Many people don't know what the Trail of Tears was, and some haven't even heard of it before. Here is an except from http://ngeorgia.com/history/nghisttt.html Note that this glosses over some of the more grizzly aspects of the Trail of Tears, but it does give an idea about it.


Between 1790 and 1830 the population of Georgia increased six-fold. The western push of the settlers created a problem. Georgians continued to take Native American lands and force them into the frontier. By 1825 the Lower Creek had been completely removed from the state under provisions of the Treaty of Indian Springs. By 1827 the Creek were gone.

Cherokee had long called western Georgia home. The Cherokee Nation continued in their enchanted land until 1828. It was then that the rumored gold, for which De Soto had relentlessly searched, was discovered in the North Georgia mountains.


" Trail Where They Cried"
In his book Don't Know Much About History, Kenneth C. Davis writes:

Hollywood has left the impression that the great Indian wars came in the Old West during the late 1800's, a period that many think of simplistically as the "cowboy and Indian" days. But in fact that was a "mopping up" effort. By that time the Indians were nearly finished, their subjugation complete, their numbers decimated. The killing, enslavement, and land theft had begun with the arrival of the Europeans. But it may have reached its nadir when it became federal policy under President (Andrew) Jackson.

The Cherokees in 1828 were not nomadic savages. In fact, they had assimilated many European-style customs, including the wearing of gowns by Cherokee women. They built roads, schools and churches, had a system of representational government, and were farmers and cattle ranchers. A Cherokee alphabet, the "Talking Leaves" was perfected by Sequoyah.

"I would sooner be honestly ****ed than hypocritically immortalized"
Davy Crockett

His political career destroyed because he supported the Cherokee, he left Washington D. C. and headed west to Texas.
In 1830 the Congress of the United States passed the "Indian Removal Act." Although many Americans were against the act, most notably Tennessee Congressman Davy Crockett, it passed anyway. President Jackson quickly signed the bill into law. The Cherokees attempted to fight removal legally by challenging the removal laws in the Supreme Court and by establishing an independent Cherokee Nation. At first the court seemed to rule against the Indians. In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, the Court refused to hear a case extending Georgia's laws on the Cherokee because they did not represent a sovereign nation. In 1832, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Cherokee on the same issue in Worcester v. Georgia. In this case Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the Cherokee Nation was sovereign, making the removal laws invalid. The Cherokee would have to agree to removal in a treaty. The treaty then would have to be ratified by the Senate.

By 1835 the Cherokee were divided and despondent. Most supported Principal Chief John Ross, who fought the encroachment of whites starting with the 1832 land lottery. However, a minority(less than 500 out of 17,000 Cherokee in North Georgia) followed Major Ridge, his son John, and Elias Boudinot, who advocated removal. The Treaty of New Echota, signed by Ridge and members of the Treaty Party in 1835, gave Jackson the legal document he needed to remove the First Americans. Ratification of the treaty by the United States Senate sealed the fate of the Cherokee. Among the few who spoke out against the ratification were Daniel Webster and Henry Clay, but it passed by a single vote. In 1838 the United States began the removal to Oklahoma, fulfilling a promise the government made to Georgia in 1802. Ordered to move on the Cherokee, General John Wool resigned his command in protest, delaying the action. His replacement, General Winfield Scott, arrived at New Echota on May 17, 1838 with 7000 men. Early that summer General Scott and the United States Army began the invasion of the Cherokee Nation.

In one of the saddest episodes of our brief history, men, women, and children were taken from their land, herded into makeshift forts with minimal facilities and food, then forced to march a thousand miles(Some made part of the trip by boat in equally horrible conditions). Under the generally indifferent army commanders, human losses for the first groups of Cherokee removed were extremely high. John Ross made an urgent appeal to Scott, requesting that the general let his people lead the tribe west. General Scott agreed. Ross organized the Cherokee into smaller groups and let them move separately through the wilderness so they could forage for food. Although the parties under Ross left in early fall and arrived in Oklahoma during the brutal winter of 1838-39, he significantly reduced the loss of life among his people. About 4000 Cherokee died as a result of the removal. The route they traversed and the journey itself became known as "The Trail of Tears" or, as a direct translation from Cherokee, "The Trail Where They Cried" ("Nunna daul Tsuny").

Ironically, just as the Creeks killed Chief McIntosh for signing the Treaty of Indian Springs, the Cherokee killed Major Ridge, his son and Elias Boudinot for signing the Treaty of New Echota. Chief John Ross, who valiantly resisted the forced removal of the Cherokee, lost his wife Quatie in the march. And so a country formed fifty years earlier on the premise "...that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among these the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.." brutally closed the curtain on a culture that had done no wrong.

Material Copyright © 1996, 1997 Golden Ink

Legend of the Cherokee RoseThe Legend of the Cherokee Rose.

No better symbol exists of the pain and suffering of the Trail Where They Cried than the Cherokee Rose. The mothers of the Cherokee grieved so much that the chiefs prayed for a sign to lift the mother's spirits and give them strength to care for their children. From that day forward, a beautiful new flower, a rose, grew wherever a mother's tear fell to the ground. The rose is white, for the mother's tears. It has a gold center, for the gold taken from the Cherokee lands, and seven leaves on each stem that represent the seven Cherokee clans that made the journey. To this day, the Cherokee Rose prospers along the route of the "Trail of Tears". The Cherokee Rose is now the official flower of the State of Georgia.

We have a festival commemorating that event called "The Trail of Courage" near here every summer. Festival belies what it is, a celebration of Native American heritage and crafts. They do not have crafts of the white man, only Native American displays and presentations. I am glad they take that stance. It is a way to pay homage to those who were made to suffer.

When I used to go to a local university here, it was (still is really) required that a history class be taken, since history has never really interested me I decided to take what I thought would be a relatively easy class.
Easy until the first day when the professor went over the syllabus that refered to the Trail of Tears as Indian Removal. With out the quotes meaning she didn't quote it from any souce. I think the only reason that I didn't get up and leave was because of shock.
I did later send her a rather long email in regards to the usage and how vulgar it was to equate Native Americans to a pest that needed to be exterminated. Granted, yes, historically, that is how they were thought of, but in a day of supposed sophistication and inteligence to use that terminolgy to me was inexcusable.
Then there was another class that I took in regards to natural resources (I was a forestry major) the professor posed the question of "Why were the buffalo hunted nearly to extinction?" Of course there were the usual answers of food, the RR, hides, tourism, etc. I sat and waited...it was a class full of mainly freshmen, all 17, 18 and 19 years of age to my 23. I spoke up and said "To get rid of the Native Americans" The professor (also my guidance counselor) asked the rest of the class if I was right. Dead silence...for a few good minutes. Then he said that yes, the buffalo were slaughtered to reduce to population of natives. It was really disgusting to think of all these young adults with no clue bout a very important part of North American history.

If yall would like, I actuallly do still have a copy of the email that I sent to that professor in regards to 'Indian Removal'....and yes the url at the bottom still works.


My name is Wendy L and I sat in on your first day of
HIST 405. The reason for my email is, though I know
this will come of little consequence in the grand
scheme of things, your usage of 'Indian Removal' in
reference to the Trail of Tears bothered me greatly.
It wasn't so much the term 'Indian' that bothered me
as the addition of 'Removal'. I realize that being
active in the Native American circuit has made me
biased , but I'm going to honest and tell you that if
some of my peers; Medicine Men & Women, Council
People, Elders, had been there they would have walked
out and never looked back. Calling it a removal is
implying that perhaps the Native American people were
disposable pests like cockroaches. I've spoken to many
people about this phrase and it has shocked some,
native or not.
What adds insult to injury is that you took the time
to address the colonists as 'Euro-Americans', and yet,
Native Americans were termed 'Indians', Indians are in
India. The term Indian comes from when Columbus and
his crew landed in South America looking for an
overseas trade route to the Orient, expecting it to be
India. But hopefully, you knew that.
Of course, depending upon who you talk to what Native
Americans prefer to be called differs.
I just wanted you to know that it disturbed me. I
could be reaching in saying that perhaps you didn't
realize what an impact such a statement might have
had. However, it's little things like that that fuel
ugly things like bigotry and racism.
At the end of this email you will find a URL that will
take you to an essay entitled "Renaming Ourselves On
Our Own Terms: Race, Tribal Nations, and
Representation in Education" taken from the spring
2000 issue of 'Indigenous Nations Studies Journal'.
Please read it and I hope that you take some of it to
heart.


Sincerely,
Wendy L


http://www.hanksville.org/storytelle...ng/Rename.html

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Wendy, You had every right to be offended, bothered, and even irate. My guess would be that your professor only knew enough about the topic to qualify for a teaching position. That is to say, I'd bet that the majority of his knowledge came from the old "shoot 'em up" cowboys and indians movies where the cowboys were always "good" and the indians were "savages", and missing entirely that there were always cowboys who were even worse than the "savages".

Though I'm Tsalagi, naturally the Trail of Tears occurred long before I was born, in fact, long before my grandfather was born. But I still remember, and it makes many of the atrocities purpetrated by Nazis seem pale in comparison. You are right...by not teaching the history, bigotry and bias is encouraged. Now, I'm not nieve enough to think that the real history would ever be taught, there will always be a slant to it, but the sad part is that it isn't being taught at all, in most places. It is doubtful that most people know what the Trail of Tears was. For that matter, there are a LOT of people in this country that really don't know what the whole Battle of Little Big Horn was all about, and even what little history they teach about that, seems to hint that the US Cavalry "won"...the truth is that they did not. The Souix nation won, decisively, so they saw no reason to continue fighting, especially when promises were made, and they disbanded because they'd won. I look at it as the Cavalry winning only by default.

Before anyone gets the wrong idea, I'm not bitter about it at all. It is history. Our tribes were defeated. But we will not go away, nor will we stop living. And the good thing is that more and more people in this country are showing honest interest in knowing what went on back then, both the good and the bad. Yeah, there were some very vile people back then, and there were also very courageous ones, and that wasn't dependent on skin color, religion, or ancestry, any more than it is now.

Thank you so much for sharing that email. One would hope that you planted a seed that might sometime have flourished in the mind of that professor, and that from that, he might have begun to learn the meaning of wisdom.

This is very moving and thought provoking. Thank you, Wendy, for posting this. We build on history, it has to be correct or we build on a lie.

Did you receive an answer back from this professor?

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Actually, no I never did recieve an answer from her, though a friend of mine did tell me that she asked one of her TA's (teaching assistant) if I was in his lab section. Also, her area of expertise is revoluntionary war/early american history. Which OF COURSE involves Natives, but maybe she skipped the day those lectures on local tribes were given. Trust me I was rather irked that she never bothered to respond, but hopefully I open her eyes a crack.

I myself an Abenaki via relatives from Nova Scotia that came to midland Maine, so now I get to claim a shade of french in my bloodlines too I suppose

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Please visit my foster dog blog: The Colbert Report.

Moderator; Native American Forum: Do you have any questions?

Congratulations, Wendy, for standing up for yourself and your people. It was offensive, and to be done in an educational setting does not make it right. How many others picked up that attitude through her courses?

That woman shouldn't be teaching if she can't bother to seek out the truth.
I started a thread in General Debate called History. I wish you would respond there.

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