Chapter 14: Arrival in “Indian Country” (45.14)

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“Indian Country”

Perhaps most significantly, the 1828 treaty promised to place the guaranteed Cherokee lands outside of any state or even territory. The Land Laws of the 1780’s had established the United States codified laws for the settlement and governmental progression within its territories which would lead to statehood.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Territory

The Treaty with the Western Cherokee, 1828

The 1828 treaty specifically said that the Cherokees lands would not be within a state or territory boundary forever, that those lands would never be subject to those laws which promoted white settlement and eventual fee simple land tenure. The Cherokee lands were in “Indian Country.”

Each Cherokee removing from their land east of the Mississippi River to these new western Cherokee lands would have their costs of emigration paid, along with “provisions procured for their comfort, accommodation, and support, by the way, and provisions for twelve months after their arrival (in the west).”

$50 per Cherokee

For those which “shall have emigrated from within the Chartered limits of the State of Georgia, the sum of fifty dollars” in addition will be paid. The United States Government had determined that Georgia was going to be the focus of forced Indian removal. The 1828 treaty was attempting to preempt that action with money as early as 1828.

The Discovery of Gold on Cherokee Land Was Bad News

The discovery of gold on Cherokee land in Georgia at Dalton and Dahlonega in 1829 exaggerated the irritations between the Cherokees and the lawless Georgians who were invading Cherokee land and abusing Cherokee citizens. The gold issue seems to have been the impetus for the aggressive anti-Cherokee laws passed by the Georgia legislature, although the achieved Jeffersonian acculturalization and modernization of the tribe potentially preparing for U.S. citizenship for the Native Americans was the far more deep-seated cause.

Georgian laws that nullified Cherokee laws, laws that prohibited Cherokee government meetings and actions, the arrest of Cherokees who interfered with removal, laws that voided Cherokee contracts, and laws that made it illegal for Cherokees to dig for gold were examples of the “legal” harassment of Cherokees on their own land by the State of Georgia.

The Indian Removal Act

The Cherokee Nation felt the weight of these “legal” collars at the same time that Andrew Jackson asked Congress to pass the Indian Removal Act to remove all the Southeastern Indians from their heritage homelands. That bill passed both houses of Congress on May 23, 1830; then being signed by President Jackson on May 30, it became the law of the land.

As it was illegal for the Cherokee Nation to hold meetings in Georgia, they moved their governing headquarters to Red Clay, Tennessee. Over the next 5 years, factions within the Cherokee Nation, some for removal but most opposed, debated, resisted, associated, conspired, and denied a willingness to remove.

The Treaty of New Echota

Great enduring animosities were created within the tribe and well beyond, to include the tribe’s sympathetic American supporters, as the Jackson administration rolled over the wishes of the vast majority of Cherokees. Jackson supporters in the U.S. Senate passed by one vote the removal treaty, the Treaty of New Echota.

The treaty was signed on Dec. 29, 1835, and ratified by the U.S. Senate on May 23, 1836; it ceded the remaining seven million acres of Cherokee land east of the Mississippi River to the United States in exchange for land in Indian Territory and 5 million dollars. That Cherokee land is shown as Area 36 on the Royce Map below.

Area 36

Source: MoTrailofTears.com Geographic Information System (GIS)

Source: MoTrailofTears.com Geographic Information System (GIS)

Source: MoTrailofTears.com Geographic Information System (GIS) Missing Areas 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10A, 10B, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, & 36.

Final Removal

The treaty called for the final removal of all Cherokees from their homeland by 2 years from the date of ratification – May 23, 1838. No amount of public outrage changed the federal government’s actions toward removal. No pleading by the Cherokee Nation had any effect.

The removal was put in the hands of the U.S. Army, as the Secretary of War was in charge of Indian issues. Member of the House of Representatives John Q. Adams stated the acceptance by the senate “brings with it eternal disgrace upon the country.”

An Unsanctioned Treaty?

