History of the Trail of Tears, Part II

In the second of two parts, what was once a voluntary resettlement program becomes a violent, forced relocation under the leadership of President Andrew Jackson.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know from house Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry's over there.
And this is part two of the Trail of Tears,
which we already did part one. If you haven't heard that,

(00:23):
I would strongly recommend you go listen to that one first. Yes, uh,
and just a fifteen second recap of part one. Um,
we earned eighteen thirty roughly, and uh, America is getting
along great with Native Americans and they say, why don't
we all just live together and we can all just
share wealth the end. Oh wait, that's not what was

(00:45):
happening at all. No Americans wanted more land Indians headland.
Americans felt that the Indians weren't putting it to good
enough use and used that to morally justify forcing them
to leave their land. That's right in the forum officially
of the eighteen thirty Removal Act. And uh, that's where
we pick up in the government said, you know what,

(01:08):
let's start off with future podcaster Chuck Bryant's tribe, the
Choco Tall. Are you Choco Tall? I have very uh
negligible amount of chocodall as long as it's not negligent. No.
In fact, I'm not exactly sure how much, but I
know my uh we but I think my dad did

(01:29):
my family tree at one point and I got some
chocd on me. I love Choctaw. Yeah, that's great. So
they picked the Choctall because they said, um, well they're
pretty friendly and we think this can be a good
um I mean, was it sort of a proof of concept?
That's what I how this could work. They said, how
about you guys go first? And the Choctaw said, okay, fine,

(01:51):
we'll sign this. We'll sign this treaty where we're going
to seed all of our land east of the Mississippi
to the federal government and in exchange, we're going to
get a sizeable amount of land in this new Indian
territory what you guys will later call Oklahoma. And the
Choctaw again, they they went largely willingly, even though they

(02:16):
were split internally, like all the tribes were to some degree, right,
but the the there were and there were three divisions.
In the Eastern division, which was led by Chief Mushila
tobi Uh. He basically said, you know what, we're not
gonna win this war. Let's just we'll just sign this treaty.
So he negotiated the treaty, and the Choctaw moved, and

(02:38):
as they were moving, they they the whole thing was
carried out, The whole Indian removal process was carried out
by the War Department, which in and of itself says something.
The fact that it's being carried out by federal soldiers
with guns and bayonets, um, rather than say, some other
civilian department. That in and of itself says a lot. Right,

(02:59):
that's going to form a certain type of um tension
to the whole thing. Yeah, it reminds me of the
great movie. Uh, Doctor Strangelove. There's no fighting in the
war room. It's one of the best lines from that movie.
So the Choctaw are going. Some of them said no,
I'm not going, and they were shackled and bound and

(03:20):
were forced to undertake this journey. Um. I think if
you if you look at the the trail that the
Cherokees took, I think it was like miles for them.
They were coming from the Carolinas and Georgia by way
of Middle Tennessee. I think. But the choctawer we're coming

(03:42):
from Mississippi and Alabama. It may have been a little shorter,
but regardless, the Choctaw were forced to march Um with
very little supplies, with very little care taken to prevent
them from dying, Um for several hundred, if not a
thousand miles out of their homelands to this new Indian
terror tory, and a lot of them did die on
the way. Yeah, And I get the feeling that the

(04:04):
you know, the ones dying were like the attitude as well,
that's just fewer people we have to worry about. That
is very astute. I think that that is kind of
the impression that it was kind of like you're you're lucky,
we're letting any of you move anyway and not just
exterminating all of you. Right, and again, like I pointed
out in the last episode, um, there was I think

(04:27):
in this other attitude that like, well, I mean, you're
you're American Indians. You can just it doesn't matter where
you're from. You can get along out there, Like it
doesn't matter that you're coming from the lush, green uh
southeastern what would become United States and moving out to
the Great Plains, which you know nothing about you don't
know how to succeed their farm there. Necessarily, they probably
could have figured it out because they had done so

(04:50):
all across North America for you know, eons, but um,
it was they weren't set up for success in any
way being relocated. So Choctaw died along the way out
of twenty thousand died in three waves of migration, and
the first group to arrive in Oklahoma found some reporters

(05:13):
waiting there and um, there too already, Yeah, there were
settlers and when the I'm sure when the eastern tribes
got there, they were like white people, know you promised, Um,
But when the when the first group, the first of
the three Choctall waves, and from what I understand, they
were the first ones to move under the Indian Removal Act.

(05:35):
But when they got there, there were some reporters there
that said, you know, how, how was it basically one
scale of one to ten. And one of the Choctaw
chiefs who who it was exactly was lost to history
was either Chief Nitta Catchy or Chief John Harkins, and
one who described it as a trail of tears and death.
And that's where the Trail of Cheers ultimately got it's

(05:57):
its name from was an an unknown Choctaw chief who
were the was among the first to arrive in Oklahoma. Yeah,
and you'll hear um a lot of names in this
part two, like Chief John Harkins, and you're like, wait
a minute, that doesn't sound like a very American Indian name.
And these are just great examples of how unculturated some

(06:21):
of these factions of tribes had become like they were
speaking English, they were had English names, and um still
being removed. Yeah and again traded extensively white people. A
lot of them were Christian Um, some of them fought
alongside the federal government, and yes, they were still being removed,
all right, So the Trail of Tears was kind of

(06:43):
coined there, although it wouldn't like you said earlier in
the first episode that the the the Cherokee Trail of
Tears is sort of what most people think about is
the official Trail of tears. But regardless, this reporter got this,
blasted it out, and the whole world sort of is
now privy to these stories of this atrocity going on.

(07:03):
So you might think, well, they probably just tried this
once then and got so much blowback that they said Yeah,
this is does not look good for us. Um, so
we should kind of stop it. Yeah that's not how
it went. No, not how it went at all. No,
the the whole process ground on. I think there was
kind of a probably a sense among the pro removal

(07:24):
factions in Washington saying like just died out of its
way less than we thought it was gonna be, you know,
an acceptable amount of casualties. Basically, so um and um.
With with the white Americans as well, the idea was
ultimately Indians are gonna be free from encroachment by whites

(07:46):
out there in Indian territory. The War Department is tasked
with making sure that happens. The War Department did not
do that, and in fact, when they got out west,
they found the same type of harassment and encroachment that
that they experienced east of the Mississippi as well. Well,
maybe worse too, because not only were white settlers west

(08:06):
of the Mississippi encroaching, they, like we talked about in
episode one, there were already plains Indians. They were like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
whoa who who are these people? You know, I know
they look like us, but we're different, you know. And
the White settlers, like what are you talking about, Like,
we're encroaching on your land too, So it was it
was not friendly in any way, you know, this arrival. Plus,

(08:30):
also after the War of eighteen twelve and um the
Seminole Wars, the US didn't have any European powers on
the continent any longer, which meant two things. One, the
Indians weren't a useful buffer between the US and say
the British, they didn't need. They weren't needed in that
respect any longer, which put them in a very shaky position.

(08:53):
And then secondly, there was no European power that the
Indians could ally themselves with to check a Erican aggression
against they had done with both Britain and Spain. So
after that and during this Indian removal process, part of
the reason why it was so rough and brutal was
because there was no reason outside of anything moral, to

(09:16):
check American aggression in this process. Yeah, so things got worse.
A bad situation got worse. Right here in Georgia again
with the Cherokee Nation, they held these lotteries between eighteen
o five and eighteen thirty two. They had seven lotteries
basically where you could Uh, a white male could, if

(09:36):
you're over eighteen years old, could buy a lottery ticket
for four bucks about a hundred dollars today, and that
would give you a chance if you were picked to
buy a hundred and sixty acre tract of land that
was not theirs, right, That kind of says it all. Yeah,
And those those a lot of those parcels still exist.
You can trace the the land parcels back to the

(09:59):
original lot today. We call them subdivisions. Yeah, you know, yeah,
he said about three quarters of these parcels in Georgia
you can still trace backs. That's amazing. So the Chickasaws
were up next, Chuck. They were sick of being harassed
and um by white settlers and said, we're out of here.
We'll we'll we'll take the government up on its offer.

(10:20):
Here are all of our lands east of the Mississippi.
We'll take some land west of the Mississippi. And the
government said, great, here's a treaty, let's sign it. Uh,
slape each other on the back, maybe have a cigar,
and that's that. And the Choctawk got or the Chickasaw
got out to Indian Territory and found they didn't have
any land out there. Yeah, they had to negotiate with

(10:43):
the Choctaw who'd gotten out there a year or two earlier,
to buy some of their land. Talk about a raw deal, Well,
it is a raw deal. And it's interesting that some
of the um I mean, I don't think word was
getting back, but you could see a little bit of
the wisdom of well, hey, the writings on the wall,
So at least we can get out there early and

(11:04):
claim some land of our own. And that's what happened.
You know, the Choctaw had claimed this land, and then
the Chickasaw had to come out there and deal with them.
Well I think I think no, I think they they
had been given actual territory by the federal government, but
they they it didn't pan out. They hadn't actually gotten
that land, right, I mean, it wasn't, like you said,

(11:25):
the War Department just sort of wash their hands of it.
All right. So then you also have the Seminole as well, Right,
the Seminal took a different tax. They they were definitely
the ones that were the biggest thorn in the side
of the Indian removal process. Yeah. Sure, So you remember
back in I think eighteen seventeen, eighteen eighteen, Andrew Jackson
fought the First Seminole War. He did not win the

(11:47):
first Seminole War. The Seminoles were still there, and although
he did get a lot of land from the Spanish
in Florida, the Seminoles ultimately came out on top. The
Second Seminole War took play when the UM when the Seminoles,
a very small faction that were prepared to leave, went
against the wishes of the tribe in general, and negotiated

(12:10):
secretly with the federal government to see the land and
the seminal. The rest of the Seminole tried said no,
they didn't represent us, we're not leaving in. The federal
government said, oh yeah, well we're gonna come down and invade.
And the Second Seminole War UM went from eighteen thirty
five to eighteen forty two. Yeah, man, seven years, that's tough. Yeah.

(12:31):
Thousands and thousands of people died. It was a war,
straight up war between the Seminoles and the federal government.
And again the Seminoles won. Yeah. You said here that
the UM in today's dollars, the government spent about two
billion dollars fighting the war. About a billion billion dollars. Okay, yeah,
sorry about that. Um So, that's number two. The Third

(12:54):
Seminal War was from eighteen fifty five to eighteen fifty eight,
and that was the last attempt of the US to
say please get out of here all, not please, but
get the heck out of here. And that failed. And
so eventually the Seminole got paid pretty good money the
holdouts there for their land. So you know, I mean,

(13:16):
if there's a success story and all of this the Seminoles,
but yeah, it it also resulted in the deaths of
a lot of people. Yeah. Uh So this next part
is sort of sets up to play out over kind
of the remaining years of the Trail of Tears. And
there are important names in here that, um you should

(13:37):
take note of, So get out your pad and pen exactly,
don't literally take a note, especially if you're driving. Um So,
the Cherokee they they sort of did a similar thing
that the Seminoles did, when a small group of people
make this treaty that the rest of the tribe doesn't
necessarily agree with. And this time it was called the

(13:58):
Treaty of New Ecatoa. I thought it was Atkatoa at
first two but then I stopped and realized, I think
it's etoa Eta. I think, so all right, we'll go
with Echtowa. I like that better anyway. Uh So, they
were about twenty Cherokee leaders that um and the names
they were headed at this point at Chief John Ridge,

(14:20):
his brother Major Ridge. Uh stand, how do you pronounced
that last name? I think W A t I E.
And alias Buddha no um. And again a lot of
these names are very Anglo because they had assimilated at
this point, and Glow or French. Well, yeah, some of
them were Budinos. I think definitely French. Um. So they

(14:44):
were about twenty of them and all though, and those
were the most notable, and they became known as the
Treaty Party. They were the ones that met with federal
agents negotiated this treaty where they would give up this
land in exchange for you know, kind of the same
old story, the cycle that happens again and again and again.
So imagine if you were a Cherokee and you were like,
we're not leaving, We're staying. We're gonna fight this in
the courts. We're gonna, you know, take our guns to

(15:07):
him if we have to. We're not leaving our land.
And you find out that twenty twenty Cherokee leaders went
secretly behind the back of the rest of the Cherokee Nation,
the other eighteen thousand members of the did the Eastern
Tribe and secretly negotiated away that land that you had
just vowed to protect and never leave. There's a lot

