The Cherokee Nation
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This paper is an examination of the Trail of Tears, an 800-mile journey that effectively destroyed the Cherokee Nation. The enforced resettlement occurred because white settlers coveted Cherokee lands and believed they had a superior claim. The nearly 4,000 deaths that resulted, perhaps as much as one-fourth of the entire population, stand as a remarkable, shameful illustration of inhumane treatment on a breathtaking scale. The Trail of Tears was a death march, a devastating chapter in the spectacularly successful campaign by European settlers to clear the New World not only of underbrush and other impediments to farming but also of the original inhabitants. Because they were members of an alien race, the Cherokee could not fit into the Europeans' plans, even when the Indians tried. They were doomed for annihilation simply because they were different and in the way of someone else's idea of progress. In December 1833, President Andrew Jackson made what he believed was a humane plea to Congress: [The Cherokee] have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits nor the desire of improvement which are essential to any favorable change in their condition. Established in the midst of another and a superior race, and without appreciating the causes of their inferiority or seeking to control them, they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstance and ere long disappear (McLoughlin After 3). He argued that, for their own good, the Cherokee Indians need
. . .
k, and a compliment of slaves" (Ehle 127). Moreover, he was seventh-eighths white, making him look like the people he was negotiating with. His Cherokee blood, however, branded him an Indian even to those who could not detect the difference on sight.
Despite his best efforts, Ross was unable to negotiate lasting treaties that would allow his people to remain on their land. White prospectors and settlers wanted possession, and they wanted the Indians gone. By 1838, the Cherokee fate was sealed.
Soldiers began to gather the Cherokees to take them to holding camps; "the roundup [proceeded] expeditiously, with no blood shed . . . [but] it was cruel work . . . made more difficult by fleets of opportunistic whites, human scavengers, following the troops . . . waiting to loot possessions that the Indians could not carry away" (Ehle 330). In the camps before departure, 1,500 Indians died from a variety of epidemics, victims of diseases for which the Cherokee had no natural immunity. These deaths were just the beginning. The tears shed in mourning were the start of a flood.
The Trail of Tears was actually two routes, one by land and the other by water, stretching approximately 800 miles each from the homelands of the Cherokee
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Approximate Word count = 2110
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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