The remainder of this group, consisting of 210 Creeks under Captain F. S. Belton, went by steamboat from Montgomery to New Orleans. Settlers secretly sold liquor to the Indians, who became drunk.60 As they proceeded, Belton reported that “the heat is excessive and the water of the worst description.”61 By the time the Creeks reached their destination, 19 had died, 9 were missing, and Captain Belton was too ill even to keep his journal. He lay down by the side of the road, and the Creeks proceeded under Belton’s assistant, Doctor J. Jones.62
In August 1836, a group of 3,022 Creeks, which soon grew to 3,142, left under William McGillivrey and Lieutenant R. B. Screven. Hungry Creeks in this party dropped out, and stole hogs and food to keep from starving. Only about 2,000 reached Fort Gibson.63
Lieutenant Edward Deas took another group of 1,170 from Georgia to Oklahoma the same month. In Tennessee, their number increased to 2,000. Deas returned to Georgia for another 2,320. The Memphis Enquirer reported, “They are generally in good health.”64
That same August, some 2,700 Creeks who had helped the settlers fight hostile Indians started west under Lieutenant M. W. Batman and Chief Opothleyaholo. Batman reported that the Indians got drunk on whiskey furnished by settlers “in every town or village through which they passed.”65 The Memphis newspaper opinion that the Creeks were generally in good health is consistent with Foreman’s failure to report any deaths at all in the 3 Creek parties, totaling 10,042, leaving in the August Screven, Deas, and Batman groups.
On September 5, a group of 1,984 Creeks left Tallassee, Alabama, in the charge of Marine Corps lieutenant J. T. Sprague. In his diary, Sprague himself argued it best that they leave:
The necessity of their leaving their country immediately was evident to every one; although wretchedly poor they were growing more so every day they remained. A large number of white men were prowling about, robbing them of their horses and cattle and carrying among them liquors which kept up an alarming state of intoxication.66
Lieutenant Sprague then added,
If liquor could be found upon the road, or within four or six miles of it, men and women would congregate there, and indulge in the most brutal scenes of intoxication. If any white-man broke in upon these bacchanals he did it at the imminent hazard of his life.67
Colonel John J. Abert said, “Their love of drink … will keep them in its vicinity while they have a shilling to procure it.”68
Like others, the Creeks had little clothing. Sprague described their plight:
The sufferings of the Indians at this period were intense. With nothing more than a cotton garment thrown over them, their feet bare, they were compelled to encounter cold, sleeting storms and to travel over frozen ground.69
They finally arrived at Fort Gibson on December 10. Sprague’s diary summed it up. “Twenty nine deaths [out of 1,984 who started] were all that occurred; fourteen of these were children and the others were the aged, feeble and intemperate.”70 A group of Creeks wrote a letter to Sprague expressing their keen appreciation for his kindness and “for his efforts to ameliorate their misery and afford such comfort as he could.”71
General T. S. Jesup had been ordered by the secretary of war to remove the Creeks. Jesup wrote to the secretary in 1837, when the removal was near completion, that he
had seen an account in the newspapers of the removal of the Creek families, but was not aware of the brutal treatment which those families had been compelled to submit to…. The Creek families were plundered of the greater part of their property, and it is no more than just that they be remunerated.72
In 1837, 3,500 Creeks were waiting at Mobile for transportation to Oklahoma. Within a 5-month period, 177 died. Every officer and agent was sick (probably from dysentery). At Pass Christian, whiskey peddlers approached the Indians, and the officers destroyed several barrels of liquor.73
In late October, as the Creeks were on their way to Oklahoma in several steamboats, another tragedy occurred:
The steamboat Monmouth with 611 Indians on board, was proceeding up the Mississippi River, when through the negligent handling of the boat she was taken through Prophet Island Bend on a course forbidden to upbound vessels; in this place at night she collided with the ship Trenton, towed by the Warren: the Monmouth was cut in two, and sunk almost immediately with a loss of 311 Indians.74
