; Deborah L Duvall, Tahlequah: The Cherokee Nation (Arcadia Publishing, 2000), p. 35; Richard M. Swiderski, The Metamorphosis of English (Bergin Garvey/Greenwood, 1996), p. 91.
There were some exceptions to removal. Those Cherokee who lived on private, individually owned lands (rather than communally owned tribal land) were not subject to removal. In North Carolina, about 400 Cherokee led by Yonaguska lived on land along the Oconaluftee River in the Great Smoky Mountains owned by a white man named William Holland Thomas (who had been adopted by Cherokee as a boy), and were thus not subject to removal, and these were joined by a smaller band of about 150 along the Nantahala River led by Utsala. Along with a group living in Snowbird and another along the Cheoah River in a community called Tomotley, these North Carolina Cherokee became the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation, numbering approximately 1000. According to a roll taken the year after the removal (1839), there were in addition some estimated about 400 of Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama, and these also joined the EBCI.
A local newspaper, the Highland Messenger, said July 24, 1840, “that between nine hundred and a thousand of these deluded beings … are still hovering about the homes of their fathers, in the counties of Macon and Cherokee" and "that they are a great annoyance to the citizens" who wanted to buy land there believing the Cherokee were gone; the newspaper reported that President Jackson said "they … are, in his opinion, free to go or stay.’
The Trail of Tears is generally considered to be an infamous episode in American history. To commemorate the event, the U.S. Congress designated the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail in 1987. Trail Of Tears National Historic Trail from the National Park Service It stretches across nine states for .
In 2004, during the 108th Congress, Senator Sam Brownback (Republican of Kansas) introduced a joint resolution (Senate Joint Resolution 37) to "offer an apology to all Native Peoples on behalf of the United States" for past "ill-conceived policies" by the United States Government regarding Indian Tribes. It passed in the U.S. Senate in February 2008.
As of 2014, Cherokee Nation members can request Heirloom plant for a species of beans carried on the Trail of Tears from the Cherokee Seed Project.
|
|
