Everything about Trail Of Tears National Historic Trail totally explained
The
Trail of Tears was the forced relocation of
Native Americans from their homelands to Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma) in the Western United States. The phrase originated from a description of the removal of the
Choctaw Nation in 1831. The removals were motivated by U.S. desire for expansion, the desire to "save" Native Americans from extinction, and to profit from the acquisition of their assets and resources. Many Native Americans suffered from exposure, disease, starvation while enroute to their destinations.
In 1830, the
Cherokee,
Chickasaw,
Choctaw,
Muscogee (Creek), and
Seminole (sometimes collectively referred to as the
Five Civilized Tribes) were living as
autonomous nations in what would be called the American
Deep South. The process of cultural transformation (proposed by
George Washington and
Henry Knox) was gaining momentum, especially among the Cherokee and Choctaw. Indian removal was first proposed by
Thomas Jefferson.
Andrew Jackson was the first U.S. President to implement removal with the passage of the
Indian Removal Act of 1830. In 1831 the Choctaw were the first to be removed, and they became the model for all other removals. After the Choctaw removal went the Seminole in 1832, then the Creek in 1834, then the Chickasaw in 1837, and then finally the Cherokee in 1838. Removals (from various parts of North America) continued to
Indian Territory (and other regions not traditionally held by the tribe) well into the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Choctaw voluntary removal
The Choctaw nation was in what are now the U.S. states of
Alabama,
Mississippi, and
Louisiana. After a series of treaties starting in 1801, the Choctaw nation was reduced to . The
Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek ceded the remaining country to the United States and was ratified in early 1831. The removals were only agreed to after a provision in the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek allowed some Choctaw to remain.
George W. Harkins would write to the American people before the removals were to commence,
Secretary of War
Lewis Cass appointed George Gaines to manage the removals. Gaines decided to remove Choctaws in three phases starting in 1831 and ending in 1833. The first was to begin on November 1, 1831 with groups meeting at Memphis and Vicksburg. A harsh winter would batter the emigrants with flash floods, sleet, and snow. Initially the Choctaws were to be transported by wagon but floods halted them. With food running out, the residents of Vicksburg and Memphis were concerned. Five steamboats (the Walter Scott, the Brandywine, the Reindeer, the Talma, and the Cleopatra) would ferry Choctaws to their river-based destinations. The Memphis group traveled up the Arkansas for about to Arkansas Post. There the temperature stayed below freezing for almost a week with the rivers clogged with ice there would be no travel for weeks. Food rationing consisted of a handful of boiled corn, one turnip, and two cups of heated water per day. Forty government wagons were sent to Arkansas Post to transport them to Little Rock. When they reached Little Rock, Choctaw chief (thought to be Thomas Harkins or Nitikechi) quoted to the Arkansas Gazette that the removal was a "
trail of tears and death." The Vicksburg group was led by an incompetent guide and was lost in the Lake Providence swamps.
Alexis de Tocqueville, the French philosopher, witnessed the Choctaw removals while in
Memphis, Tennessee in 1831,
Nearly 15,000 Choctaws made the move to what would be called
Indian Territory and then later
Oklahoma. About 2,500–6,000 died along the trail of tears. Approximately 5,000–6,000 Choctaws remained in Mississippi in 1831 after the initial removal efforts. The Choctaws who chose to remain in newly formed Mississippi were subject to legal conflict, harassment, and intimidation. The Choctaws "have had our habitations torn down and burned, our fences destroyed, cattle turned into our fields and we ourselves have been scourged, manacled, fettered and otherwise personally abused, until by such treatment some of our best men have died." On December 28, 1835 a group of Seminoles and escaped slaves ambushed a U.S. Army company attempting to forcibly remove the Seminole. Out of 110 army troops only 3 survived, and with that the Second Seminole War had begun.
As the realization that the Seminoles would resist relocation sank in, Florida began preparing for war. The St. Augustine Militia asked the
War Department for the loan of 500 muskets. Five hundred volunteers were mobilized under Brig. Gen.
Richard K. Call. Indian war parties raided farms and settlements, and families fled to forts, large towns, or out of the territory altogether. A war party led by Osceola captured a Florida militia supply train, killing eight of its guards and wounding six others. Most of the goods taken were recovered by the militia in another fight a few days later. Sugar plantations along the Atlantic coast south of St. Augustine were destroyed, with many of the slaves on the plantations joining the Seminoles.
Other warchiefs such as
Halleck Tustenuggee, Jumper, and
Black Seminoles Abraham and John Horse continued the Seminole resistance against the army. The war ended, after a full decade of fighting, in 1842. The U.S. government is estimated to have spent about $20,000,000 on the war, at the time an astronomical sum. Many Indians were forcibly exiled to Creek lands west of the Mississippi; others retreated into the Everglades. In the end, the government gave up trying to subjugate the Seminole in their Everglades redoubts and left less than 100 Seminoles in peace.
