The Trail of Tears was the forced migration of numerous indigenous American tribes from their ancestral lands in the US Southeast to new territory in Oklahoma. The journey resulted in the deaths of over 4,000 Native Americans along the way. But what was everyday life on the Trail of Tears like?
Well, today we're going to take a look at some of the brutal realities of everyday life on the Trail of Tears. But before we get started, be sure to subscribe to the Weird History channel. After that, we'd be much obliged if you would leave a comment and let us know what other indigenous American topics you would like to hear about. OK, let's walk down this trail of tears.
On May 28, 1830, US President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, a document that authorized the American government to extinguish Indian titles to lands in the nation's southeast. That act also authorized the president to negotiate with native tribes in order to gain access and make improvements to their lands, as well as offer resettlement funds to those tribes and groups willing to move west. Even in its own time, the act was highly controversial.
While many Americans, particularly those in the south and the largest state, Georgia, supported its passage, many others opposed the act, including a large number of Christian missionaries and several sitting members of Congress. Indeed, it was only after a long... bitter series of debates that the act finally was passed by the legislature. While its ultimate goal was to turn those lands over to settlers, the Indian Removal Act did not explicitly grant Jackson permission to forcibly remove native inhabitants. Nonetheless, the five so-called civilized tribes, which included the Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, Cherokee, and Seminole, as well as the Wyandotte, Kickapoo, Pottawatomie, Shawnee, and Lenape.
were all ultimately removed from their lands, and force was often a major factor. The tribes were sent west on a trip that would eventually become known as the Trail of Tears. Native Americans, still ubiquitously known as Indians among the white population at the time, weren't terribly popular in many of the states the Trail of Tears took them through. Therefore, at numerous points along the journey, they were forced to go many miles off the main route in order to avoid towns and cities where residents simply did not want them to come through. In some of these places, the landowners would charge them fees to cross over their lands.
And not surprisingly, those fees weren't cheap. For example, after traveling through Tennessee and Kentucky, the Cherokee reached southern Illinois. But they had to cross the Ohio River to get there.
To cross the river on a ferry, the Cherokee were charged $1 a head, the equivalent of $22.26 today. Other users of the ferry, meanwhile, typically paid a mere $0.12, which was the equivalent of $2.67 today. A soldier named John G. Burnett, a private in Abraham McClellan's company who was assigned to help translate on the Trail of Tears, recorded his memories of the trail on his 80th birthday.
In those memoirs, he pulled no punches. And based on his firsthand knowledge, he characterized the trail as the most brutal order in the history of American warfare. While Burnett's recorded memories provide many deeply moving and personal details from the trail, it is his recollections of the brutal weather faced by the travelers that he refers to the most. And the natives who walked the trail were, indeed, forced to face harsh weather. In May of 1838, for example, the Cherokee were rounded up and put into stockades in Cleveland, Tennessee, until October of that year, when they finally began the trail.
This means that they had to complete the thousand-mile journey in the dead of winter. As Burnett remembers, many were forced to walk in bare feet with only the thinnest blankets for warmth as the sleet and snow fell on them. Due to the cold and exposure, many contracted illnesses like pneumonia.
An untold number succumbed as a result. Picture this scene. After being removed from their ancestral homeland and forced by the US government to head to an unknown place in order to survive, Hundreds of sick and dying Native Americans struggled to travel across miles of freezing, desolate land. And as they persevere, spectators stand along the sides of the road, offering no help or relief, but rather staring on in silence, watching for their own interest.
It sounds cruel, but that's exactly the way it happened. Consider, for example, the testimony of Samuel Cloud, who turned nine years old on the Trail of Tears. His story was recorded by his great-grandson.
And among the many sad reminiscences that Cloud recounts, the very ending of his story stands out in its perversity. Cloud recalled that by the end, he hated the white people who lined the roads in their woolen clothes that kept them warm, watching the Indians pass. Yes, Native Americans weren't the only ones who wound up walking the Trail of Tears.
Piling one injustice on top of another, many of the Cherokees brought their slaves along the trail with them as they moved from their homeland in Tennessee to the land allotted to them in Oklahoma. These enslaved African-Americans were not only tasked with dealing with the incredibly inhospitable conditions of the trail, but they also had to serve their Cherokee masters while they traveled. They hunted for food and prepared it, washed clothes, cared for the sick. guarded camps, and served as scouts along the trail.
Along the trail, pretty much every essential was in short supply. Travelers had no regular or easy access to food, water, shelter, clothes, or medicine. And very little game could be found and killed along the trail to supplement the meager available rations.
As a result, many died of starvation along the way. And even coffins for the dead weren't readily available. In addition, There was a terrible drought that same year, and the first group dispatched along the trail in August of 1838 had to return to the base camp in present-day Chattanooga, Tennessee, because the creeks and rivers were dried up.
Dehydration, along with starvation, wound up killing many on the Trail of Tears. Private John Burnett remembers taking part in only one confrontation on the trail, one with a teamster who was whipping an elderly man to hurry along into a wagon. Private Burnett would later write that the sight of that old and nearly blind creature quivering under the lashes of a bullwhip was too much for him.
Having reached his breaking point with the cruelty, the private started a fight with the Teamster in order to defend the man, sustaining an injury to his face in the process. And Burnett's account isn't the only one of its kind. Conflicts, either with brutal Teamsters or with local militias, were regular dangers to those that walked the Trail of Tears. Many accounts of the Trail of Tears included discussion of the lack of wagon space available to the travelers. Because there weren't enough wagons, like pretty much every other necessity on the trail, only the very young, the very old, the sick, and nursing mothers were allowed to ride in them.
As a result, the majority of those forcibly relocated along the trail were forced to cover 1,000 miles on foot. And if that wasn't bad enough, many were forced to make the walk without shoes. A traveler from Maine happened upon one of the caravans in Kentucky and wrote that, even aged females, apparently nearly ready to drop into the grave, were traveling with heavy burdens attached to their back in their bare feet. The route that most Cherokee took west used what is now called the Northern Route, which wound its way from through Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas before reaching Oklahoma.
The distance totaled roughly 1,000 miles. The Cherokee anticipated this route taking two months for completion. However, as a result of the terrible traveling conditions, meager rations, and illnesses, the journey took nearly four months to complete. If you do the math, it means that the travelers had a meager daily mileage of between eight and nine miles. The passage of the Indian Removal Act didn't leave the Native Americans with a lot of great options.
Their choices were basically to move or to stand and fight against an overwhelmingly more powerful force. Most chose to relocate, but not all. In Florida, for example, the Seminole Indians decided to go to war against the US government rather than be removed from their homeland.
When the US Army arrived in Florida in 1835, ready to enforce the treaty required acquiring the Seminoles to give up their land, they were ambushed by 180 Seminole warriors. In response, the US government spent over $20 million in war expenses battling the Seminoles. The war, which lasted until 1842, left more than 1,500 soldiers dead and resulted in the removal of many Seminoles. However, some Seminoles were able to remain, setting up communities deep in the Florida Everglades. Historians estimate that roughly 4,000 Cherokees died on the Trail of Tears.
Some died from exposure to the elements, others from starvation, others from illness, and still others from their advanced age coupled with the brutal conditions. Because of the frigid temperatures and wintry conditions, those who were buried were interred in shallow graves, with very little ceremony along the way. By the 1840s, tens of thousands of indigenous Americans had been forcibly relocated from their ancestral lands of the southeast to their new home across the Mississippi River, which was known as Indian Territory. At the time, the US government repeatedly swore that this new location would never be encroached on by settlers. But as we know today, it did not go that way.
As the United States continued to pursue its manifest destiny and expand further westward, the so-called Indian Territory got progressively smaller. and smaller. Finally, on September 17, 1907, Oklahoma became the 46th US state, and the Indian Territory was officially no more. The path of the Trail of Tears ran through nine separate states, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. Now known as the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, the route is maintained and run by the National Park Service.
While it is no longer possible to walk the entire trail as it was traveled by Native Americans and African-Americans of the 1830s, various portions of the path are still accessible on foot, by bicycle, on horseback, or in a car. So what do you think? What was the most surprising thing you learned?
Let us know in the comments below. And while you're at it, check out some of these other videos from our Weird History.