(15:28):
of anger, yes. So the ones that decided that they
were going to stay were led by Chief John Ross.
He was a very powerful chief um in the East
for decades. He had been negotiating to that point fairly
successfully with the federal government, saying, okay, if you're going

(15:50):
to if you're gonna take this land, we're gonna sell
it to you, and you're gonna pay through the nose
for it. Even though they still gave him a pretty
fair price, like four dollars and something per acre when
the going rate was about fifteen. But this was this
was much more money twenty million dollars I think in
in eighteen thirties dollars than um then the government was

(16:14):
prepared to spend, which was zero. It was no, you
give us the land and you you can move out
west instead. So they were negotiating a treaty or John
John Ross was with the blessing of the Cherokee Council
and the Cherokee people as a whole. And one of
the other um parts of that that negotiation was that anyone,

(16:36):
any Cherokee would be recognized as a full U. S. Citizen. Yeah,
it sounds like he had like a couple of different
versions of the offer. One as you can have all
this land for twenty million bucks, or you can have
some of it for four million bucks, let us keep
some and whoever wants to stay can become full citizens
with all the rights afforded to a full citizen. So

(16:57):
he was actually in the middle making what was, you know,
not a bad deal for his people, know, and again
and he had the full the blessing of the Cherokee
Council to do this. Yeah, And did he not know
at all that the Treaty Party was doing this from
what I understand, No, it was a secret, secret negotiation
and they were happening concurrently. So the the John Ross

(17:20):
faction was negotiating for about four bucks an acre, the
the Treaty Party negotiated for about a dollar five and acre,
or about five percent of the value of the land.
And they the government said we'll go with you. Guys.
They signed the treaty. Uh. The Cherokee when they found
out about it, um, basically signed a petition saying that's

(17:43):
an illegal treaty. We don't we don't condone that. They
got something like seventeen thousand signatures. They're only eighteen thousand
Cherokees in the East. And the Senate still ratified it. Yeah,
they said, that's just very Let's see all those names,
it's very impressive. Uh, let me rip that into shoot
two pieces, and we're gonna ratify this. Uh, and it

(18:04):
becomes a federal statute. And um, this kind of is
what really set everything in motion for the final removal
of the Cherokee. Yeah, you Cherokee now have three years
to vacate your land. And uh, if you don't, well
let's just say you should vacate your land within three years.
Is what the federal government said. But they still, for
the most part, didn't leave. And we'll take a break

(18:26):
here and we'll talk about that process after this. All right,

(18:52):
So we're back. Um, the treaty had been signed in
against the will of the Cherokee people. They had three
years to get I was gonna say, get out of Dodge,
But man, why do I keep saying that? Get out
of Cherokee? And then I was about to say they
had three years to play ball, but they'd be like,
what does playball mean? Well, it hadn't been invinited yet either,

(19:15):
Get with the chuck. Three years later, only two thousand
of the eighteen thousand had migrated west. And so President
Martin van Buren, who's as we saw earlier, kind of
just continue to carry out Jackson's policies. Yeah. Jackson was
a two term president, and the Van Buren presidency just
made it twelve basically, yeah, twelve years. Yeah. Uh. He said,

(19:38):
all right, well, here's what we're gonna do, because Jackson
is telling me I have to do this. We're gonna
send in federal troops and you hold outs in Georgia
and the Carolina's um. We have a general named Winfield Scott.
He's gonna bring about seven thousand men in there, and
he's going to ask you nicely to leave, and that
he doesn't want bloodshed all while tapping on his side,

(20:01):
are on us hip exactly, which is basically what happened. Yeah,
he had a he had a quote here you want
to read that he read a statement he said, the
blood of the white man or the blood of the
red man, may be spilt, and if spilt, however accidentally,
it may be impossible for the discreet and humane among
you or among us, to prevent a general war and carnage.
Think of this, my Cherokee brethren. I am an old

(20:23):
warrior and have been present at many a scene of slaughter.
But spare me. I beseech you the horror of witnessing
the destruction of the Cherokees. In other words, don't make
me kill all of you. And let's think about what
we will. We have seven thousand men behind me. Yeah,
and think about where this came from. Like this was

(20:44):
we want your land. You have to leave. That's that.
And now it's gotten to the point where we're going
to kill you if you don't leave. And when they
came and forced them to leave finally, uh and eighteen
thirty eight, at gunpoint, they said you have to leave now.