The Monmouth was apparently overloaded as well. Steamboat owners believed that no more than 400 or 500 people should be transported at one time; the Monmouth had 611 Indians on board.75
There was only one bright side to the horrible situation. The Creeks had been removed to land about which George Catlin said, “There is scarcely a finer country on earth.”76
The treaty for removal of the Chickasaw was signed on Pontotoc Creek on October 20, 1832, and provided that the tribe would cede all its lands outright to the government. The government would then sell the land and hold the proceeds for the Chickasaw.77
The president appointed Colonel A. M. M. Upshaw superintendent of the Chickasaw removal. The first group of 500 Chickasaw passed through Memphis on July 4. They were imposing. According to Upshaw’s diary:
They presented a handsome appearance, being nearly all mounted, and, with few exceptions, well dressed in their national costume. It has been remarked by many of our citizens, who have witnessed the passage of emigrating Indians, that on no previous occasion was there as good order or more dispatch. Not a drunken Indian we believe, was seen in the company.78
Upshaw delivered 3,538 Chickasaw to Fort Coffee in Oklahoma on January 2, 1837.79 Their land, according to Captain G. P. Kingsbury, was “one of the finest ranges for horses and cattle I have ever seen at this season of the year.”80 Upshaw’s diary refers to few deaths.81
The negligence of the contractors, however, soon made itself felt. Upshaw wrote to Daniel Harris on May 1, 1837, that
I am here starving with the Chickasaws by gross mismanagement on the part of the contractors, and when our situation will be bettered it is hard for me to tell, for it is one failure after another without end…. I begin to think we will have to starve to death or abandon the Country.82
The government had greater difficulty making a removal treaty with the Cherokee. Georgia passed a law providing that Georgia law extended to the Cherokee Nation, that all Cherokee laws were null and void, and that anyone who tried to persuade anyone else not to go west would be jailed.83 Foreman reported that President Jackson
warned the [Cherokee] Indians that the government was powerless to prevent the State of Georgia from exercising sovereignty over them and that if they insisted on remaining in the state, they did so at their peril, and that they need expect no help from him.84
Under these bleak circumstances, a removal treaty was signed by another group of Cherokee (the eastern Cherokee) on December 28, 1835, called the Treaty of New Echota. The Choctaw pattern was once more followed. A date was fixed by which they were required to leave, May 23, 1838, but less than one eighth had gone by that time.85 When the deadline was reached, the Cherokee still resisted, were rounded up, and forcibly taken to Oklahoma.86 Their removal was not complete until 1839.87
Lieutenant Harris was assigned to lead a group of Cherokee west.88 A boat across the river furnished liquor and, Harris reported, “immorality & misrule have continued to be the order of the day—dancing, drunkenness, gambling & fighting the pastime of the night.”89
Harris also reported “an alarming change took place with the introduction of a malignant type of cholera.”90 The Indians, panic-stricken, dispersed into the timber.91 Harris himself got cholera.92
Harris left the party at Dwight Mission. By that time, there had been 81 deaths, 50 from cholera. Forty-five children under 10 “died chiefly of the measles, dysenteries, worms, &c, the result of exposure, confinement, want of proper cleanliness, the river water and the neglect of parents.”93 Of those in the Harris party who reached Oklahoma, nearly half died before the end of the year.94
A group of about 600 Cherokee who wanted to
go west by themselves left New Echota, the Cherokee capital, in January 1837. Another party consisting of 466 Indians left Ross’s Landing on March 3, 1837, under Dr. John S. Young. Liquor was introduced at many stops, and there was drunkenness.95 Physician C. Lillybridge also went along and was in a good position to assess fatalities on the voyage, but he reported none at all.
