Kara Louie

Following a Trail of Tears

For yet another third period, I walked through the faded pink door into the fluorescent-lit room.  I walked along the back wall, past the poster of the “Pledge of Allegiance” spelled out with license plates.  I sat down in my seat.  This would be my first of two periods in a row with Mrs. Sorenson, the quirky history/English teacher who would bring out her fiddle and sing songs based on the unit of U.S. history we were working on.  This day, Mrs. Sorenson wasn’t singing any songs.  There weren’t many songs she knew about the Trail of Tears.  She reminded us about how the American Indians had owned the land before the Europeans came and how the new settlers wanted to keep the natural resources found in the Indians’ homelands.  Mrs. Sorenson explained that the Cherokee Indians, a tribe of Native Americans, were forced off their land and marched thousands of miles on foot to be moved to the designated Indian Territory.  She mentioned that many died, but more Cherokees cried.   To me, this was merely information to be absorbed for the test, and then squeezed out to make room for the next unit.  I had bigger problems than mere thousands of people in the past being paraded to some other place.  Little did I know that in five years I would study literature extensively on the Trail of Tears for my college English class.

The Trail of Tears was the Cherokee removal in 1838 from the southeast states of the United States into Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma.  Remembering back to eighth grade, I vaguely recall the Indians being forced off their land and moved to Indian Territory with the violent assistance of soldiers; however, all the research I have done point out that only a few were moved under soldier control.  A majority of the Cherokee tribe had permission to move themselves.  The remainder were given a small stipend for supplies, broken into thirteen detachments, and trailed by soldiers to ensure actual removal.  Each detachment took a minimum of four months to complete the over 1,000 mile trip.  Only the sick and elderly were allowed to sit on the wagons, and by the end of the trip, all the wagons were full.  The research reveals the deaths of many Cherokees mostly because of disease and terrible conditions.  The bodies were left on the side of the trail, which was unheard of in Cherokee tradition.  Women, children and even men cried about the loss of their land, families, and friends, hence the name, the Trail of Tears. 

I started the research fairly open to all information I found out, although I did start with sympathy towards the Cherokee.  The Cherokee had become fully assimilated under advisement of Thomas Jefferson; they had a written language and written laws, and they changed the family to being patriarchal as opposed to matriarchal.  I started my research looking for personal narratives about the actual removal to Oklahoma.  Unfortunately, I could only find short quotes on websites from anonymous Cherokees.  So I began with books written specifically about the Cherokee removal.

After my frustration about the lack of personal narratives, William L. Anderson’s book, Cherokee Removal: Before and After was refreshing.  The University of Georgia Press in Athens, Georgia was smart in 1991 to publish this collage of personal narratives, descriptions, and statistics on the Trail of Tears.  William Anderson, a professor of history at Western Carolina University, author of articles and another book on Cherokee studies, member of the editorial board of the Journal of Cherokee Studies and of the advisory board of the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, not only presents an impressive resume, but also the strength the Cherokee people demonstrated by enduring the painful and tedious journey along what is now known as the Trail of Tears.

According to Anderson, the Cherokee, a proud tribe, once expanded over eight states had been corralled into only sections of four states.  Three Cherokee leaders signed the Treaty of New Echota, which gave up all Cherokee lands for $15 million and lands in Indian Territory.  While a few Cherokee volunteered to move west, the majority remained…that is until this happened:

Men working in the fields were arrested and driven to the stockades.  Women were dragged from their homes by soldiers whose language they could not understand.  Children were often separated from their parents and driven into the stockades with the sky for a blanket and the earth for a pillow… In one home death had come during the night, a little sad faced child had died and was lying on a bear skin couch and some women were preparing the little body for burial.  All were arrested and driven out leaving the child in the cabin. (qtd. in Anderson 79)

Anderson explains the unnecessary brutality of the American soldiers through this quote from John G. Burnett, a soldier who had assisted in this removal.  Unfortunately, this was only preliminary to the actual removal.  A few thousand Cherokees were forcibly moved to Indian Territory, but the forced removal ceased after the Cherokees were granted permission to remove themselves.  After that, thirteen detachments of about a thousand people in each took the long journey.  The book, Cherokee Removal: Before and After, states the sickness and difficulty along the trail took quite a toll: more than 1,500 lives from just the thirteen detachments.  The number and conditions would have astonished my eighth grade self, had I listened.

