I can feel his [my father’s] anger and frustration. There is nothing he can do. From my mother I feel fear. I am filled with fear, too. What is going on? I was just playing, but now my family and my friends’ families are gathered together and told to walk at the point of a bayonet.
Samuel Cloud
They pounded so hard that the door nearly came off its hinges. Soldiers, foreign soldiers, burst into the house with rifles drawn, pointing them at the children. The soldiers were yelling: “You had two years! You made your choice! Now, get up! Let’s go!” The family was allowed to take the clothes on their backs and little else. They were forced into a fenced stockade, and herded like cattle.
The family stayed there for months with no shelter above and red clay as a bed. They stayed penned up with many other families in close quarters, and they were left exposed to sickness and disease. Some two thousand Cherokee died in the stockades. This hell was Fort Wool, located in New Echota. Thus began the “Trail Where We Cried” or, as we know it today, “The Trail of Tears.” (See Sources in my book, Lost Towns of North Georgia)
When it was finally time to travel, the weather had turned cold. 1838 brought a harsh winter down on the Cherokees. Supplies of dried corn and salt pork ran low, and few people along the way offered help, while others took advantage and charged inflated grain prices. The Mississippi River was frozen. Many groups were trapped between the Mississippi and another river frozen behind them. They could no longer move forward; they were stuck for weeks in ice and snow.
Many spots were impassable, but the Cherokee were pushed by gunpoint to a new land west of the Mississippi. Eventually, fifteen thousand Cherokee, mostly on foot, made the seven-hundred to eight-hundred-mile journey, which averaged 120 days. Over four thousand would never see their new home.36 New Echota, the Cherokee capital, was lost to history.
Samuel Cloud was nine years old when he made this journey. His father had already died:
We walk across the frozen earth. Nothing seems right anymore—the cold seeps through my clothes. I wish I had my blanket. I remember last winter, I had a blanket when I was warm. I don’t feel like I’ll ever be warm again. I remember my father’s smile. It seems like so long ago.
Imagine
Imagine this happening today.
A foreign government is taking you and your family away from the only land you have ever known. Wouldn’t you feel betrayed? Your political leaders signed away your home and property to a hostile enemy. Impossible! But it happened in 1836 when Congress passed a treaty to remove the Indians from Cherokee land in North Georgia. President Andrew Jackson signed it into law; the Cherokee had two years to get off the land. The worst part was that the Treaty of New Echota was signed by three of their own: Elias Boudinot (1804–1839), Major John Ridge (1771–1839), and John Ridge (1802–1839). These men later paid a high price for their betrayal.
Assimilation
At the end of the American Revolution, the United States initiated a “civilization” policy, funding missionary groups to go among the tribes and “Americanize” the Cherokees, Choctaws, Seminoles, Chickasaws, and Creeks. The young government promised Native Americans that if they could become more “white” like their neighbors, they would become social and political equals. Thomas Jefferson even commented that, someday, the Indians might be equal to whites.
Cherokees owned most of North Georgia. The Cherokee Nation was a sovereign country, but its members knew that fighting the whites would not end successfully. After all, it had not worked for the Creek Indians. They decided to continue assimilation as a means to be accepted and to protect their way of life.
Cherokees were encouraged to grow wheat instead of corn and to have regular meal times. They were taught how to dress in English clothing and speak English. They changed their names to common Anglo names. They went to mission schools, and the wealthy sent their children to Northern schools. The Cherokees were indoctrinated into Christianity.40 The Cherokees and leaders like Elias Boudinot encouraged acculturation, a strategy to assimilate Anglo-Saxon ways for acceptance into society. They hoped that the government would leave them alone. In the process, they created their own constitution, government, capital, and a new language.
The leaders established the Cherokee Nation capital in New Echota. In 1827, they wrote a constitution with two preambles, like that of the United States. In addition, they created a court and a meetinghouse. John Ross was appointed their principal chief, the equivalent to the president. The Cherokees set up “eight judicial districts and a bicameral congress. All of this for a population of about 20,000 people living in an area a fraction of the size of Georgia.”
