A Brief History of the Trail of Tears

Migration from the original Cherokee Nation began in the early 1800’s as Cherokees, wary of white encroachment, moved west and settled in other areas of the country. White resentment of the Cherokees had been building and reached a pinnacle after gold was discovered in Georgia, and immediately following the passage of the Cherokee Nation constitution, and establishment of a Cherokee Supreme Court. Possessed with ‘gold fever,’ and a thirst for expansion, the white communities turned on their Cherokee neighbors and the U.S. government decided it was time for the Cherokees to leave behind their farms, their land and their homes.

A group known as the Old Settlers had moved in 1817 to lands given them in Arkansas where again they established a government and a peaceful way of life. Later, they too, were forced into Indian Territory.

President Andrew Jackson, whose command and life was saved due to 500 Cherokee allies at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814, unbelievably authorized the Indian Removal Act of 1830. In following the recommendation of President James Monroe in his final address to Congress in 1825, Jackson sanctioned an attitude that had persisted for many years among many white immigrants. Even Thomas Jefferson, who often cited the Great Law of Peace of the Iroquois Confederacy as the model for the U.S. Constitution, supported Indian Removal as early as 1802.

The displacement of Native People was not wanting for eloquent opposition. Senators Daniel Webster and Henry Clay spoke out against removal. Reverend Samuel Worcester, missionary to the Cherokees, challenged Georgia’s attempt to estinguish Indian title to land in the state, winning the case before the Supreme Court.

Worcester vs. Georgia, 1832, and Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia, 1831, are considered the two most influential decisions in Indian law. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled for Georgia in the 1831 case, but in Worcester vs. Georgia, the court affirmed Cherokee sovereignty. President Andrew Jackson defied the decision of the court and ordered the removal, an act of defiance that established the U.S. government’s precedent for the removal of many Native Americans from the ancestral homelands.

The U.S. government used the Treaty of New Echota in 1835 to justify the removal. The treaty, illegally signed by about 100 Cherokees known as the Treaty Party, relinquished all lands east of the Mississippi River in exchange for land in Indian Territory and the promise of money, livestock, various provisions and tools, and other benefits.

When the pro-removal Cherokee leaders signed the Treaty of New Echota, they also signed their own death warrants. The Cherokee Naiton Council earlier had passed a law that called for the death penalty for anyone who agreed to give up tribal land. The signing and the removal led to better factionalism and the deaths of most of the Treaty Part leaders once in Indian Territory.

Opposition to the removal was led by Chief John Ross, a mixed-blood of Scottish and one-eighth Cherokee descent. The Ross party and most Cherokees opposed the New Echota Treaty, but Georgia and the U.S. government prevailed and used it as justification to force almost all of the 17,000 Cherokees from their southeastern homeland.

Under orders from President Jackson and in defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Army began enforcement of the Removal Act. More than 3,000 Cherokees were rounded up in the summer of 1838 and loaded onto boats that traveled the Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi and Arkansas Rivers into Indian Territory. Many were held in prison camps awaiting their fate.

An estimated 4,000 died from hunger, exposure and disease. The journey became an eternal memory as the "trail where they cried" for the Cherokees and other removed tribes. Today, it is remembered as the "Trail of Tears." The Oklahoma Chapter of the Trail of Tears Association has begun the task of marking the graves of Trail survivors with bronze memorials.

Interesting Statistics on the Removal
by Ralph Jenkins

Here are the parties leaving under their own supervision:

DETACHMENT                DEPARTED                ARRIVED

Hair Conrad             Aug 23, 1838            Jan 17, 1839  (Our Sixkillers in this group)
Elijah Hicks            Sep 1, 1838             Jan 4, 1839
Jesse Bushyhead         Sep 3, 1838             Feb 27, 1839
John Benge              Sep 28, 1838            Jan 17, 1839
Situwakee               Sep 7, 1838             Feb 2, 1839
Old Field               Sep 24, 1838            Feb 23, 1839
Moses Daniel            Sep 30, 1838            Mar 2, 1839
Choowalooka             Sep 14, 1838            Mar , 1839
James Brown             Sep 10, 1838            Mar 5, 1839
George Hicks            Sep 7, 1838             Mar 14, 1839
Richard Taylor          Sep 20, 1838            Mar 24, 1839
Peter Hildebrand        Oct 23, 1838            Mar 24, 1839
John Drew               Dec 5, 1838             Mar 18, 1839

Here are the recorded numbers. I have taken the numbers of deaths from the State
Papers, because in one case (Hair Conrad's party) they are higher than Starr's numbers;
Starr gives 54, not 57.

