The following is a story of what my ancestors were put through by the American government in 1838-39. Grief? These people suffered grief on a daily basis. But they were proud people and continue to be proud. I can say that I am proud of what my ancestors have done in the past and what they continue to do and be, no one can ever take my ancestory away from me. Thank you Dad for making me the person that I am today and always will be ~ PROUD and HONORED to be part of the Cherokee Nation.

The first road built through this Ozark Mountain wilderness was a highway of rejection, pain, sickness and death. Around Mountain Home, Arkansas they call it the Old Military Road. Parts of it still exist as an asphalt lane winding along the ridgetops through steep and narrow valleys, but most of it has long since disappeared. But it remains infamous as the “Trail of Tears,” representing one of the sorriest episodes in American history. Cherokee Indians called it “Nuska daul Tsuny” or “Trail where they cried.”

Built by Army troops in the early 1830’s, it had one purpose; to provide a route for the forced march of thousands of Cherokee Indians who had done nothing wrong except to live in the wrong place at the wrong time. During the 1830’s, thousands of Indian tribes were forced off their lands in the southeastern United States and moved to Indian Territory, today’s state of Oklahoma. Some of the Indians went peacefully, but the proud Cherokees resisted. In the end, thousands died from the effects of the 800-mile march during the harsh winter of 1838-39.

They were marched by rifle point by U.S. soldiers as a result of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, passed by Congress with the backing of President Andrew Jackson. The Cherokee tribe was concentrated in western North Carolina and northern Georgia, a land rich in minerals, good soil, and plenty of wild game.

Early in the 19th century, American settlers clamored for more land. Thomas Jefferson proposed the creation of a buffer zone between the U.S. and European holdings, to be inhabited by Native Americans. The plan would also allow for expansion westward to the Mississippi River.

Between 1816 and 1840, tribes located between the original states and the Mississippi, including Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles, signed more than 40 treaties ceding their lands to the U.S.

In 1829, President Jackson, who earlier fought against the Seminole tribes in Florida and had developed a lifelong enmity for Native Americans, set a policy to relocate eastern Indians. In 1830, it was endorsed when Congress passed the Indian Removal Act. About 100,000 Indians living between Michigan, Louisiana, and Florida moved west after the U.S. government coerced treaties or used the Army against those resisting. The Ottawa tribe in northwestern Ohio and Michigan was moved to Kansas.

Nineteenth century writers and later Hollywood were unfair to Native Americans. They were not nomadic tribes of howling savages, but civilized long before Columbus came to America.

Cherokees occupied choice lands in several southeastern states. As new settlers arrived, Cherokees traded and intermarried with them. They began to adopt European customs and gradually turned to an agricultural economy, while being pressured to give up traditional homelands. Between 1721 and 1819, more than 90 percent of their lands were ceded to others. By the 1820’s, Chief Sequoyah’s formal alphabet brought literacy and a government, complete with a constitution.

In 1828, two years before the Indian Removal Act was passed, gold was found on Cherokee lands. Georgia held lotteries to give Cherokee land and gold rights to whites. Cherokees were not allowed to conduct tribal business, contract, testify in courts against whites, or mine for gold.

The Cherokee tribes successfully challenged Georgia in the U.S. Supreme Court, President Jackson, when hearing of the Court’s decision, reportedly said “(Chief Justice) John Marshall has made his decision; let him enforce it if he can.”

Most Cherokees opposed removal. Yet a minority felt it was futile to continue to fight. They believed that they might survive as a people only if they signed a treaty with the United States. In December, 1835, the federal government sought out this minority to effect a treaty at New Echota, Georgia. Only 300 to 500 Cherokees were there; none were elected officials of the Cherokee Nation. Twenty signed the treaty, ceding all Cherokee territory east of the Mississippi in exchange for $5 million and the new homelands in Indian Territory.

More than 15,000 Cherokees protested the illegal treaty. Yet, on May 23, 1836, the U.S. Senate ratified the Treaty of New Echota by just one vote. Congressman Davy Crockett, whose political career was destroyed because he supported the Cherokees, said in 1835 on the floor of the House ~ “I would sooner be honestly damned than hypocritically immortalized.” He died the next year at the Alamo.