The tenor of the removal changed after most of the Cherokee failed to leave by the date required by their treaty. James Mooney said, “It may well exceed in weight of grief and pathos any other passage in American history.”96 Nearly 17,000 Cherokee were gathered into stockades and brought in groups of about 5,000 to the river to embark. There were 2 physicians for each group.97
The next party was also in the charge of Lieutenant Deas and left Ross’s Landing under guard on June 6, 1838. Deas determined that there were 489 in the group. He issued tenting material to protect the Cherokee from the weather. Fort Coffee was reached on June 19. Grant Foreman noted, “There had been no death in the party since their departure from Ross’s Landing.”98
Exactly one week after the party under Deas left, a second party, of 875 Cherokee, left Chattanooga under Lieutenant R. H. K. Whitley, whose assistants included 2 physicians and a hospital attendant. The results were dramatically different even though the conditions of the 2 journeys would appear on the surface to be about the same. Only 602 reached their destination. There were 273 deaths.99 Why the June 6 expedition should have no deaths and the June 13 party 273 is not known.
On October 11, 1838, a group of 650 to 700 left, led by Deas. These were treaty-faction Cherokee who refused to go with the Cherokee Nation group under Ross. They arrived in Oklahoma without incident on January 7, 1839.100
The Cherokee Nation asked General Scott to permit the Cherokee to remove themselves in the fall after “the sickly season” had ended. Scott agreed.101 On July 19, 1838, the Army and Navy Chronicle reported that there were 9,250 Cherokee in the stockades, with another 1,500 on the way there.102
There were now about 13,000 Cherokee gathered for removal, including their slaves.103 On October 1, 1,103 Indians started under John Benge and on October 4 an additional group of 748 started under Elijah Hicks. By the 16th, it was apparent that the Hicks party did not have enough clothing. They reached their new home on January 4, 1839.104 There were 114 deaths.105
Nine more Cherokee Nation parties left through October and 4 in November.106 A party conducted by John Hicks left on November 4.107 Cherokee leaving on October 5 included a Cherokee minister, the Reverend Jesse Bushyhead. He wrote that his party had been detained a month by ice in the Mississippi, and they did not reach Oklahoma until February 23. There were 32 deaths while they were on the road.108
The leaders of some of the other journeys gave reports of additional deaths: the Reverend Evan Jones reported 38; another Cherokee minister, the Reverend Stephen Foreman, 71; Mose Daniel’s party, 48; James Brown, 34 “deaths and other causes”; John Drew, 55. These additional deaths total at least 269.109
There was some consolation in the quality of their new land. George Catlin described it as
a fine tract of country; and having advanced somewhat in the arts and agriculture before they started, [the Cherokees] are now found to be mostly living well, cultivating their fields of corn and other crops, which they raise with great success.110
Edward H. Spicer even reported that “by 1887, the Cherokees … were on the way to political and economic development comparable to that of other Americans.”111
SEVERAL TROUBLING questions are raised by the Trails of Tears. What are some relevant numbers? How many deaths were there? Were these deaths atrocities?
A Presidential Commission on Indian Reservation Economies in 1984 made its Report and Recommendations to President Reagan. That report said that only about 100,000 Indians were resettled. It also said that a problem with the act was that the Indians could not be removed far enough or fast enough to stay out of the path of advancing settlers.112 The 1860 Census (29 years after removal began) indicated there were 340,000 Indians then. Although about 30 percent were removed under the act, about 70 percent of the Indians in the country (all over the country, not just in the South) were not removed.113
Grant Foreman and others have made estimates of deaths by tribes. Those estimates vary widely. Edward H. Spicer reported 5,000 Choctaw deaths.114 Carl Waldman stated that approximately 3,500 Creeks “died of disease and exposure during and shortly after the ensuing removal.”115 Spicer said 2,000 Chickasaw failed to arrive in Oklahoma and “after arrival 3,500 more died.”116 Spicer said the Trails of Tears deaths “recorded in their [Cherokee] history” is 4,000.117 Even when John Ross got permission from the government for the Cherokee to manage their own removal, the deaths continued. Out of 3,916 in the first 4 detachments, 573, or 14.6 percent, died.118 These estimates total 18,000 deaths.