(21:06):
And and it was not gather your stuff and leave,
it was stop what you're doing and leave. Most of
the people um were not able to get their supplies together.
Some were able to grab blankets, A lot of them
were barefoot um and they were herded out of their houses. Yeah,
you said there was one case where there were these uh,

(21:28):
there was a small child who had died. Uh at
the night that they were preparing for burial, and they
turn guns on them and said no, no no, no, you
can't even do that. Get out, And they had to
leave this body of a child behind by itself. Plus
they also had to suffer the um in dignity of
watching white settlers loot their houses as they were being

(21:49):
marched away. Oh yeah, the people that have been encroaching
all these years had free reign at this point. It
was open season. So the the the federal government had
built thirty one posts around the Caroline and is in Georgia,
which were basically like temporary holding stations before the forced
migration began. And like a third of the people who
died during this um removal process among the Cherokee died

(22:13):
in these posts. They died of exposure, they died of hunger.
There's like disease ripping through these things. It was just
a terrible situation even just to start. Yeah, and you know,
as far as what's going on today, regardless of how
you feel about deportation, just look into deportation facilities. Are

(22:33):
they pretty bad? I mean it wasn't you know, people
weren't dying of aren't dying of cholera. But just go
look it up. Make your own judgment. I'll say that, Okay,
I don't want to get too political here. Um, all right,
So there are a couple of routes here that the
Cherokee took to get to Oklahoma. Basically, you could go

(22:54):
on a boat or you can walk. Right, Maybe if
you're old and frail, you might be in a wagon,
but basically you're gonna walk. Yeah. The draft animals were
for carrying supplies. The wagons were just for the elderly
and maybe like little little little kids. Um, but yeah,
you're gonna have to walk in Again. A lot of

(23:15):
these people were removed from their homes with and not
giving even enough time to get their shoes. So they
were walking barefoot twelve miles. Yeah, and I think about
fifteen thousand by foot in about three thousand. We're fortunate enough,
I guess you could say, to go by steamship. Yeah.
And we should say also that the experience of this
is not it's not the same for everybody. Right, there

(23:37):
were plenty of very wealthy Cherokees who who arranged for
their own passage west, including one guy, rich Joe Van.
He was I don't know where he made his money,
but he was a wealthy Cherokee who um traveled privately
on his own steamship. Yeah. I mean, if he owned
a steamship, he's doing pretty well. Sure. Uh. And again

(24:00):
you point out in the article this is it's just
another reminder of how uncultured some of these Native Americans
have become at this point. And they were still like, now, man,
you're ostensibly living like a wealthy white person, but you're
still Indians. To get out right them again, the overlooked

(24:21):
group in this too seems to be the African American slaves. Um. Again,
some Cherokee's owned slaves, and the slaves were made to
to go on the Trail of Tears with them as well. Yeah,
or forced to. Um, you know. The ones who didn't
have to go west were forced to relocate from all
over the colonies, largely down south to support the cotton industry.

(24:44):
That was a big deal. Um. So this land that
opened up immediately became like cotton land, and it created
the biggest agricultural economy in the world. The American South
had the biggest, largest, most robust agricultural economy in the
entire world during this period as a result of this
land opening up. But part of that required this slave

(25:07):
labor and so um, the slave trade increased dramatically during
this period as well. So the the forced removal of
Native Americans led to a forced diaspora of African Americans
into that land that had just been vacated where they
were forced to work, which is, Yeah, it's an overlooked

(25:28):
part of history for sure. I mean, we all understand,
we know about slavery, and we know that it happened,
and that was in the South or whatever. But this
this period was where it just steps up exponentially as
a direct result of the forced removal. Yeah, I mean,
like hundreds of thousands of acres of land all of

(25:49):
a sudden that needed tending to um, millions of acres,
millions of millions of acres, Yeah, which is a lot
of hundreds of thousands. Be like does of acres about
forty million dozen? Uh So back to the the westward
trail of tears Um. This first migration was in the

(26:13):
summer of eight and I don't know if anyone out
there has ever walked from Georgia to Oklahoma at all.
I wonder if that's like a thing hike the Trail
of tears. Uh jeez, I don't know. I bet somebody does,
probably like in an awareness campaign or something. I could