There was honor elsewhere, General Robert Wool resigned from the Army rather than force the Cherokees out. General Winfield Scott took over and arrived in Georgia with 7,000 troops. Most Cherokees, including Chief John Ross, did not believe that they would be forced to move. Many had planted crops. But in May, 1838, federal troops and state militias began rounding up the Cherokees into stockades. Despite warnings from General Scott to treat the Cherokees kindly, the roundup proved harrowing. Families were separated ~ the elderly and ill forced out at gunpoint ~ and people were given only minutes to collect cherished possessions. White looters followed, ransacking homesteads.

Three groups, averaging about 1,000 Cherokees each, left in June, 1838, under military supervision. After these groups had arrived in Indian Territory, the Cherokees were granted permission to supervise their own overland migration. One soldier, writing years later to his grandchildren, said that he had seen men killed and wounded in battle, but the removal of the Cherokees “was the cruelest work I ever seen.”

The groups left mostly in the summer of 1838, traveling from present day Chattanooga by rail, boat, and wagon, primarily on the water route. The water route used the Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi, and Arkansas rivers to Oklahoma, but it was more than 1,000 miles long. Water levels were low and the rivers were often impassable: one group, traveling overland through northern Arkansas, suffered three to five deaths per day due to illness and drought.

There really wasn’t much of a road, just a clearing through the forests. The country was pretty inhospitable; not much food and very sparsely populated. The road through what was then Arkansas Territory was built around 1831 by engineer battalions from Jacksonport, at the confluence of the Black and White Rivers, west for about 200 miles to Van Buren, Arkansas, near the border of Indian Territory. Another spur went through Fayetteville, Arkansas to Tahlequah. Military records show that only one group used the road, but others may have taken it. A group of 1,200 Cherokees headed by John Benge, a Cherokee Chief, left East Tennessee on September 28, 1838, and arrived at Tahlequah on January 17, 1839. Official records show three births and 33 deaths on the harrowing journal. Chief John Bell led another group.

The winter of 1838-39 was an unusually harsh winter in the Lower Midwest. A group of 898 Indians headed by Chief Jessie Bushyhead left three weeks before the Benge group suffered terribly. It took a northerly route through Kentucky, Southern Illinois, and crossed the ice-choked Mississippi River in the dead of winter.

At a spot in the Missouri Ozarks not far from the river, Eliza Missouri Bushyhead was born January 3, 1839 to the wife of Chief Bushyhead. She survived the forced march and lived many years in Tahlequah County, Oklahoma, where she was named its most distinguished citizen.

But “Princess Otahki,” a young Cherokee maiden, died that same morning along the trail and was buried there. Missouri later developed the site as Trail of Tears State Park, about 15 miles north of Cape Girardeau.

Chief Bushyhead’s group suffered 38 deaths, and another 148 either died or deserted during the journey. The last party, including Chief Ross, went the long water route, because heavy rains made the roads impassable.

Two thirds of the ill-equipped Cherokees were trapped between the ice-bound Ohio and Mississippi Rivers during January, 1839.

A survivor wrote: “Long time we travel on way to new land. People feel bad when they leave Old Nation. Women cry and make sad wails, children cry and many men cry. But they say nothing and just put heads down and keep on towards west. Many days pass and people die very much.”

By March, 1839, all survivors had arrived in the west. No one knows how many died throughout the ordeal. Missionary doctor Elizur Butler, who accompanied the Cherokees, estimated that more than 4,000 died. Official government records show 15,949 were removed to Indian Territory, but unofficial estimates put the total at between 20,000 and 25,000.

In August, 1839, John Ross was elected principal chief of the reconstituted Cherokee Nation with Tahlequah as its capital. It remains the tribal headquarters for the Cherokee Nation today.

About 1,000 Cherokees in Tennessee and North Carolina escaped the roundup, and their descendants live around the North Carolina community which bears the tribal name. They established a tribal government in 1868 in Cherokee, North Carolina, and today are known as the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and live on the Qualla Reservation.

To preserve the few remaining segments of the trail, some are seeking renewal of a 10-year-old federal effort to mark the trail. The National Trail of Tears Act expired last year after about 300 miles of the northernmost trail were marked through Missouri, Illinois, western Arkansas, and Oklahoma. In Baxter County, there is evidence of the old trail. On a high ridge just west of Mountain Home, a line of rutted wagon tracks, overgrown with cedar saplings, can be seen. Some are trying to get the National Park Service and the Arkansas Historical Commission interested in marking the route. “After all, for what the Cherokees went through, it’s the least they can do.”