Creek dissolution
William McIntosh signed treaties that ceded more land to Georgia. The 1814 signing of the
Treaty of Fort Jackson signaled the end for the Creek Nation and for all Indians in the South. Friendly Creek leaders, like Selocta and Big Warrior, addressed Sharp Knife (the Indian nickname for Andrew Jackson) and reminded him that they keep the peace. Nevertheless, Jackson retorted that they didn't "cut (
Tecumseh's) throat" when they'd the chance, so they must now cede Creek lands. Jackson also ignored Article 9 of the
Treaty of Ghent that restored sovereignty to Indians and their nations.
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Andrew Jackson }}
Eventually, the Creek Confederacy enacted a law that made further land cessions a
capital offense. Nevertheless, on
February 12,
1825, McIntosh and other chiefs signed the
Treaty of Indian Springs, which gave up most of the remaining Creek lands in Georgia.
(External Link
) After the
U.S. Senate ratified the treaty, McIntosh was assassinated on
May 13 1825, by Creeks led by Menawa.
The Creek National Council, led by
Opothle Yohola, protested to the United States that the Treaty of Indian Springs was fraudulent. President
John Quincy Adams was sympathetic, and eventually the treaty was nullified in a new agreement, the
Treaty of Washington (1826).
(External Link) Writes historian R. Douglas Hurt: "The Creeks had accomplished what no Indian nation had ever done or would do again — achieve the annulment of a ratified treaty." However, Governor Troup of Georgia ignored the new treaty and began to forcibly remove the Indians under the terms of the earlier treaty. At first, President Adams attempted to intervene with federal troops, but Troup called out the militia, and Adams, fearful of a civil war, conceded. As he explained to his intimates, "The Indians are not worth going to war over."
Although the Creeks had been forced from Georgia, with many Lower Creeks moving to the
Indian Territory, there were still about 20,000 Upper Creeks living in Alabama. However, the state moved to abolish tribal governments and extend state laws over the Creeks.
Opothle Yohola appealed to the administration of President Andrew Jackson for protection from Alabama; when none was forthcoming, the
Treaty of Cusseta was signed on
March 24 1832, which divided up Creek lands into individual allotments.
(External Link) Creeks could either sell their allotments and received funds to remove to the west, or stay in Alabama and submit to state laws. Land speculators and squatters began to defraud Creeks out of their allotments, and violence broke out, leading to the so-called "
Creek War of 1836."
Secretary of War Lewis Cass dispatched General
Winfield Scott to end the violence by forcibly removing the Creeks to the Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River.
Chickasaw monetary removal
Cherokee forced relocation
In 1838, the
Cherokee Nation was removed from their lands in Georgia to the Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma) in the
Western United States, which resulted in the deaths of approximately 4,000 Cherokees. In the
Cherokee language, the event is called
Nunna daul Isunyi—“the Trail Where They Cried”. The Cherokee Trail of Tears resulted from the enforcement of the
Treaty of New Echota, an agreement signed under the provisions of the
Indian Removal Act of 1830 which exchanged Native American land in the East for lands west of the
Mississippi River, but which was never accepted by the elected tribal leadership or a majority of the Cherokee people.
Tensions between Georgia and the Cherokee Nation were brought to a crisis by the discovery of gold near
Dahlonega, Georgia, in 1829, resulting in the
Georgia Gold Rush, the first
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
Marshall court ruled that the Cherokees 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 couldn't impose laws in Cherokee territory, since only the national government — not state governments — had authority in Indian affairs.
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 Cherokees 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 Cherokees to sign a removal treaty.
Nevertheless, the treaty, passed by Congress by a single vote, and signed into law by
President Andrew Jackson, was imposed by his successor President
Martin Van Buren who allowed
Georgia,
Tennessee,
North Carolina, and
Alabama militia to round up about 13,000 Cherokees in
concentration camps before being sent to the West. Most of the deaths occurred from disease, starvation and cold in these camps. After the initial roundup, the U.S. military still oversaw the emigration until they met the forced destination. 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 Cherokees 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."
Removed Cherokees initially settled near
Tahlequah, Oklahoma. The political turmoil resulting from the Treaty of New Echota and the Trail of Tears led to the assassinations of Major Ridge, John Ridge, and Elias Boudinot; of the leaders of the Treaty Party, only Stand Watie escaped his assassins. The population of the Cherokee Nation eventually rebounded, and today the Cherokees are the largest American Indian group in the United States.
There were some exceptions to removal. Perhaps 100 Cherokees evaded the U.S. soldiers and lived off the land in Georgia and other states. Those Cherokees who lived on private, individually owned lands (rather than communally owned tribal land) were not subject to removal. In North Carolina, about 400 Cherokees, known as the Oconaluftee Cherokee, lived on land in the
Great Smoky Mountains owned by a white man named
William Holland Thomas (who had been adopted by Cherokees as a boy), and were thus not subject to removal. Added to this were some 200 Cherokee from the Nantahala area allowed to stay after assisting the U.S. Army hunt down and capture the family of the old prophet Tsali (Tsali faced a firing squad). These North Carolina Cherokees became the
Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation.
Other tribes removed
Many tribes from various regions in North America were removed to Indian Territory. They include:
Further Information
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