General Winfield Scott was in command of the troops gathering up every Cherokee man, woman and child and placing them in the stockades. General Scott did not take pleasure in his job and ordered his troops to refrain from violence. However, the Cherokees were treated harshly as they hastily gathered up their possessions in the confusion and sadness that marked the Trail of Tears. From the stockades the Cherokees were moved to internment camps in Tennessee and Alabama (Cordes 136). By July of 1838 the Cherokees were held in the camps and awaiting removal to their new homes. While the Cherokees were in the camps their homes were burned so that they would not try to escape (Cordes 136).
By the end of the summer of 1839 the Cherokees that survived the Trail of Tears had arrived at their new home in Oklahoma. Shortly thereafter, Major Ridge, his son and nephew were assassinated for signing the Treaty of New Echota (Cordes 140). In order to prevent any more violent outbreaks against those who had supported the treaty, John Ross passed an �act of forgiveness� for those who had signed the treaty (Cordes 140). The Cherokee nation had lost over 4,000 of its tribe members on the Trail of Tears and Ross did not relish the thought of losing more.
The Cherokees had to start their lives again with many broken families and no
knowledge of the land in which they were to live. The United States had betrayed the Cherokee Indians and had robbed them of the history they had built while living in the southeastern states. The US caused the death of thousands of men, women and children that lived on its soil. Fifty years later, John G. Burnett, a man who had served as a private in the US Army during the winter of 1838-39 recorded his account of the tragedy:
" [I] witnessed the execution of the most brutal order in the history of American
warfare. I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their homes,
and driven at the bayonet point into stockades. And in the chill of a drizzling rain
on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle or sheep into six hundred
and forty-five wagons and headed for the West"(as qtd. in Cordes 136).
Acknowledging the tragedies that Burnett vividly remembers is acknowledging the existence of the Cherokee Indians. The struggles of the Cherokee Indians cannot be forgotten because the Cherokees represent a group of people who had struggled with white settler�s ways, succeeded in many aspects and then were thrown out of their own homes for the efforts they had made. The Trail of Tears is an American tragedy and should always be remembered as such.
Cherokee Rose Legend
Removal Forts and Stockades
Timeline of Cherokee History
Link to William Apess Page
Works Cited Page
for Eng323 @ Suny Albany
April 2002