Trail of Tears (1838)
Mon Oct 01, 1838
Image: "The Trail of Tears", by Robert Lindneux, a painting depicting the forced removal of indigenous people.
On this day in 1838, the first major group of Cherokee, more than 12,000 people, were forced out of Tennessee, traveling westward from the town of Red Clay. A Choctaw leader called the forced deportations "a trail of tears and death".
The Trail of Tears was the cumulative result of a series of forced relocations of approximately 60,000-100,000 Native Americans in the United States from their ancestral homelands in the southeast to areas west of the Mississippi River that had been designated as "Indian Territory".
In 1837-38, President Martin Van Buren allowed Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Alabama, using an armed force of 7,000 people, to relocate about 13,000 Cherokees to Cleveland, Tennessee. On October 1st, 1838, the first major group of Cherokee, more than 12,000 people in hundreds of covered wagons, were forced out of Tennessee, traveling westward from the town of Red Clay.
Taking the journey through an unusually cold winter, they suffered terribly from exposure, disease, and starvation, killing several thousand people while en route to their new designated reserve. They were also attacked by locals and economically exploited - starving Indians were charged a dollar a head, equal to $24.01 today, to cross the Ohio River, which typically charged twelve cents, equal to $2.88 today.
- Date: 1838-10-01
- Learn More: www.cherokeehistorical.org, georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu, en.wikipedia.org.
- Tags: #Indigenous.
- Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org
The Cherokee Nation has an annual bike ride following that trail, and when it started in the 70s there wasn't any indication as to where the path was. Today, there's a lot of markers (many funded entirely by the tribe) that indicate special spots along the way. However, there are still a lot of unmarked, unknown graves. They get found every so often, as a testament to how many died that no one recorded.