A Cherokee named Sequoyah never learned to speak, read, or write the English language, but in 1821, he invented a Cherokee syllabary with 86 characters. His language system is similar to Chinese in that a symbol exists for every word. He worked on it for years and neglected his crops. His neighbors called him insane, and his wife burned his work. She thought it was witchcraft or sorcery. Many Cherokees did not see the point. Despite the roadblocks, by 1825, it was in general use, and the Cherokees were more literate than their Georgia mountain neighbors
Boudinot traveled and spoke to raise money for the Cherokee Nation. Monies from his writing allowed him to purchase a printing press, and the first Indian newspaper was created. The Phoenix was written in both English and the Cherokee language. When Boudinot returned home, he helped Sequoyah by editing the newspaper. He also translated the New Testament for publication on the front page.
All of this assimilation and acculturation was in vain, however. Georgians did not care how civilized the Cherokees became—they wanted them out. And they wanted their land—all of it.
There’s Gold in that Cherokee Land
The first gold rush was not out West but in North Georgia. Auraria, a little town near Dahlonega in Lumpkin County, was rich in gold—flakes were lying on the cut ridges in the red clay. In the middle of sovereign Cherokee land, Auraria found itself at the center of a gold rush. The Georgia government was impatient with the federal government’s promise to remove the Cherokees from North Georgia. With an all-out gold rush, the state was ready to move. At the same time that gold was found, the Indian Removal Act passed in Congress. This only strengthened Georgia’s resolve to remove the Cherokees.
The Georgia legislators got busy creating new laws. Cherokees were not allowed to conduct tribal business, enter contracts, testify in court against whites, or mine for gold. In addition, the state divided the Cherokee Nation into several northern counties. At the same time, the state created laws in 1830, inciting the Indians to take their case to court. Since creating the counties, Georgia declared their ownership of Cherokee land and required everyone to follow Georgia law. Among the new laws was the ruling that whites living on Cherokee land must get a permit and then swear a loyalty oath to the governor.
Samuel Worcester, a white missionary living on Cherokee land in New Echota, refused to take the loyalty oath to the governor. He was arrested and jailed. The Cherokees fought the government, not with arrows, but by going to court—eventually the Supreme Court.
Justice John Marshall declared Georgia’s law invalid because the Cherokee land was not under Georgia’s authority. Marshall’s decision supported the Cherokee Nation and demanded the release of Samuel Worcester for living with the Indians. President Jackson said, “Chief Justice Marshall made his ‘decision.’ Let him enforce it.”
Georgia’s government ignored the Supreme Court ruling. In the Gold Lottery of 1832, Georgia began parceling the land that once belonged to the Cherokees. Land and gold lots could be purchased for ten dollars per lot. Land- and gold-hungry Georgians wanted the Native Americans gone, removed to the west of the Mississippi.
The Indian Holocaust
President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830. This act gave the federal government authority to exchange land, such as that in North Georgia, for land west of the Mississippi River—an “Indian colonization zone” that the United States had acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase. This “Indian territory” was located in present-day Oklahoma.
Most Cherokees did not want to leave their homeland, but a few ruling-class Cherokees felt they should go. The biggest proponent of this was the Ridge family: Elias Boudinot (1804–1839), Major John Ridge (1771– 1839) and John Ridge (1802–1839). Boudinot wrote articles for the Cherokee newspaper encouraging the Nation to support the New Echota Treaty. The principal chief, John Ross, fought against this and asked other Cherokees to sign a petition that he would take to Washington. The government took advantage of this rift, offering money to the Cherokee Nation. The minority faction took action.