                        THORNTON        STARR     STATE PAPERS
                         --------------         ---------     --------   
DETACHMENT      DEPART  ARRIVE  BIRTHS  DEATHS  DESERTIONS ACCESSIONS
Hair Conrad       729     654      9      57        24         14  (Our Sixkillers in this group)
Elijah Hicks      858     744      5      54
Jesse Bushyhead   950     898      6      38       148        171
John Benge       1200    1132      3      33
Situwakee        1250    1033      5      71
Old Field         983     921     19      57        10          6
Moses Daniel     1035     924      6      48
Choowalooka      1150     970             NA
James Brown       850     717      3      34 
George Hicks     1118    1039             NA
Richard Taylor   1029     942     15      55
Peter Hildebrand 1766    1311             NA
John Drew         231     219             NA

TOTAL           13149   11504     71     447       182        191

For 4 parties, no information on deaths was recorded. 
I have therefore estimated the death rate overall, 
and posted the number of deaths that might have 
escaped the records assuming a uniformdeath rate for 
those parties. 

                        POSSIBLE
                        DEATH        UNRECORDED
DETACHMENT              RATE         DEATHS
                                            
Hair Conrad             7.82%  (Our Sixkillers in this group)
Elijah Hicks            6.29%
Jesse Bushyhead         4.00%
John Benge              2.75%
Situwakee               5.68%
Old Field               5.80%
Moses Daniel            4.64%
Choowalooka                            58
James Brown             4.00%
George Hicks                           56
Richard Taylor          5.34%
Peter Hildebrand                       89
John Drew                              12

TOTAL                   5.03%         215

The number of Cherokees who might be expected to arrive is thus 
the number departed plus births and accessions, minus deaths and 
desertions. I have compared the expected number to the actual 
recorded number. This gives 1301 Cherokees unaccounted for. These 
are shown in the column headed POSSIBLE "LOST" CHEROKEES. If these 
are combined with the number known to have deserted, we have over 
1500 known to have begun the journey who may have dropped out and 
returned, or settled along the way, or pursued another path to 
another life.

ACTUAL                  POSSIBLE       TOTAL       "LOST"
                EXPECTED   RECORDED        "LOST"       RECORDED     PLUS
DETACHMENT      ARRIVALS   ARRIVALS      CHEROKEES      DESERTIONS   DESERTIONS

Hair Conrad        674        654           20             24           44  (Our Sixkillers)
Elijah Hicks       829        744           85                          85
Jesse Bushyhead    941        898           43            148          191
John Benge        1170       1132           38                          38
Situwakee         1184       1033          151                         151
Old Field          941        921           20             10           30
Moses Daniel       993        924           69                          69
Choowalooka       1150        970          180                         180
James Brown        819        717          102                         102
George Hicks      1118       1039           79                          79
Richard Taylor     989        942           47                          47
Peter Hildebrand  1766       1311          455                         455
John Drew          231        219           12                          12
TOTAL            12805      11504         1301            182         1483

If these 1483 are combined with the more than 300 known to have left the Deas party, we have 1700
or more who might have taken alternative paths. Of course these are "soft" numbers; record-keeping
was surely not uppermost in the minds of anyone, and some of the numbers may overlap. But it is also
possible that the true number is larger, not smaller. Either way, this evidence suggests a fairly large group
of Cherokees unaccounted for by the record-keepers. And some of these may have been the ancestors
of those whose family histories keep alive the memory of Cherokee origins despite their absence from the
Dawes and Miller rolls.

Please know that I offer these numbers in full awareness of their uncertainty and of the speculative nature
of my inferences, and with the hope that they may be useful to others, and that I welcome comments and
corrections.

Ralph Jenkins
DEAN'S OFFICE, COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY
PHILADELPHIA, PA 19122 USA

Cherokee Trail of Tears:
Other Paths

by Ralph Jenkins

There is evidence in the historical record of a sizeable group of Cherokee who neither escaped removal nor completed the Trail of Tears, but instead began the journey, dropped out, and possibly returned to the old Nation.

Grant Foreman's account of the emigrations by water in June, 1838, gives some evidence of this possibility. These were the groups that left under military supervision, before the Cherokee asked for and were granted permission to supervise their own migration. Foreman writes:

Twenty-eight hundred of them [Cherokee] were divided into three detachments, each accompanied by a military office, a corps of assistants, and two physicians. The first with about 800 in the party departed June 6; the next with 875 started on the fifteenth.

The first party forcibly placed on the boats was in charge of Lieut. Edward Deas and was made up of Cherokee Indians from Georgia who had been concentrated at Ross's Landing. They were escorted by soldier guards aboard a little flotilla consisting of one steamboat of 100 tons, and six flatboats, one of which was constructed with a double-decked cabin. In the excitement and bitterness accompanying the enforced embarking of the Indians and their crowded condition aboard the boats, the conductors thought it best not to attempt to muster and count them until later. .