William Anderson appeals to logical people reading the book through his quantitative analysis.  Everything has a number; number of people who signed the treaty: three; number of Cherokees rounded up and put in stockades: almost 17,000.  Just through that alone, any reader can understand that three Cherokees had decided the fate of almost 17,000.  This shows Anderson believes some people to be cruel and malicious, for example the soldiers and the three Cherokees, but they all still have raw human emotions such as guilt and remorse, like John G. Burnett, the soldier who had described the removal of the Cherokee into the stockades.  Throughout the book, Anderson shows that he knows the world could be a better place if people learned from history.  Despite the cold figures, Anderson really heats up the readers’ emotions with ad populum appeal.  He appeals to the readers’ humanitarian values which have been present throughout history.  There has always been someone willing to donate money or time willing to help save a life of a loved one or a starving kid in Africa. 

This is why Anderson’s black and white description startled me.  How could a country, which I called home, be so destructive?  How could anyone take an innocent human being from his or her home?  How could someone watch these people suffer and not say anything until after it had happened?  How could the Trail of Tears actually have happened?

With these startling questions in mind, I decided to find out the reasoning behind the Cherokee removal.  I looked to the president of the time, Andrew Jackson, for the reason why the Indian Removal Act was passed, most specifically the removal of the assimilated Cherokee. In his second annual message, Andrew Jackson, once heralded as a great general, speaks of the “benevolent policy of the Government” (Jackson).  I found the copy of his speech on the PBS website, an educational nonprofit media enterprise, thereby leading me to believe the speech is accurate. 

Jackson explains how a “speedy removal will be important to the United States, to individual States, and to the Indians themselves” by helping the savages become civilized and Christian (Jackson).  He then describes why the white men should own the lands by demonstrating that the Indians do not have strong attachments to the land.  The thing Jackson illustrates most is the kindness and generosity of the government, defending the government’s decision to remove the Indians and help them settle; Andrew Jackson leads his audience to believe the Indians will jump at the offer for help in moving to Indian Territory.

Jackson uses rhetoric to convince a listener that the Indians are being liberated and saved, as strongly illustrated by this quote:

It will separate the Indians from immediate contact with the settlements of whites; free them from power of the States; enable them to pursue happiness in their own way and under their own rude institutions; will retard the progress of decay, which is lessening their numbers, and perhaps cause them gradually, under the protection of the Government and through the influence of good counsels, to cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community.

Jackson’s dysphemism, a synonym with a darker definition, calls the Native Americans “Indians,” but later degrades them to a “savage” people.  He refers to their government as “rude institutions,” despite their “savage” government based on the U.S. government.  Jackson claims that the Indians are in the process of “decaying,” and removal to a foreign land would stop the disintegration of the native people.  Jackson asserts that with the benevolent aid of the U.S. government, the Indians can improve as people by becoming “an interesting, civilized, and Christian community,” even though the Cherokee had already assimilated and become interesting, civil, and some even Christian people.

But really, did separating Indians from white settlers solve anything?  Didn’t the white settlers exploit the natural resources located on Indian land?  Didn’t  the whites just move westward?  Andrew Jackson said the removal would “free them from power of the States… [and] enable them to pursue happiness.”  Yet according to William L. Anderson’s book, the Cherokee had already been granted freedom by the Supreme Court from Georgia’s unconstitutional state laws in the case Worchester v. Georgia.  Why were the Cherokees and many other Indian tribes decaying?  Could it be the greedy white settlers?  Could it be disease the Indians had never been exposed to before the whites arrived?  Could it be the U.S. government was picking on the Indians?  Whether or not any of these possibilities were true, the Government had already influenced the Cherokee to assimilate.  And if the Cherokee were already assimilated, why couldn’t the U.S. government let the Cherokee stay?

Obviously, Andrew Jackson, with his agenda of obtaining the Indian lands for the white settlers, had to convince his constituency, all of the white, male Americans that this was the correct course of action.  The misinformation astounded me.  I have understood that presidents stretch the truth, but this president disfigured the truth.  According to Anderson, the government didn’t help the Cherokee move; the soldiers forced them into action!  And while three Cherokees signed the Treaty of New Echota, none of the signers had held any power in the Cherokee government.  It was essentially one child of the land owners selling the property, even though the child didn’t own the property.  Furthermore, the government aid in helping the Cherokee settle was contracting a food supply company, which cheated the Cherokee by giving less food than agreed upon, some of which was the spoiled and rotten food that the food supply company could not sell.  Essentially the gracious offer of the government was a scam.  I had taken a look at a new and old perspective on the Trail of Tears, what it was and why it happened.

I took a look at one last perspective, trying to find out the extent of which the Trail of Tears had ruined the Cherokee.  I didn’t expect anyone to prove from a woman’s perspective how the horrific Trail wrecked so much of the Cherokee culture but  I did expect to find facts to prove the Trail of Tears was a mistake.  Carolyn Ross Johnston didn’t let me down.

