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The Trail of Tears refers to the forced removal of the Cherokee American Indian tribe by the U.S. federal government, which resulted in the deaths of thousands of Cherokee Indians. In the Cherokee language, the event is called Nunna daul Tsuny — "the trail where they cried."
The Cherokees were not the only Native Americans forcibly removed to the American West, and so the phrase "Trail of Tears" is sometimes used to refer to similar events endured by other Indian peoples, especially among the "Five Civilized Tribes." See Indian Removal for an overview of the era and details about the other "trails."
Disputes with Georgia
The rapidly expanding population of the United States early in the nineteenth century created tenions with American Indian tribes located within the borders of the various states. In the Compact of 1802, the state of Georgia relinquished her western land claims (later to become the states of Alabama and Mississippi) to the United States in the expectation that Indian tribes within Georgia would be removed to the west, thus giving Georgia control of all land within her borders. However, the Cherokees declined to move, and led by principal Chief John Ross, declared itself to be a sovereign nation, adopting a written constitution in 1827.
When Georgia ignored these claims and moved to confiscate Cherokee lands, 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 nation. However, in Worcester v. State of Georgia (1832), the Court ruled that Georgia could not impose laws in Cherokee territory; only the national government 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 actually said no such thing.1
However, Jackson was fully committed to the policy of Indian removal, and he had no intention of using the power of the national government to protect the Cherokees from Georgia. With the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the U.S. Congress had given him authority to negotiate removal treaties, exchanging Indian land in the east for land out west. Jackson put pressure on the Cherokees to sign a removal treaty.
Treaty of New Echota
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 the Reverend 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] (http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/Vol2/treaties/che0439.htm). 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 the 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.
Forced removal
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.
Aftermath
There were some exceptions to removal. Cherokees who lived on private land (rather than tribal land) were not removed. 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.
To commemorate this forced removal, the U.S. Congress designated the Trail Of Tears National Historic Trail in 1987. It stretches for 2,200 miles across nine states.
See also
Notes
Note 1: Remini, page 257.
References
- Ehle, John. Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation. New York: Doubleday, 1988.
- Remini, Robert V. Andrew Jackson and his Indian Wars. New York: Viking, 2001.
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