THE FIRST TRAIL OF TEARS- Early Arrivals in 1832 Western Cherokees
THE FIRST TRAIL OF TEARS- Early Arrivals in 1832 Western Cherokees Grand Lake Business Journal
The Trail of Tears during the winter of 1838-39, resulting in the removal of massive numbers of Cherokees from Georgia is a well documented and publicized historic event. Prompted by the Treaty of New Echota, approved by a minority of Cherokee delegates in 1835, forced removal followed. That horrific event later led to assassinations and divisions within the Cherokee Nation that still reverberate. But it wasn’t the first forced removal of Cherokees by the federal government that occurred ten years earlier.
THE FIRST TRAIL OF TEARS- Early Arrivals in 1832 Western Cherokees . This earlier trek to what had recently been designated “Indian Territory” involved smaller groups ranging from 40 or 50 families beginning in 1829 to as many as a contingent of 600 continuing through April of 1832, an estimated 3,000 in all according to Arkansas newspaper records and missionary journals. The reports also indicated that many of those migrants were destitute, so poor they sold their Indian Territory claims to speculators just to buy food and supplies. But who were these Cherokees and what prompted their journey?
These were Western Cherokees, some of whom could trace their origins through oral history to eight or nine hundred years before in what would later become the states of Arkansas and Missouri. Others migrated from the east in the 1700s when Europeans began arriving in the new world. More recent arrivals came in the early 1800s due to unrest in Tennessee and Georgia. These Western Cherokees had become a powerful force west of the Mississippi River by the mid-1700s. And through treaties in 1817 and 1819, the United States recognized them as the Cherokee Nation West. One estimate indicated that at least 30,000 Cherokees lived just in Arkansas at the time. By 1813 the number of Western Cherokees had become so large, the federal government assigned them their own agent, William Lovely. The second treaty with the United States in 1819 had formally separated the Western from the Eastern Cherokee, recognizing them as an independent nation. John Jolly was elected as Principal Chief that same year and the new nation set about formulating its own constitution and laws.
The initial events that precipitated the first Trail of Tears in 1829 for the Western Cherokee somewhat mirror the Treaty of New Echota that later created a similar problem for the Eastern Cherokee. During the spring of 1828, a delegation was sent to Washington to address several issues involving unfulfilled treaty agreements. Without any authority, part of that delegation proceeded to negotiate an exchange of land in Arkansas for land in the newly designated Indian Territory. That agreement was rushed through legislative procedures and immediately approved by the United States government. Predictably, when the delegates returned home the Western Cherokee government declared it null and void, but the government ignored them and proceeded with the exchange. However, this is where the similarity between the origins of the two nations’ “trails” end.
In 1828 and 1829, the Western Cherokees, under the supervision of Chief Jolly relocated their government offices from Piney, Arkansas to Tahlontiskee, Indian Territory near Deep Creek, south of present day Gore. Perhaps because gold was discovered in Georgia that same year the federal government may have been preoccupied, so the task of actual removal of Western Cherokees became the responsibilities of the states of Missouri and Arkansas. Both passed legislation requiring tribesman, some whose families had occupied the land for a century, to show written evidence of title, which of course did not exist. In Missouri, laws were passed preventing Indians from “roaming and hunting.” Another required them to divest themselves of “Indian style” clothing. Although a variety of similar insidious laws were passed, the two states could not muster the resources to enforce them, so while a small percent of Western Cherokees were forced to move, most did not. Confirming those earlier estimates, an 1851 “Old Settlers Roll,” indicated there were only 3,000 Western Cherokees living in Indian Territory by 1839.
In contrast, not only were the Eastern Cherokees harassed by the state of Georgia and the federal government for several years, Andrew Jackson, who campaigned for Indian removal, was elected in 1830. Consequently, the might of the United States government was focused on the forced removal of the Eastern Cherokees.
So, the impact of these two Trails of Tears differed considerably. Still, for the next 25 years members of these two Cherokee Nations attempted to work together. A government would be organized, a school system developed and living conditions would improve…until the Civil War. THE FIRST TRAIL OF TEARS- Early Arrivals in 1832 Western Cherokees.
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