Foreman would appear to have made the most diligent investigation concerning the number of deaths. He noted that there was no way to assess the number of Cherokee deaths. He said in language that could apply to all the removed tribes,
On the march there were many deaths, a few desertions and accessions and occasional exchanges from one party to another where some by sickness were obliged to drop out of the way and join those coming after; so that an accurate statement of the number removed and of those who perished on the way became impossible.119
The figures Foreman used in Indian Removal, taken for the most part from journals of eyewitnesses, give a far different picture than other writers. The deaths he reported on the Trails of Tears (not all the deaths he mentioned are referred to above) include 25 Choctaw deaths, 166 Seminole, 297 Creek, 556 Chickasaw, and 802 Cherokee, for a total of 1,846. (The Choctaw estimate of 25 deaths must be contrasted with his statements about the Leflore expedition, where 1,000 left and only 88 nearly starved Choctaw arrived. It seems unlikely all of the remaining 912 survived.) These specific estimates by Foreman, of course, are minimal estimates, because when the journal of the military officer stated that “many,” “several,” or “a number” died, a quantity cannot be determined.120 The difference in estimates between 18,000 and 1,846 is clearly too wide. We do not know exactly how many Indians died on the Trails of Tears, but of course it was far too many and constituted a national tragedy.
Were the deaths in the Trails of Tears atrocities? An atrocity occurs only if the injury is intentional, and such injuries were not committed here by army personnel. The conduct of President Jackson would not appear to amount to intentional injury either, but it can be argued he did intend it.
The evidence that could lead one to believe he did intend the deaths consists of the fact that after the Creek War, Jackson was determined to eliminate all potential enemies of his country from the southern frontier.121 But there are also indications that Jackson did not intend the many deaths. He stated in his 1829 first inaugural address that he desired a just, humane, and considerate policy toward the Indians. Robert Remini asserted that “no one these days seriously indicts Jackson as a mad racist intent upon genocide.”122 Remini concluded that
some men, like Jackson, meant removal as a humanitarian means of preserving Native American life and culture in a place where they would not constitute a threat to the safety of the Union and a bother to the greed, arrogance, and racism of whites.123
Grant Foreman concluded his book on the removals on a cautiously optimistic note:
The rehabilitation of these five Indian nations, their readjustment to their new surroundings, the recovery of their national spirit and enterprise, the building of their farms and homes, their governments and schools upon the raw frontier, bringing into being a higher civilization of Indians, this was an achievement unique in our history, that compares favorably with the best traditions of white frontier civilization.124
No more will be said about the sorrowful Trails of Tears. Atrocities, of course, continued throughout the country.
IN 1832, army captain Benjamin Louis Eulalie de Bo
nneville and his men established a trading post on the Green River in Wyoming. Helen Hunt Jackson told how one of his trappers discovered that his traps had been stolen, and he vowed to kill the first Indian he saw. He saw 2 Root Digger Indians fishing, killed one, and threw his body in the stream. Shortly after that, a party of trappers was about to cross a stream, saw unarmed Root Diggers on the opposite bank, and killed 25 of them. The survivors were chased, lassoed, and dragged until they were dead. Later on, the same group of trappers found that some of their horses had been stolen by the Riccaree Indians. They told them that unless all the horses were returned, 2 innocent Indians who had wandered into the trappers’ camp would be burned to death. Two horses were released, and the Indians who had them fled. The 2 prisoners were burned.125
After the 1832 defeat of 275 Illinois militiamen by 40 Sac and Fox* warriors in the skirmish known as Stillman’s Run, Black Hawk terrorized the frontier in the Black Hawk War. With 40 braves, mostly Potawatomi, he attacked the Davis farm at Indian Creek in Illinois. Fifteen were murdered and mutilated. Two girls, Rachel and Sylvia Hall, saw the Indians dancing, brandishing their parents’ scalps. The sisters were captured, but later ransomed for horses. The Illinois frontier was disrupted by Stillman’s Run and the Indian Creek Massacre. Settlers fled their homes, farming stopped, mining stopped. The Galena, Illinois, newspaper was quoted by Alan Axelrod as calling for a “war of extermination” against the Indians.127
A party of 29 Illinois militia finally caught up with 11 marauding warriors and killed them all. Militia colonel William S. Hamilton came on the scene an hour later with friendly Sioux, Menominees, and Winnebagos and turned them on the dead bodies. The Indians hacked them to bits.128
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