Blackburn, Marion. “Return or the trail of tears. ” Mar. -Apr. 53-64. ebsco. Web. It’s easy to miss this subtle groove, covered in pine straw and vines, worn in the ground of eastern Tennessee. In the summer of 1838, about 13,000 Cherokee walked this path from their homes in the Appalachian Mountains to a new, government mandated homeland in Oklahoma. The Trail of Tears was a journey of some 900 miles that took approximately nine months to complete.
After they were rounded up from their villages and homes, the Cherokee were assembled in large internment camps, where some waited for weeks before heading out in waves of approximately 1,000, following different paths, depending on the season. As many as 4,000 died along the way from dehydration, tuberculosis, whooping cough, and other hardships—by some accounts, a dozen or more were buried at each stop. Some escaped along the way and were caught and returned to the march like criminals. The Cherokee fought eviction through official channels, eventually winning support for independent status from the LIS.
Supreme Court-a decision that prompted Jackson to say, “[Chief Justice] John Marshall has made his decision; let him enforce it now if he can. The Cherokee, which white Americans called one of the Five Civilized Tribes, considered themselves American and wanted to join the growing country as participating members. In 1827, the Cherokee ratified a constitution modeled after the American one. Despite the apparent Cherokee desire to join instead of fight, the federal government began a military buildup in preparation for what it assumed would become a long, bloody conflict.
As part of this militarization, they reactivated there would be a guerilla war in North Carolina. The military was poised for an eventuality that never happened. ” There was no insurgency and little resistance when the military began the roundup of the Cherokee in June and July 1838. Once the Cherokee were moved and soldiers left in 1838, Fort Armistead was abandoned. From the Civil War period through the turn of the century, the site was privately owned, until it was purchased by the USFS in 2005, and archaeological exploration began the next year.
In 1987, Congress designated the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, about 2,200 miles across nine states. Fort Armistead is on the trail and is a remarkably fragile site. Hidden cameras, motion monitors, and a high-tech security system protect it from looters and unauthorized visitors. Among the visitors allowed at the site are Cherokee from Oklahoma, whose ancestors surely passed through the fort. The excavation and study of the site of Fort Armistead is beginning to flesh out the story of those who left.
Now, the Cherokee, whose capital is Tahlequah in eastern Oklahoma, number some 300,000— i-ligh-tech security, ncluding cameras and motion detectors, has been installed at the frague and significant site of Fort Armistead. The site’s location remains a secret. comprising the United States’ second largest tribal nation. But the small band of Cherokee who stayed behind left a smaller but still significant legacy in southern Appalachia. Ashley, Burnett. “Riding the trail of Tears. ” American Indian Quarterly (2015): 238-241. Ebsco. Web. 10 Mar. 2016. engagement with the forced Cherokee removal of the nineteenth century as he maneuvers within a critical milieu of Native literary theorists such as Daniel Heath Justice and Robert Warrior.
Confronting the historical gaps that are generated from Euro Western claims to truth, authenticity, and accuracy, Hausman has actively produced a space of cultural resistance that follows in the critical tracks of Justice, The Cherokee removal has been “transformed into a userfriendly, consumer driven ride” that fosters a voyeuristic, fetishized, and escapist experience that is “meant to be fun for the whole family” The remarkable lack of Cherokee accounts of the Trail of Tears has historically been solved with the application of established Native stereotypes and rote experiences of trauma to the thousands of Natives who were moved West.
The generations of Cherokees who have taken the Trail of Tears inside their minds, spirits, and experiences have been overlooked and ignored. A Cherokee firsthand account of the Trail of Tears is a rarity, if it exists at all, and Hausman rightly answers this problem by questioning Native authenticity and historical fact. Leaving behind Western objectivity and claims to historical facts, Hausman artistically recreates the Trail of Tears through Tallulah’s story.
Her story does not conform to the accepted data that have been collected concerning Cherokees and their removal, yet she walks the trail every day and is shaped by it, as her lived experiences all from her personal story, which connects her to the removal of her people. By the end of the novel, Homeland Security, which is investigating the disturbances that affected the tourists inside the trepp, rejects her story. It is not based on biased and subjective facts but a deeply personal and cultural connection to the Trail of Tears, which lives and breathes out of the trauma of her people.
Smith, Daniel B. An American Betrayal: Cherokee Patriots and the Trail of Tears 258. 35 (2011): 51-51. Ebsco. Web. 10 Mar. 2016. Daniel Blake Smith reevaluates the Cherokee Nation’s response to President Andrew Jackson’s policy of Indian removal. Rather than focus exclusively on the extemal pressures the Cherokees faced to leave their land. “beyond in the 1820s and 1830s was nothing less than what it meant to be a good Cherokee, a patriot, amid the critical struggle over removal” Independence Day in Mississippi in 1835 was marked not by joyous communal celebrations but by paroxysms of communal violence.
In Livingston, near the center of the state, vague hints of an impending slave insurrection had prompted the convening of a vigilance committee, which condemned and hanged five white men on essentially no evidence. McGill, Sara A. “Indian Removal & the Trail of Tears. ” (2009): 1-2. Book Collection Nonfiction: High School Edition. Web. 11 Mar. 2016. The Proclamation of 1763 forced colonists to remain east of the Appalachian Mountains, and all land west of this natural barrier was reserved for Native Americans. However, by the 1800’s, American cities were growing and the settlers were itching to move westward onto Native American lands.
The first Seminole War of 1817-1819, fought in the territory of Florida, demonstrated the volatile nature of the relationship between the US government and Native American tribes. General Andrew Jackson marched on Florida in an effort to gain possession of the lands from the Spanish and Indian tribes. The Seminole tribe was determined to hold their ground, but the Jackson’s forces were too strong. His troops forcibly took a Seminole-held fort at Prospect Bluff, Florida, and continued their march, attacking and conquering a Seminole village led by Chief Neamathla.
The Trail of Tears was the result of the U. S. government’s treatment of the Cherokee Nation. The Cherokee was the last tribe to fight for their home in the Appalachian region of North and South Carolina, as well as in Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama. The Cherokee developed a republican government ruled by a constitution in 1820, much like that of the U. S. Despite their organization, they could not stop the settlers’ push for possession of Cherokee territory, especially when gold was discovered on their lands in Georgia.
Chief John Ross, of Cherokee and Scottish descent, led a number f Cherokee in protest against the treaty and Jackson’s measures, but his efforts were to no avail. The federal government forced the Cherokee nation to leave all of their lands and livestock to find a new home in the less fertile lands of the arid west. The first group of 3,000 began their forced march in the summer 1838. The remaining 12,000 waited in prison camps and traveled through the freezing temperatures of the winter of 1838-1839. Four different routes were taken across Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois and Missouri. Nearly one fourth of the Cherokee population died from starvation and disease.
The rest had to endure the abuses of the military personnel, the extreme temperatures and the sorrow of leaving their homes. Once they arrived, the Cherokee joined the other displaced Native Americans in their new life on less fertile lands. Two acts passed in 1854 and 1866 reduced their territory to land only in Oklahoma, despite the former promises of the American government. The US government’s oppressive treatment of Native Americans would continue for decades, reaching well into the twentieth century, as the government continually robbed them of their land, culture and dignity.