Starting early on the morning of the ninth they reached Decatur at six o'clock to take the train to Tuscumbia but were compelled to remain until the next day. Then "the Indians and their baggage were transferred from the boats to the Rail Road cars. About 32 cars were necessary to transport the Party, and no more could be employed for want of power in the [two] Locomotive Engines."

As the Indians were much crowded on the train the twenty-three soldiers were discharged. The first detachment reached Tuscumbia at three o'clock and boarded the steamboat SMELTER which "immediately set off for Waterloo at the foot of the rapids without awaiting for the 2nd train of Cars with the remainder of the Party." When the second party reached Tuscumbia they went into the camp awhile waiting transportation by water. As the guard had been discharged, whisky was introduced among them, much drunkenness resulting, and OVER ONE HUNDRED OF THE EMIGRANTS ESCAPED [emphasis mine]. The remainder were carried by water aboard a keel boat and a small steamer about thirty miles to Waterloo.

Here the party was united and set out on the eleventh aboard the steamboat SMELTER and two large double decked keel boats; the next afternoon they reached Paducah, Kentucky, where Lieutenant Deas left one of the keel boats which he found superfluous. He succeeded in mustering the Indians after a fashion and found that he had 489. (Grant Foreman, Indian Removal: The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians, Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1956 (copyright 1932), p.291)

His account suggests the ease with which individuals or even groups could leave the emigration party; on June 8, six miles above Decatur, "such of the people as choose have gone ashore to sleep and cook" (Foreman, p.292). By June 10, the party were about 150 miles by land from their point of departure in Tennessee. Over 100 had left the group on the previous night. By the 11th, in Paducah, Deas counted 489; the original party of about 800 had shrunk by about 300 between June 6 and June 12. Where did they go? If they had wanted to re-settle in the West, they could have stayed on the boat with the rest of the party. But they were still within walking distance of their old homes. The guards had been discharged. It would have been easy to infer that the white government had no further interest in them; their land had been surveyed and seized, and they were now free to go where they would. It is not difficult to imagine numbers of them returning home, to live as they could.

Ralph Jenkins
DEAN'S OFFICE, COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY
PHILADELPHIA, PA 19122 USA


1838
February	15,665 people of the Cherokee Nation memorialize congress protesting the Treaty of New Echola.
March	Outraged American citizens throughout the country memorialize congress on behalf of the Cherokee.
April	Congress tables memorials protesting Cherokee removal. Federal troops ordered to prepare for roundup.
May	Cherokee roundup begins May 23, 1838. Southeast suffers worst drought in recorded history. Tsali escapes roundup and returns to North Carolina.
June	First group of Cherokees driven west under Federal guard. Further removal aborted because of drought and "sickly season."
July	Over 13,000 Cherokees imprisoned in military stockades awaiting break in drought. Approximately 1500 die in confinement.
August	In Aquohee stockade Cherokee chiefs meet in council, reaffirming the sovereignty of the Cherokee Nation. John Ross becomes superintendent of the removal.
September	Drought breaks: Cherokee prepare to embark on forced exodus to Indian Territory in Oklahoma. Ross wins additional funds for food and clothing.
October	For most Cherokee, the "Trail of Tears" begins.
November	Thirteen contingents of Cherokees cross Tennessee, Kentucky and Illinois. First groups reach the Mississippi River, where there crossing is held up by river ice flows.
December	Contingent led by Chief Jesse Bushyhead camps near present day Trail of Tears Park. John Ross leaves Cherokee homeland with last group: carrying the records and laws of the Cherokee Nation. 5000 Cherokees trapped east of the Mississippi by harsh winter; many die.
1839
January	First overland contingents arrives at Fort Gibson. Ross party of sick and infirm travel from Kentucky by riverboat.
February	Chief Ross's wife, Quati, dies near Little Rock, Arkansas on February 1, 1839.
March	Last group headed by Ross, reaches Oklahoma. More than 3000 Cherokee die on Trail of Tears, 1600 in stockades and about the same number en route. 800 more die in 1839 in Oklahoma.
April	Cherokees build houses, clear land, plant and begin to rebuild their nation.
May	Western Cherokee invite new arrivals to meet to establish a united Cherokee government.
June	Old Treaty Part leaders attempt to foil reunification negotiations between Ross and Sequoyah. Treaty Party leaders John Ridge, Major Ridge and Elias Boudinot assassinated.
July	Cherokee Act of Union brings together the eastern and western Cherokee Nations on July 12, 1839.
August	Stand Watie, Brother of Boudinot, pledges revenge for deaths of party leaders.
September	Cherokee constitution adopted on September 6, 1839. Tahlequah established as capital of the Cherokee Nation.