The Secretary of War, Lewis Cass, was advised by the federal enrolling agent that the Treaty of New Echota “is no treaty at all, because it was not sanctioned by the great body of the Cherokees and was made without their participation or assent….The business of making the treaty was transacted with a committee appointed by the Indians present from a delegation taken to Washington which had no more authority to make a treaty than any other dozen Cherokee accidentally picked out for the purpose.”

Six Hundred Volunteer to Leave

By January 1, 1837, about 600 Cherokees of affluence elected to voluntarily leave their homes and travel an overland trail to Indian Territory. This moneyed group traveled with fine horses and wagons, their Negro slaves, and fat oxen arriving in Indian Territory in time to plant crops for fall harvest.

A second volunteer group of 466 Cherokees, led by the U.S. military, did not fare as well. Departing from Ross’s Landing (Chattanooga) on March 3, 1837, on a fleet of eleven flatboats and three steamboats, the water voyage on the Tennessee and Ohio Rivers successfully delivered the group to Memphis.

The Arkansas River was a most treacherous and unforgiving waterway with snags, sawyers, and sand bars requiring a pilot trained and accustomed to the river to navigate the treacherous river. This party of Cherokees suffered greatly with ailments of every cause.

The Removal Trails

Below, the Royce Map is presented with the know Trail of Tears relocation routes overlain.

Council of August of 1837

A national council was called in August of 1837 to convince the Cherokees to be accepting of the removal with more promises mixed with intimidation with threat of military force. The government of the United States was going to enforce the removal whether the Cherokee were willing to leave or not.

Areas 37 through 47

Source: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15y1Sf3RKNv1TwoDodbRp6XnXD_pwmuPv/view?usp=drive_link

At that council an English geologist and geographer, George Featherstonhaugh, was present to watch as prayers were said and gospels sung invoking God’s rescue of the tormented Nation. Featherstonhaugh later wrote of his impressions of the event and of his disdain for the very idea that these Indians who had come so far in their pursuit of acculturalization that President Jefferson had urged:

This spectacle…led me into reflection upon the opinion which is so generally entertained of its being impossible to civilize the Indian….Here is a remarkable instance which seems to furnish a conclusive answer…A whole Indian nation abandons the pagan practices of their ancestors, adopts the Christian religion, uses books printed in their own language, submits to the government of their elders, builds houses and temples of worship, relies upon agriculture for their support, and produces men of great ability to rule over them…Are not these the great principles of civilization?
They were driven from their religious and social state then, not because they cannot be civilized, but because a pseudo set of civilized beings, who are too strong for them want their possessions.”

The Lieutenant B.B. Cannon Detachment

On October 14, 1837, a third party of Cherokees who had supported the removal treaty, the Lt. B.B. Cannon Detachment, left the Cherokee Agency at Ft. Cass heading overland to Indian Territory. This group and the previous two needed to get out of the Nation to avoid death for their support of the treaty.

Note: The Missouri Trail of Tears Association has devoted considerable effort to present the Diary of Lt. BB Canon as he relocated a contingent of Cherokee in the Cannon Detachment. The graphic above is used to present the events recorded in his journal

This detachment of 365 Cherokees established the land route generally followed by the remaining 12,000 Cherokees in the forced removal. From the Cherokee Agency near Calhoun, the detachment crossed the Tennessee River at Blythe’s Ferry, marching, it was a military detachment, onto Nashville several days later. At Nashville two of the Cherokee leaders in the detachment visited Andrew Jackson at the Hermitage prior to crossing the Cumberland River.

Source: The Interactive (ArcGIS Online) Cannon Detachment Map

The Missouri Story of the Trail of Tears Begins

After crossing the Cumberland River on the toll bridge, the detachment marched northwesterly, crossing the Ohio River at Golconda. Specifically, Cannon led his detachment onto the Mississippi River, crossing at Willard’s Landing, marching through the city of Jackson, Missouri, traveling through Southeastern Missouri to Farmington, continuing westward through the Meramec River Hills, and eventually summiting the prairie of western Missouri at the intersection to the Springfield-to-St. Louis Road (Link to GLO), leading them to Indian Territory.

The Missouri Story of the Trail of Tears recounts that leg of the trek.

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