On December 29, 1835, the Ridges and a few others signed the New Echota Treaty without Chief Ross's authorization. The treaty allowed the government to remove the Cherokees legally west of the Mississippi. It gave the Cherokee Nation two years to remove themselves, providing them with $5 million and a new homeland.46 Only two thousand Cherokees left with the Ridges to the new territory. The remainder stayed until the bitter end.
The deadline for the Cherokee removal was May 1838. Just weeks before that deadline, John Ross gathered 15,665 signatures from almost every Cherokee remaining in the East. He took the petitions to Congress, but due to a gun dual between two representatives, Congress adjourned, and they never saw the 160-foot-long petition sewn together into one long scroll. Congress never returned to Ross’s petition. On the morning of May 26, 1838, federal troops and state militia began gathering the Cherokees for forced removal.
John Ross tried to intercede, but all was lost. In retaliation, Boudinot and the Ridges were beaten and knifed by unknown assailants in the new Cherokee land. This is how one survivor felt about leaving the land they loved:
Long time we travel on way to new land. People feel bad when they leave Old Nation. Women’s cry and make sad wails. Children cry and many men cry . . . but they say nothing and just put heads down and keep on go towards West. Many days pass and people die very much.
Samuel Cloud
Michael Rutledge wrote about his grandfather Samuel Cloud’s experience as a nine-year-old boy on the Trail of Tears in his paper “Forgiveness in the Age of Forgetfulness”:
I know what it is to hate. I hate those white soldiers who took us from our home. I hate the soldiers who make us keep walking through the snow and ice toward this new home that none of us ever wanted. I hate the people who killed my father and mother.
I hate the white people who lined the roads in their woolen clothes that kept them warm, watching us pass. None of those white people are here to say they are sorry that I am alone. None of them cared about me or my people. All they ever saw was the color of our skin. All I see is the color of theirs, and I hate them.
Providing a soldier’s perspective, Private John G. Burnett wrote this in his diary:
I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven at the bayonet point into the stockades. And in the chill of a drizzling rain on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle or sheep into six hundred and forty-five wagons and started toward the west. On the morning of November the 17th we encountered a terrific sleet and snowstorm with freezing temperatures and from that day until we reached the end of the fateful journey on March the 26th 1839, the sufferings of the Cherokees were awful. The trail of the exiles was a trail of death. They had to sleep in the wagons and on the ground without fire. And I have known as many as twenty-two of them to die in one night of pneumonia due to ill treatment, cold and exposure.
Private John G. Burnett Captain Abraham McClellan’s Company, 2nd Regiment, 2nd Brigade, Mounted Infantry Cherokee Indian Removal 1838–3950
John Ross lost his wife on the trail but began again when he reached Oklahoma. He reinstated the Cherokee Nation and set up a new capital. Ross continued to fight for his people as the principal chief until his death on August 1, 1866. New Echota, Georgia, the sophisticated capital of the Cherokee Nation, was silent and lost until 1954.
New Town for New Echota
New Echota, once called New Town, was lost to nature. The property was converted into farmland; the only remaining building was the Worcester House. A group of citizens bought 200 acres of the lost town and deeded it to the state. Archaeological excavations began uncovering foundations and roads. The Worcester House was restored. Chief Vann’s Tavern was saved from the waters of Lake Lanier and moved to the site.
The Supreme Court House, Phoenix Printing Office, and other buildings were dedicated on May 12, 1962. On that day, the Georgia Legislature repealed the laws still on the books that denied the Cherokees the right to their land.
A museum was built in 1969. A cabin was restored in 1983. A Cherokee homestead was recreated, and in 1994, the Council House was reconstructed. New Echota Historic Site in Gordon County preserves what is left of the Cherokee capital.51 Visiting this historical site, reality sets in: this was sovereign Cherokee land; the ground you are standing on was stolen. Cherokees know what their ancestors sacrificed to stay as one nation, even if they were removed from their native land. Georgians gained land and gold, but the question nags, What did they learn?
Listen to me read this chapter: