Trail of Tears

This is a photo of an oil painting by Robert Lindneaux which hangs in the Woolaroc Museum near Bartlesville OK. It depicts the 1,000-mile trek banishing the Cherokee people from No. Georgia in 1838. It could depict as well the similar treks to Oklahoma over the next 60 years forced on the Sioux from the Dakotas and the Apache from Arizona.

The term, trail of tears, generally refers to the route taken by the Cherokee Indians from North Georgia to the Indian territory in Oklahoma. It is also the title of a book by John Ehle (New York: Anchor Books, 1998, 397 pp.) which I have been reading from the Cradle of Forestry gift shop.

From 1795, when George Washington was president, the American policy was that native Americans should wear the white man’s clothing, learn the white man’s ways in school, including religion, and then, just maybe, the native American could be awarded citizenship in 50 years. It was not an enlightened policy of inclusion which should have respected the culture of native Americans.

The Cherokees had a sophisticated culture of their own. Women were respected and were the final authority in the Cherokee family structure. Men were also respected as providers, warriors and leaders. The social structure had many democratic features which worked well to maintain peace and social order.

The Cherokee nation, which inhabited northeast Georgia and the mountains of the Carolinas, assimilated the white man’s ways, lived in log lodges and reduced its language to written form, as Sequoya did with his syllabary. The irony was the Cherokees were the first to be removed from Georgia where over half of the eastern Cherokees lived.

When Andrew Jackson was fighting the Indian wars from Tennessee against the Creeks and the Choctaws, he hired Cherokee chiefs to recruit his forces and paid them handsomely to fight his battles. Later, when he was President of the United States, he openly plotted with Georgia leaders to banish the Cherokees from their lands, because a rich vein of gold was discovered in 1828 running from Dahlonega to the Nacoochee Valley, a distance of about 20 miles.

Population pressures caused by the gold rush and claims for deeded property and mining rights were so great that political leaders were forced to make choices. Indian nations owned land in common and no individual ever had a deed to where he lived. That's where the two cultures clashed and the Cherokees, far outnumbered by whites, were doomed to lose.

This is not a proud or happy story of early America, but it happened here where we have been this summer. Cherokees are alive an well in North Carolina, but gone in Georgia. We hope to visit Cherokee NC some day soon and tell about a little brighter side.