Trail of Tears

Another one of Sharon's forebears, William Davis, has a small connection to history -- The Trail of Tears. I can't find much about the man, and in fact, the connection comes from a single line in a history of the Cash family written by one of their descendants. The writer noted that Davis drove a supply wagon on the trail. 

But the point of most of these posts is to find where our ancestors intersect with history so I, and by extension anyone who reads these little posts, can review historical events we may not know so much about. 

Unlike many of the previous posts, I remember learning about the Trail of Tears in my long ago history classes, but my recollections are dim and only tell me that it was about the forced removal of a number of Native American tribes to the West back in the 1800s. I've always connected this with the concept of Manifest Destiny. 

The term "Manifest Destiny" was coined by a newspaper editor in 1845, so it has no direct connection with the events that brought about the Trail of Tears, but certainly the spirit of the idea existed long before the coinage.

In the 1800s, cotton became king in the South. Whites living in southern states discovered that riches lay in those white, fluffy bolls. But you need land to grow it on. Unfortunately for many would be cotton growers, much of the land in the early part of the century was controlled by Native American tribes. And they weren't inclined to let the whites have it.

Whites and Native Americans had clashed over land ownership almost from the time colonists landed in the New World. Though you'll remember stories of cooperation between the colonials and indigenous tribes, it didn't take long before the colonials decided the natives were wasting resources that they could develop in the name of civilization. This inevitably caused clashes. 

By the time of the nation's founding, this disagreement between the newcomers and the previous residents came to be seen as a problem -- the "Indian problem." One solution to the problem was to "civilize" Native American. You know, convert them to Christianity, make them speak English, teach them to read, and perhaps most of all, convert them to a European understanding of property and individual land ownership. In the southeast, many in some of the tribes had adopted this solution and became know as the "Five Civilized Tribes": the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Creek and Cherokee tribes to be exact. 

Theirs were the lands hopeful cotton growers needed. States began to pass laws limiting Native American sovereignty. Military leaders such as Andrew Jackson began campaigns against the tribes. Eventually the Supreme Court became involved in the legal end of the battle, with both sides winning and losing cases.

In 1832, however, the court decided in favor of the Native Americans, who were declared to be sovereign nations not subject to state law. Jackson was president at the time and observed that the court could say what it wanted but someone would have to enforce the decision, something he was not inclined to do. 

In fact, Jackson had already engineered the passage of the Indian Removal Act, giving him the power to negotiate treaties with the tribes, granting them land west of the Mississippi in exchange for the valuable land the cotton growers wanted. Any tribal members who decided to stay would become citizens of the states they resided in, subject to their laws.

The Choctaw were the first to sign a treaty, but a number of them decided to stay. They were then harassed until they decided to leave, heading west but without help from the federal government -- no food, no supplies, no aid of any kind. Much suffering accompanied that journey and one of their leaders dubbed the journey a "trail of tears and death." 

You might think that to be the origin of the trail's name, but most sources I viewed credit the term to the Cherokees. 

Other treaties were made, but in general the tribes resisted moving despite the treaties. So they had to go, and the military was called in to force them out. The Creeks, for instance, negotiated a treaty but never signed it. So the military forced them out, with 15,000 Creek leaving for the West, enduring 3,500 deaths along the way. 

The Seminoles resisted to the point of war breaking out, costing the government an estimated $40 million to $60 million. 

The Chickasaw negotiated a treaty that promised them land in the west, but the government reneged on the promise, and they were forced to purchase land from the Choctaw.

Perhaps the most egregious dealing occurred with the Cherokee. Government negotiators worked out a deal with Cherokee representatives that would pay them $5 million and give them relocation assistance and compensation for lost land. Unfortunately, they didn't strike that deal with the recognized leaders of the tribe. Some 15,000-16,000 (depending on which source you read) signed a petition protesting the deal.

The deal was ratified anyway, but by 1838 only 2,000 Cherokee had left. Martin Van Buren occupied the White House by them, and he wasn't having any of this recalcitrance on the Cherokee's part. He sent 7,000 troops to escort the remaining 16,000 tribe members west. A quarter of them died along the way. This brought about their dubbing their journey the Trail of Tears. 

We visited the Chickasaw cultural center in Oklahoma -- the western lands the tribes were forced to relocate to -- and a portion of the exhibit hall called The Removal Corridor is devoted to telling the story of their relocation. The picture showing a statue of a tribal member at the top of this post comes from that visit.