(26:34):
see that. Um, so that it was in the summer heat.
It's it's not forgiving in any way. UM. A lot
of people died on that first wave. And I don't
think we mentioned that. Chief John Ross, he was the
last of the Cherokee of his group to to leave,
to pick up and leave. Yeah, the federal government was

(26:55):
doing such a disastrously bad job of overseeing this migration
that John Ross went to General Scott and said, please,
if we're going to migrate, let me oversee the remaining
migrations because you guys are botching this. And Scott actually said, okay, fine,
you can oversee the migrations. Despite Andrew Jackson angrily writing like, no,

(27:20):
there's a terrible idea, Do not do that. You can't
let the Indians oversee their own forced migration, you dummy,
Scott still did it. He stood up to the political pressure. Um.
And so the Trail of Tears historically, what you think
of the official trail of tears started at the Rattlesnake
in Rattlesnake Springs, Tennessee, which is where he said, Is

(27:42):
that middle Tennessee. I think it's middle like around Memphis.
Maybe is in Memphis in the center, Memphis, West Nashville.
Then I think it's around Nashville. Okay, Tennessee is uh
you know, my family's from Tennessee and your chop taw
Well Mississippi, uh, before Tennessee, but mainly from West Tennessee,

(28:03):
which has got probably more in common with Arkansas than
like Nashville. You're like, maybe you've heard of my cousin.
He was falsely accused of killing some boys back in
the eighties. Oh, the Memphis Three. No, not a cousin,
but they were in Arkansas, West Memphis, Arkansas. It's confusing. Um,

(28:24):
it's not that confused. Well, I mean West Memphis, Arkansas.
You hear Memphis, you generally think of Tennessee. That's the
east Memphis. We should do a show in Elvis, are we? Well,
we do one on grace Land. Yeah. And I think
that's when I pointed out to that God Bless my
dear departed grandmother, but she was of that camp like, oh, Elvis,

(28:46):
he's poor thing. He just his doctors killed him. And
I was like grandmother. He was a big fat junkie,
died on the toilet. Made some great music though. Um.
All right, So Elvis Aside Rattlesnake Springs, Tennessee is where
the Trail of Tears, officially the route kind of began. Um.
And it went through And this is something that I

(29:07):
never considered it went or you know it. Let's take
a break. That's a good little teaser there, and we'll
talk about, um, the impact it had on these towns
that it went through. All right. I teased that I

(29:41):
had never realized this. But um, the old story you
heard about white people lining up in their towns to
watch the Native Americans passed through and shed a tear
for them, which is bunk. Or maybe one person did,
probably yeah, Um, but it had a big like you
can't move eighteen thousand people, and that was just the

(30:02):
Cherokee without um. You know, there's a big economic boon
that can happen when you go through a town of
that many with that many people. And they went through many, many,
many towns. The government spent two and a half two
point one five billion dollars in two thousand fifteen money, um,
moving the Cherokee and all of that was for things

(30:24):
like supplies and stuff like that. So the entire um,
I think Arkansas, I think it was Arkansas. Their entire
agricultural economy shifted from the cotton boom that was going
on in the rest of the South to growing corn
strictly to supply the federal government for this migration. Yeah.

(30:46):
The Trail of Tears itself had its own economy, right,
it's own moving portable economy. Yeah. A lot of cottage
industries grew up where um, you know, peep townspeople would
get into like porting, ferrying, helping carry supplies, or moving
people across bodies of water. Um. Some were exploitive, not surprisingly,

(31:08):
Like there were people who said, well, this is my land,
and I'm going to charge each of you a fee
for crossing over it, and then an exit fee when
you get to the other side kind of stuff, you know. Yeah,
and some of the town's would, I guess, despite the
fact that it would could have been a bit of
a temporary economic boom, refused to even let it happen,

(31:29):
Like you can't have passage through my town, even though
it's easier on you. You got to go around this
entire town. Yea cape gerro Doe. UM did that in Missouri.
They said, it's way easier to cross the Mississippi through town,
but there's another crossing two miles up and it's treacherous,
but you've got to take that one. So some of
this was documented by UM white soldiers who were overseeing.

(31:53):
I guess from the War Department. Um, should we read
a couple of these accounts? Well, yeah, I think we should.
This one in particulars from John G. Burnett, who in
eighteen ninety, as he was an old man dying, he
was interviewed by a newspaper for his experiences because he
had been a soldier along the trailer tears with the Cherokee.

(32:13):
All right, I'll read one of these, Um. 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 in the
six hundred and forty five wagons and started toward the west.
One can never forget the sadness and solemnity of that morning.

(32:35):
Chief John Ross led him prayer, and when the bugle
sounded in the wagons started rolling. Many of the children
rose to their feet and waved their little hands goodbye
to their mountain homes, knowing they were leaving them forever.
Many of these helpless people did not have blankets, and
many of them have been driven from their home barefooted.
On the morning of November seventeenth, we've encountered a terrific

(32:56):
sleet and snowstorm with freezing temperatures. And from that day
until we reached the end of the Fateful journey on
March eighteen thirty nine, 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. Among this

(33:18):
number was the beautiful Christian wife of Chief John Ross.
This noble hearted woman died of martyr to childhood, giving
her only blanket for the protection of a sick child.
She rode thinly clad the blinding sleet and snowstorm, developed pneumonia,
and died in the still hours of a blique winter
night with her head resting on Lieutenant Gregg's saddle blanket.

(33:40):
So clearly some of the soldiers were kind of haunted
with the task that they were given. Yeah, because this guy,
John Brunette, was on the trail in eighteen thirty eight,
this is eighteen ninety. He's still giving this impassioned like
account of it, you know. Man, Um, there was another
witness who's who estimated that the Cherokee buried fourteen or
fifteen of a people at every stopping place. And this

(34:03):
was along this mile trail, which they did about ten
miles a day by foot. And as a result, about
four thousand of the seven thousand, seventeen thousand Cherokee who
uh moved during this migration died along the way. Yeah.
And again, um, just like the cycle all Uh. When

(34:25):
they got there, they were not met with open arms.
Remember the old settlers that we talked about from the
very beginning, the very first ones to go out west. Uh,
they did not take kindly to their arrival. No, because
remember they formed basically a different tribe of Cherokee out there. Yeah,
like they were their own tribe that you know, I said,
you know what, all bets are off is our land.

(34:47):
So when they showed up, the Eastern Cherokees were like, yeah,
but there's a lot more of us than there are
of you guys. So we're we're in charge now. Yeah.
And I think one of the more interesting things, you know,
we mentioned when I said to take note with that
new Achitoah Treaty with those twenty um, what was it
twenty or so twenty leaders leaders that that signed this

(35:10):
treaty against the will of John Ross. Those I mean
that stuff was like in stone. Now, this faction that
was created with that carried through for decades and decades
and and and that same line carried over yeah out
west as well. Right, So allegiances formed between the treaty

(35:31):
party supporters and the John Ross supporters, and ultimately John
Ross was able to consolidate power out there, and he
became the chief of all of the Cherokees now that
they were all out west, the the combined tribe. Yeah.
And once once he consolidated power, he gave it a
day or two and then he said, okay, it's time

(35:52):
to have the treaty party members killed. Yeah. He he
had vengeance on his mind for sure, So he dispatched. Uh.
And one night on June nine, he dispatched some assassins. Um.
They went and found the principal signers. We mentioned Major Ridge,
his brother John Ridge, and Elias Budino. They all died

(36:13):
that night, but stand Watti interestingly escaped. And I don't
think we said you know, we said it. Um. That
faction and that divide between the nation was going on
for decades. It lasted into the Civil War, and the
new Etchetowa supporters supported the South, the others opposed to
the North. So the divide between the Union and the

(36:35):
Confederacy also fell along that new etchetoa Treaty party and
John Ross supporters line still and they fought each other
as Confederate and Union soldiers. Yeah. And actually stand Watty
became a general in the Confederacy. Yes, he survived the
assassination attempt. Uh. He got out because he was warned

(36:57):
by the Reverend Samuel H. Worcester maybe Worcestershire. Uh. And
he was I think we mentioned him earlier. He was
a missionary who originally filed that suit against Georgia on
behalf of the Cherokee that went to the Supreme Court,
and um he was he warned Watty. Watty got out,
went on to fight in the Civil War, and he

