Cherokee Removal

When I was a young child, I often braided my long blond locks and stuck a feather in my hair, wore leather moccasins, danced, chanted, and called myself an Indian. I was not, and as far as DNA research has been able to determine, I don’t have one single drop of Native American blood pulsing through me. Still, I pretended to be an Indian, even with my fair skin.

As I grew older, I learned how the Indians were pushed out of Georgia— ripped from their homeland to make way for my ancestors. Some Cherokee were killed. Others died on a long journey—a story that brought me great shame and sadness, and why wouldn’t it? It’s a horrible part of American history.

Last week, I drove to New Echota State Historic Site outside of Calhoun, Georgia, where I interviewed a park ranger as part of my research for an article about Cherokee heritage sites around the state. New Echota, positioned at the headwaters of the Oostanaula River, is one of the most significant Cherokee sites in the nation. In 1825, the Cherokee national legislature established their capital there. The site housed the first Indian language newspaper office, witnessed a court case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, served as one of the earliest experiments in national self-government by an Indian tribe, and was where the treaty was signed that relinquished Cherokee claims to lands east of the Mississippi River. And sadly, it is where the “Trail of Tears” officially began.

A park ranger explained how white American settlers had classified the Cherokee as one of the “Five Civilized Tribes” because they were agrarian, lived in permanent communities, had intermarried with white Europeans, and had begun adopting some practices of white settlers. They developed their own writing system, thanks to Sequoyah who created the Cherokee alphabet, enabling his people to read, write, record their laws, and publish newspapers in their own language.

But white people throughout the South refused to accept the Cherokee people as social equals. The demand for fertile soil to grow cotton, the discovery of gold on Cherokee land, and racial prejudice drove the push for their removal. Georgia politicians (Troup, Gilmer, and Lumpkin), pressured the federal government to fulfill the Compact of 1802, which promised to remove the Cherokee from the state and give their land away in a lottery.

Led by Principal Chief John Ross, the Cherokee government claimed they were a sovereign nation. In 1827, they adopted a written constitution and enacted laws prohibiting the sale of national land upon penalty of death. The Cherokee Nation took their case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court continued from page

and won (Worcester v. Georgia), but President Andrew Jackson refused to enforce the decision.

The Cherokee Nation eventually divided between those who wanted to fight and a “Treaty Party” that saw the writing on the wall and wanted to surrender as a means of cultural survival. By 1835, the latter group, led by Major Ridge, John Ridge, and Elias Boudinot, signed the Treaty of New Echota without the authority of Principal Chief Ross or the Cherokee government. Chief Ross gathered 16,000 Cherokee signatures against the treaty, proving that the majority of the tribe disagreed with it, but the treaty stood, and that was that.

The park ranger shared another disturbing detail: During the land lottery that gave Cherokee land to whites, recipients were asked to wait until the Cherokee were evacuated, but many families didn’t wait. They showed up at homes in North Georgia and demanded the Cherokee leave their property immediately. Some were evicted in harsh weather conditions with children and infants with nowhere to go.

In 1838, soldiers rounded up the remaining Cherokees and marched young and old to an Indian Territory established in Oklahoma. Historians estimate that over 4,000 Cherokees died on the Trail of Tears—a 1000-mile trek that took over four months.

We Americans have not always been on the heroic, peace-keeping side of history, and we need to understand that and more importantly, own it. I’m a believer that we should study these dark chapters of history and learn from them. History should never be sanitized or erased.

Today, my husband and I own eight acres in what was once Cherokee lands. I wonder about the peaceful families who once occupied these woods, and I hope when they were removed, they survived the journey and went on to live lives that had some joy in them after the terrible atrocity that happened here. I no longer pretend to be an Indian as I did in my childhood, but I do stop from time to time and think how the Cherokee felt being forced to leave this lovely land—their home. Perhaps the most meaningful way we can honor those who suffered is by carrying their stories forward into the future with the truth they deserve.

LIGHTING UP THE SKIES – The City of Soperton ended their annual July Jam festival with a bang on Saturday, July 12, as fireworks lit up the sky. Though the scheduled bands could not play because of rain, the festival still offered wares from several food vendors, a farmers market, and a fireworks display. The event is held annually during July.Photo by Makaylee Randolph