The Trail Of Tears And Its Impact On Native Americans

When the population thinks of the first people in America, they may think of Christopher Columbus or the European colonists, when actually the first people here were the Indians. The Trail of Tears was a relocation process forced by the whites onto the Indians. Native Americans then had to move from their homelands to the west and onto what is now called Oklahoma. This document forced them to agree to removal so that they could preserve their identity as tribes. The Indian’s land was held hostage by the states and the federal government. To understand the Trail of Tears, one must look at the unfairness and prejudice, the impact on the Native American lives during the journey, and the lasting effects.

The Indians were treated with prejudice

and unfairness by the white men. To illustrate, in 1829 the Cherokees faced problems such as intrusions from white squatters on their lands in the Southeast. With regards to this in one reported incident, there were bands of thieves that were called “poney clubs” that went to the home of an elderly Indian woman and asked her for corn and beans. When she explained to them she had nothing to sell, they set her woods on fire. When the Cherokee tribe heard of this they complained to Colonel Hugh Montgomery, the Cherokee agent to Captain Brooks and commander of the Georgia Guard, yet very little was done. The Cherokees later came to suspect that the intruders were supported in their actions by some of the local authorities, this meant that they had no support from the authorities and were on their own (Rozema 47).
The government wasn't able to do much for the Indians because they were not in favor of them when that incident was reported.

Also the state of Georgia and the citizens did not want Indians to stay on the land. “In 1820, pressure from the government and the people of Georgia made it exceedingly hard for the Cherokees to stay in the state of Georgia”, (Rozema 42). Therefore that is to say the Indians chose to do everything and anything to stay together as a tribe even if it meant they had to move across the country for that. This then led to the Indian Removal Act. This was the first major legislature that said the U.S. would no longer respect the legal and political rights of the Indians. The Act gave President Andrew Jackson a grant to acquire the Indian tribe’s unsettled western lands in exchange for their territories within the state borders in the Southeast, where they would be removed from. The Indians were forced to accept the land exchange and the removal

(citation).
The Trail of Tears was life changing for the Native Americans. The Cherokee tribes took an alternate way of life but were compelled to remain on their properties. John Ross, who became the Cherokee tribes principal chief in 1828, was strongly against giving up the tribe’s land. However, some members in the tribe believed that they could not avoid the white settlers from trespassing their lands. Therefore, the only way to maintain the Cherokee culture and to survive as a tribe would be to move west and start a new life in a new territory (History 1).
The unfairness took place before and after the Indian Removal Act. President Andrew Jackson wanted to remove the Indians from the eastern lands to open up new land for settlement by citizens of the U.S. The U.S. Supreme Court made this act forbidden, consequently, Jackson decided to follow through with it. (Smith 95). Some officials from the early years of the American Republican such as President George Washington, believed that the best way to fix the “Indian problem” was to civilize the Indians. Their goal was to make the Native Americans learn to speak and read English and how to take ownership of land and property such as African slaves (History 1).
When the Native Americans were “Christianized”, their land in the Southeast was still valuable to them and it grew to be more desirable by the white settlers that flooded the Indians region. The whites reasons for the want of these specific regions, the Southeast, was so that they could make fortunes by growing cotton. They did not care how civilized their Native American neighbors were, they considered that land essential and would do anything to possess it, including stealing livestock, burned looted houses and, and squatted on land that did not belong to the whites (History 1).
In 1830 President Andrew Jackson signed the Removal Act and it gave the government power to exchange the native’s land east of Mississippi for lands in the west on the Indian colonization zone. The Federal government exchange law required the arrangement of expulsion in a non-harming, peaceful, and gentle way. Therefore, it did not allow the president or any other person to compel the Native tribes to surrender their property. However, President Andrew Jackson and his government often ignored the letters from the law and forced the Indians to evacuate the lands they lived on for many generations (History 1).
The forced removal had a deadline so consequently the Indians had to leave the lands with no questions asked. President Van Buren assigned General Winfield Scott to head the forcible operation therefore they began to gather up Cherokees in the Southeast lands on May 26, 1838 and about 17,000 cherokees along with the 2,000 black slaves owned by the wealthier Cherokees were removed by gunpoint from their homes. When they were removed, they headed off to camps such as Cedartown, Georgia with only clothes on their backs and nothing else in hand (New 3). The Indians had no warning of when and who would come to forcibly remove them.
The conditions the Native Americans faced during the trail were brutal and involved death. In the winters on the trail, it was too cold for them to go out and hunt buffalo and deer so the Native Americans had only two cups of hot water, cornbread and only one turnip per day. Also during the winter season the Indians only brought what they were wearing so therefore it wasn't enough because many of them died from the cold winters (Smith 89). When summer arrived the military men (soldiers) would go out into the open and kill a buffalo or deer for the men to eat.
As a result during the winter it was too cold to hunt and considering they were moving constantly they had nowhere to store the food.
As they continued the appalling trail through Arkansas that were described as, “suffocating clouds of dust stirred up by oxen and wagons”, hundreds of them became ill. Consequently, when they decided to rest, they consumed massive quantities of green peaches and corn that produced a spreading disease called a “flux”. This flux led to deaths and extended to a 6 to 7 day experience. With this episode a total of 602 out of the original 875 survived the trip to Oklahoma so that means that 273 Indians died from this disease. The Indians now traveled an eight hundred mile trek that would take three months. They traveled only ten miles a day and rested until the next day and started the same routine (Smith 222-223).
A man on the journey said, “It is with sorrow that we are forced by authority of the white man to quit the scenes of our childhood, but we must go”, (“Native 3”). This informs us on how most of the Indians felt towards the act and how they still continued to feel this way even after it ended. Despite the depressing circumstances of the forced march, some of the travelers found unexpected pleasure in the majesty and novelty of what they saw along the way (Smith 224). One Indian missionary set aside his mood during the trip and took in the moment. After they arrived he noticed, “Our attention was arrested by the passing of a large, beautiful and grand steamboat. Neither my dear wife nor myself had ever seen one before” (Smith 224). This shows that some Indians looked past the horrendous experience and did their best to acquire something much more important (Smith 224).
As a result the Southeast tribes moved into the new lands in the west, domesticated animals replaced what they used to hunt, animals such as horses, pigs and cattle. Later in the 1840s a missionary described the way they lived as living in log cabins. In addition the Cherokees raised pumpkins, corn, peas, melons and also yams. Although the land the Indians were farming on was still owned communally, the Cherokee still practiced crop agriculture. Since they raised these crops, as a result their ownership of land ranged from one to ten acres (“National Humanities” 1).
Favorite settling places for the tribes were at the waterfalls where they could run their gist mills for their grain. Coal and oil deposits provided a new source of wealth in the later part of the century when the Cherokees became wealthier. The tribes had to adapt to a new environment because in the nineteenth century work changed the Indians relationship with their land (Native 1).
It is with no question that the Indians have been treated terribly throughout the years. On the other hand Native Americans didn’t let the way white people treated them stand in the way of them making a better life for themselves. They have accomplished things that individuals long ago never would have thought of. For example, there are still many tribes in Oklahoma including the Cherokees. Not only do Native Americans have their own territory, but they also have their own casinos on the reservations. The Indians took what Americans did to them, and they made a good life. They have become a more civilized group of people while still upholding their own traditions (“National Humanities” 5).
When President at the time Andrew Jackson promised that the Indians would be treated fairly and the removal would be their moral development, the white man's goal was to take the land the Indians possessed for themselves and make fortunes with it. The reality in this removal is removing thousands of Cherokees from their native homes was not beneficial for them in any way. It was the massive number of natives that died on the trail that suffered the most (Trail 1). With these many deaths in mind, Cherokee leaders did what they could to take care those who were without parents. In 1841 they established a law to care for the education and provide for the orphaned children. As a result, by the time they arrived in the new Indian territory land (Oklahoma) many had already died.
In addition, the natives were running low on food so therefore they had to resort to hunting and gathering for the food, which back home they farmed and cultivated.

Not only was there not enough food to go around but also it meant many died of starvation as some natives slowly began to recover this tragic removal. With recovery finally taking its place, the Cherokee repopulated, established homes for their people and a nation as a matter of fact once again. However the tragic experience they lived still takes a toll on them today. In effect it reproduced a massive distrust of outsiders such as the whites and the government to be specific and therefore the tension with the whites between the natives is still evident today (Trail

2).
Over the years the Cherokees Trail of Tears has taken an epic level of drama and sacrifice. “The level of drama has placed our nation on trial for its treatment to the Indians” (Smith 220), and pressure for the development of western lands required the removal of the Indians from their homelands. Finally after years of intense political quarrels over removal, a profoundly traumatic and deadly experience on the trail, the Removal Crisis ended (Smith 267). Many Native Americans knew where they stood and what they wanted and when they moved west adapting was a challenge but the Trail of Tears was one they could never forget because it greatly impacted them. In The Trail of Tears