Trail of Tears

In 1835, about 18,000 people comprised the Cherokee nation located in the region of the state of Georgia. That year, a small Cherokee group numbering 300-500 who were interested in relocating west were approached by federal officials; they signed the Treaty of New Echota agreeing to sell the land of the whole nation.  Though Cherokee leaders protested that this small group was not representative of the whole, and were not recognized leaders, the Supreme Court ratified the treaty in 1836 and Andrew Jackson’s party in the Senate used it as legal leverage to require relocation of the entire Cherokee population.  Legal protest and a petition signed by 15,000 Cherokee members failed, and in May 1838, the Cherokees were forced by 7,000 U.S. troops to abandon their land.

At a council held at Aquohee Camp August 1, 1838, where the Cherokee were held for four months after their removal, the chiefs reaffirmed the sovereignty of the nation and nominated Chief John Ross to lead the movement efforts.  Ross used this mandate to pressure the U.S. military to allow Cherokee leaders to escort their own people in a series of thirteen contingents.  The 800-mile journey to the allotted land west of the Mississippi was estimated to take eighty days, but it took some contingents much longer.  This forced emigration became known as the “Trail of Tears,” after the Cherokee term for the path, which is also translated as “The Trail Where They Cried.”  At least 4,000 died on the journey.  While the Cherokee were able to rebuild in their new region, political conflict between the recent émigrés and those Cherokees who had left earlier and signed the false Treaty of New Echota proved challenging.  Poor land for farming and limited assistance from a government that had pledged to support relocation costs compounded resettlement difficulties. (BH)

For more information and a very engaging treatment of this subject, please listen to Sarah Vowell on the radio show This American Life.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/107/trail-of-tears?act=1
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/107/trail-of-tears?act=2

Works Consulted:

McLoughlin, William G. After the Trail of Tears: the Cherokees’ Struggle for Sovereignty, 1839-1880. Chapel Hill:U North Carolina P, 1993.

PBS (Public Broadcasting Service). “People and Events: Indian Removal, 1814-1858.” Accessed 12 November, 2005. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2959.html.

Van Every, Dale. Disinherited. NY: William Morrow, 1966