Carolyn Ross Johnston, a professor of History and American Studies, explains the plight of Cherokee women and their involvement and sufferings before, during and after the Trail of Tears in the third chapter of Cherokee Women in Crisis: Trail of Tears, Civil War, and Allotment, 1838-1907.  This recent book, published by The University of Alabama Press in Tuscaloosa, Alabama in 2003, describes the emotional and physical violence done to the proud and ‘civilized’ Cherokee people.  Carolyn Ross Johnston explains the injustice done to the Cherokee.

Beginning in 1838, stockades were built to house the Cherokee before removal west.  Soldiers forced the Cherokee out of their homes and into the crudely set-up camps.  Yet even before the removal, the women, who were head of the house and mother to the children, tried to petition the removal to the United States government.  Unfortunately, the United States was a patriarchal government and did not perceive women as citizens, especially ‘savage’ Indian women.  As a result, the U.S. did not accept the petition as valid.  Cherokee women had to be strong to survive the stockades and the tedious journey down the Trail of Tears.  They carried their young, bore children along the trail and tried to cook with the meager, rotting food supplied by the government.  Many men felt emasculated by the removal and fell into deep depression, and many of those drank themselves into ragged states.  Thus it became a women’s role again to keep the family alive and together:

The most marked change, however, when this transition [from savagery to civilization] takes place, is the condition of the females.  She who had been the drudge and the slave then begins to assume her true position as an equal; and her labor is transferred from the field to her household-to the care of her family and children.  This great change in disposition and condition has taken place, to a greater extent, [in] all the tribes that have been removed and permanently settled west of the Mississippi. (Johnston 77) 

Through passages such as this one, Johnston glorifies how the Cherokee rose up above their condition during the Trail of Tears.  Johnston’s continued use of stories where the women fought back and how they carried the families on to the Indian Territory tells miles about the potential of women.  Johnston stressed that men feel the need to be in power, but that when men lose their power or sense of power, they break down.  Essentially, Groucho Marx’s quote, “behind every successful man is a woman,” is pertinent as the bulk of Cherokee men survived because of the Cherokee women.  But why did the Cherokee need to be removed in the first place?  Johnston points fingers at President Andrew Jackson, just as Jackson pointed at the Cherokee and banished them from their lands.  She implies everyone finds a scapegoat in order to keep power. 

Through the multiple personal narratives from various sources including U.S. politicians, Cherokee Indians, and U.S. soldiers in charge of the removal, Carolyn Ross Johnston makes a strong case against Andrew Jackson’s decision to remove the Cherokee; however, Johnston falls short of a great argument against Jackson because she fails to describe the reasons why the removal occurred.  After all my research, I have determined the reasons for the removal fell short and do agree with Johnston that Andrew Jackson is at least one person to blame for the tragedy known as the Trail of Tears. 

I’d say researching this paper has been an educational experience that wasn’t half bad.  I had ascertained a few facts about the Trail of Tears from my eighth grade history teacher.  For this paper, I have learned the quantitative facts as well as read personal narratives of Cherokees and soldiers who survived the Trail of Tears from William L. Anderson, a prestigious scholar.  I discovered the United States government’s reasoning of why the Indians should be removed from the president of the time, Andrew Jackson.  And lastly, I got a feminist approach to the Trail of Tears through Carolyn Ross Johnston, professor and feminist.  Each source gave me new insight on the unsubstantiated Trail of Tears.

In the beginning I had felt a slight sympathy toward the Cherokee.  Now I am outraged by the event. It makes me doubt every politician of the past and present, casting the same shadow of doubt upon any future politicians.  I agreed quite easily with William L. Anderson’s cold hard facts of numbers representing people.  Those people represent human lives, something I care about.  Andrew Jackson, to me, now represents all politicians with an agenda.  He represents the suppressor of human life and of diverse cultures.  He represents discrimination at its worst.  While I do not consider myself a feminist, I consider myself a humanist, which values the male and female right to become equal.  It was easy to agree with Carolyn Ross Johnston because she empowered female values as moral. 

I learned that the government can not always be trusted.  It is important to become informed of government discrepancies in order to effectively use our voice and vote.  This knowledge could keep Iraqi citizens from dying today.  It could keep Iraqi and American soldiers alive.  It could feed and house homeless all around the world.  I want to be able to make a difference.  If getting information is all we as people need to do to make a difference, we should try and stay informed.  Information is the key to a healthy and peaceful world, which is why I will make an effort to keep informed.

Works Cited

Anderson, William L. Cherokee Removal: Before and After. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia P, 1991. 75-83.

Jackson, Andrew. "Andrew Jackson's Second Annual Message." PBS. Comp. James D. Richardson. 4 Apr. 2007 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h3437t.html. 

Johnston, Carolyn R. Cherokee Women in Crisis: Trail of Tears, Civil War, and Allotment, 1838-1907. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama P, 2003. 56-78.

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