(37:18):
was the last general to surrender in the Confederacy, the
last one, not the last Cherokee general, the last general
of the Confederacy to surrender. So he very interesting story there.
So overall, Chuck, between eighteen thirty and eighteen fifty, I
said it was a decade earlier. I think the eighteen
thirties were the worst of it. But between those those

(37:40):
twenty years, the US government moved more than one hundred
thousand Native Americans east of the Mississippi to the west
of the Mississippi. And not just the five civilized tribes,
not just the southeastern or Eastern churches, northern tribes, like
basically everyone who was living east of the Mississippi between
Canada in the Gulf of Mexico was pushed away across

(38:05):
the Mississippi. And it was the first big massive movement
of of Native Americans to what would be basically a
sweeping motion by the by America, by the federal government
from one edge of the coast to the other, trying
to sweep the continent clean of Native Americans. And at
first it was here, you go to this other area

(38:26):
where Native Americans are, and you can deal with it.
And then eventually they started running more out of land
more and more, and extermination became more of a policy
than than removal. Yeah, because remember we had said that
Thomas Jefferson said, well, the Mississippi River is clearly going
to be our western border. Um. They went on to

(38:46):
later say, remember when we said that, we would kind
of like all the land and we're gonna take it.
And in response, finally it was two thousand nine, I
think before any official oology was proffered for um the
Trail of Tears, and it wasn't just the Trail of tears.

(39:07):
It covered everything, anything that had ever been done to
Native Americans by the federal government was summed up with
an apology for quote the many instances of violence, maltreatment,
and neglect inflicted on Native people's by citizens of the
United States. Back to business. Yeah, and that was drafted

(39:27):
UM a few years part of that by Kansas Senator
Sam brown Back and UM signed into law by President
Barack Obama and then I guess another. The closest thing
to an apology that Georgia ever gave was back in
nineteen six Uh, Georgia adopted the Cherokee rose as the

(39:49):
official state flower, and according to Cherokee legend, the flower
grew from the tears of the mothers who cried for
their children along the way, and the flowers still grows
along that official trail of tears today, all the way
into eastern Oklahoma. Yeah, and that trail is protected um
federally for now at least. So that's trailer tears man,

(40:13):
tough one, tough too. Yes. Uh. If you want to
know more about the trailer tears, just type those words
into your favorite search engine and start learning. And since
I said start learning, it's time for listener mail. Uh.
This is a correction about the Holy Roman Empire. Hey, guys,
I know you'd like to get things right even after

(40:34):
the facts, so I thought i'd help you out a bit.
Listening to the Death Tax episode picked up on something
you said in this and at least one of the
recent episode when you mentioned the Holy Roman Empire. It's
pretty clearly referring to Rome during the early part of
the first millennium. Ce, but it's actually an incorrect moniker
for that state. The Holy Roman Empire is it's referred
to in history, was a collection of Central European traditionally

(40:57):
Germanic U states UH, briefly some of Italy early on,
under a loose rule by the Holy Roman Emperor, not
the Pope who was the ruling papals who was ruling
the papal states when the Holy Roman Empire was in
its early existence. Origins of the Holy Roman Empire began
in the ninth ninth century, followed by the division of
Charlemagne's Frankish kingdom into the three partitions given to each

(41:22):
of his three sons, the easternmost, eventually becoming the Holy
Roman Empire UH. Without getting into too much specific history,
I'll tell you that it's roughly one thousand year run
is filled with fascinating events and political structure unique in
world history. Catholic Reformation and the Thirty Years War impacted
and influenced heavily the political structure of the Holy Roman

(41:44):
Empire and his member states for one, and Chris ort Loff, buddy,
you are a student of history. Clearly very well done,
and thank you for that nice name dropping of Charlemagne
to Chris if you want to school it's like Chris,
did we love that kind of thing, especially if it's
nice and pleasant. Uh. You can tweet to us. I'm

(42:07):
at josh um Clark and at s Y s K podcast,
Chuck's at Charles W. Chuck Bryant on Facebook and its
Stuff you Should Know on Facebook right. You can send
us both an email the Stuff podcast at how stuff
Works dot com and as always, joined us at our
home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.

(42:29):
For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
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