[image credit:  The Granger Collection, Ltd. NY
Painting: Trail of Tears, Robert Lindneux, 1942.]

 

Learning Objectives 

Introduction

"In leading [the Indians] to agriculture, to manufactures, and civilizations; in bringing together their and our sentiments, and in preparing them ultimately to participate in the benefits of our Government, I trust and believe we are acting for their greatest good."

Thomas Jefferson, 1803

In his pronouncement, President Jefferson set the tone for a one-hundred-year policy of the federal government toward Native Americans. By implication, the president strongly urged Indians to abandon nomadic ways and pattern lifestyles after Americans. The response varied among Native American tribes.  Some rejected Jefferson and rebelled; others complied.  

The most compliant were the Cherokee peoples. In the next two decades these people reshaped their culture to the "white man's ways."  The tribal leaders wrote a constitution, using the United States Constitution as a model. Many Cherokee learned to read and write their language, applying the set of written symbols invented by Sequoya, a Cherokee.  The Cherokee published the Cherokee Phoenix, printing it in two languages --- English and Cherokee.  The Cherokee cultivated fields, planted orchards, and fenced pastures; they build roads, houses, and towns. Some were small farmers, while others became plantation owners that included African slaves. A significant number converted to Christianity, and children attended mission schools.

Despite the fact that the Cherokee nation adapted to the mores and laws of American society, it lost most of its ancestral homelands. Pressure came from land-hungry American citizens and recent immigrants and reflected successful military campaigns of professional Indian fighters. By the 1820, the Cherokee had only retained only 35,000 square miles, located in the moderate, humid climate of Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee.  Yet the Cherokee were hopeful: they had, by accommodation and assimilation, established a fragile co-existence with white society.

But this fragile co-existence collapsed by the late 1820s.Land-hungry white settlers wanted the remaining land: Cotton could be grown and gold had been discovered. As an added benefit for the land-hungry, Andrew Jackson, former Indian fighter, won the presidential election in 1828. In his campaign, he promised to free up land in the South for white settlers.  

Keeping his word, Jackson promoted Indian removal in his first message to Congress in 1929. He followed this message by supporting the Indian Removal Act of 1830.  In addition,, he stood by as government officials bribed, harassed and intimated the Cherokee to sign a treaty that “sold” the remaining land to the United States, and he began the process of forced removal of the Cherokee peoples from their homeland to the newly organized Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma).

The government’s actions met with opposition. During the 1830s, the Cherokee sent delegations to Washington to plead their case; the president and congress ignored these pleas. By mid-decade Davy Crockett and Ralph Waldo Emerson, prominent Americans from different regions, publicly denounced the government’s policy.  Crockett, congressman from Tennessee, registered his opposition by speaking and voting against removal. His stand contributed to his defeat for re-election. In 1838, Emerson, transcendentalist philosopher, wrote, and publicly circulated, a letter to the newly elected president, Martin Van Buren. Emerson challenged the president with questions that strike at the center of the notion of American democracy:  “Will the American government steal?  Will it lie?  Will it kill?” Answering these questions, Emerson lamented that as the removal policy moved forward, Americans would need to “shut their eyes until the last howl and wailing of these tormented villages and tribes shall afflict the ear of the world”

As Crockett and Emerson anticipated, the forced removal of the Cherokee was messy and painful. Beginning in the summer of 1838 the United States Army, under the command of Brigadier General Winfield Scott, seized terrified Cherokee from their homes and imprisoned them in temporary stockades.  Once all had been collected and arrangements for the migration had been finalized, soldiers herded some 15,000 men, women and children to their new home --- the harsh and arid climate of Oklahoma. Hunger, disease and exposure to extreme weather conditions led to the death of some  4,000 people on the trek westward. This human tragedy leaves its mark on Cherokee history --- they remember the time as the “trail where they cried.”[1]  This event has also left its mark on the historical narrative of the United States.  Known as the Trail of Tears, the forced removal of the Cherokee from their homelands stands as one of our nation’s darkest moments.

This activity asks that you relive the events leading up to and including the Trail of Tears.  As you step back in time, ask yourself if the “trail were they cried” was necessary to assure the economic well-being and social mobility of American citizens.  Or does it stand as one of our darkest moments: a progression of events driven by greed and racial prejudice.

 Step One: Understanding the background of the removal of the Cherokee nation.

 Tasks

Resources

 Step Two:  Considering the Issues of Forced Removal

Tasks: 

 Rationales:  

Economic Opportunities for White Settlers

Policy of Federal Government

Opposition to Removal

The Trail of Tears

Step Three: Reliving the Events of the Trail of Tears

Tasks:

Scenario:  Select one of the roles listed below.  As that person, write a first-hand account of your experiences and opinion of the removal of the Cherokee Indians from Georgia in 1838 – 1839.  Be sure that your essay includes reference or statements from the  resources in Steps One and Two. Provide specific examples from these resources that express the point of view of the role that you select.  For example, if you decide to be Andrew Jackson, you would emphasize his attitudes toward Native Americans and his reasons for forcing the Cherokee Nation to relocate in "Indian Territory."

IN addition, each essay needs to include: (1) a description / rationale of the government's policy for removal of the Cherokee; (2) Andrew Jackson's attitude and policy; (3) forms of resistance of the Cherokee nation prior to forced removal in the mid 1830s.

Roles

Step Four: Evaluating the Activity - Not assigned for Spring 2006.

Task: Write a short essay that evaluates this activity.  Use the following as a guide.

Step Five: Considering the Cherokee nation today - 5 additional points.

In 1934 the United States government enacted the Indian Reorganization Act. It was the government's attempt to secure new rights for Native Americans on reservations. Its main provisions were to restore to Native Americans management of their assets (mostly land); to prevent further depletion of reservation resources; to build a sound economic foundation for the people of the reservations; and to return to the Native Americans local self-government on a tribal basis. This act allowed the Cherokee to return to the land taken from them in the 1830s. 

Now the Cherokee have an active presence on the Internet, using it to re-establish their history and their culture. 

Review the information in one or more of the sites listed below. Alternatively, search the Internet for other resources. Then write a short essay on the ways that the Cherokee consider themselves and their past. 

Resources:

 10/28/2006