When gold was found in Georgia, the government forgot its treaties and drove the Cherokees to Oklahoma. One fourth of the Cherokees died on the journey west from disease, starvation, and brutal conditions suffered during the forced eviction; But God, looking down from heaven, decided to commemorate the brave Cherokees and the grieving Cherokee mothers and so, as the tears of the maidens dropped to the ground, God turned them into flowers in the shape of a Cherokee Rose. The gold in the center of the rose represents the discovery of gold that caused the eviction of the Cherokee from the ancestral lands. The rose is white symbolizing tears of the grieving mothers: Seven leaves on each stem represent the seven Cherokee clans. This is why they are so plentiful in Oklahoma, the end of the Trail of Tears. The Cherokee Rose is the Georgia State Flower.

THE TRAIL of TEARS

Painting by Robert Lindneux (Woolaroc Museum Oklahoma)

EVICTION of the CHEROKEE and the TRAIL of TEARS: FORT GILMER

One hundred yards east is the site of Fort Gilmer, built in 1838 to garrison U.S. troops ordered to enforce the removal from this region of the last Cherokee Indians under terms of the New Echota treaty of 1835. One of seven such forts erected in the Cherokee territory, Gilmer was the temporary headquarters of Gen. Winfield Scott, under whose command the removal was effected. The reluctant Indians were brought here and guarded until the westward march began.