The Trail of Tears: A Forgotten Blight on American History

Over the span of seven years in American history, the US government and military took part in what could be considered an act of genocide with the forced removal of five Native American nations from the south eastern states. Former County Executive and Oradell native William "Pat" Schuber gave a lecture on the long forgotten history of The Trail of Tears at the Oradell Library.

"It's not a shining moment in America's history," the Fairleigh Dickinson professor said. "But it deserves learning from. The Trail of Tears was the forced eviction of the Cherokee in 1838 for 800-miles to Indian Territory in Oklahoma. It's a difficult part of history but it needs revisiting because it is not endimic to one trib, but to several tribes from southeast America."

The Trail of Tears included the removal of not only the Cherokee but also that of the Seminole, Chocktaw, Chickasaw and Creek nations, led by President Andrew Jackson from 1831 to 1837 from Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Florita.

"There is a myth perpetrated that the Indian Nations of the West were resistant to white people while those on the eastern seaboard were more passive," Schuber said. "But that is just no true. Those nations on the east coach were more advanced than the whites gave them credit for."

According to Schuber, to understand the Trail of Tears, you have to look back in history to just before the War of 1812 when Shawnee Chief Tecumsah visisted the Creek Nation to promote the idea of a Pan Indian Confederation.

Around the same time that Tecumsah was inciting other Native Americans to rise up against the Americans, the Creek Nation battled one another in a civil war between those that supported Tecumsah and those that did not.

"In August 1813, the worst frontier massacre of white settlers took place when 600 Red Sticks slaughted 275 settlers at Fort Mims," Schuber said. "The Red Sticks waited until the fort's doors were opened and then stormed inside. It caused a reverberation greated than the incident and as a result brought four armies and Andrew Jackson leading the Tennessee militia into the area."

Jackson and his men later decimated the Red Sticks at the Battle of Horsehoe Bend which as an ultimate result led to the Trail of Tears.

But historically, Jackson's administration was not the only one with an anti-Indian policy. President George Washington, while treating Indians as sovereign nations, ordered that all treaties be signed through the War Department. President Thomas Jefferson implemented a policy of negotiated Indian removal following the Louisiana Purchase.

Jackson's policy was the harshest though, believing that Indians posed a national securty threat, but were subject to federal law. Also he embraced Indian removal as a way to "save Indian civilization." Of the five Native American nations, all but the Seminole would sign a treaty with Jackson to cede their lands to the United States and when it came to voluntary removal to Oklahoma, the Cherokee alone refused to leave.

"The Cherokee ratifiyed their own constitutution, similar to the United States Consitution declaring their sovereignty," Schuber said. "They also hired lawyers to defend them in court with Supreme Court Chief Justive Jon Marshall ruling that the Cherokee are a 'domestic dependent nation to be protected from the actions of individual states' but must follow federal law."

In the end though, the Cherokee were forced to evacuate to Oklahoma.

During the Trail of Tears, approximately 46,000 Native Americans were forcibly removed from southeastern American with between 6,500 to 10,000 dying due to exhaustation, disease, lack of fund and clothing and murder by angry settlers.

"Today there are 565 federally recognized Native American tribes with the Cherokee nation as the largest with 300,000 members in Oklahoma," Schuber said. "The Creek have 250,000; the Seminole are 150,00; and the Chickasaw and Choctaw are have 100,000. They all prosper today by owning casino's and despite the glowing lights of a casino's lights, it masks the blight on American history."

To this day, members of the Seminole Nation can still be found in the Florida Everglades and Cherokee continue to live in the Great Smokey Mountains of North Carolina.