Left to themselves, the Cherokees set about
systematizing their forces and bringing order out of chaos in a logical and
businesslike manner. By resolution of their Council they made Chief Ross
superintendent agent of emigration and entrusted the entire management of
removal to a committee of their own people. This committee organized the
people along the line of family ties, into thirteen detachments comprising
as nearly equal numbers as practicable. Over each detachment were placed as
officers two such men as were best qualified to manage that particular group
of people. After a thorough investigation had been made of the different
routes each division was to proceed over the one selected by its leaders.
Late in August the Council and people assembling for a
final meeting at Aquohe Camp, about two miles south of the Hiwassee River,
passed a resolution declaring that, never having consented to the sale of
their country, either themselves or through their representatives, the
original ownership still rested in the Cherokee Nation whose title to the
lands, described by the boundaries of 1819, was still unimpaired and
absolute; that the United States was responsible for all losses and damages
in enforcing the pretended treaty; as they had never relinquished their
national sovereignty therefore the moral and political relations existing
among the citizens towards each other and towards the body politic could not
be changed by their forcible expulsion; finally they pronounced their laws
and constitution in full force to remain so until the general welfare
rendered a modification expedient. This action bound anew the people,
distracted and confused by the harrowing experiences of the last few months,
into a united body politic which went, not as individuals but as a nation,
into exile.
As September approached every exertion was made, by
both leaders and people, to meet their obligations to the United States and
keep their promise to General Wool that the first detachment should be under
way by September 1. This detachment, led by Going Snake, was in motion on
the appointed day, crossing the Tennessee about twenty-five miles from the
Agency and thence taking their slow way to the west.
In consequence of sickness however which still
prevailed in the camps and the drought which rendered travel distressing
beyond description General Scott called a halt and ordered emigration
suspended for several weeks. It was not until some time later that the last
detachment was ready to set out for the west. This party under the personal
direction of the principal chief, left Rattlesnake Springs, near Charleston,
Tennessee, October 31. Crossing to the north side of the Haissee at the
ferry above Gunstocker Creek, they continued down along the river. The sick,
the old people and children rode in the wagons6 which carried the
provisions, bedding, cooking utensils and such other household good as they
happened to have. The rest proceeded on foot or horseback. The march was
conducted with the order of an army; a detachment of officers, heading the
procession, was followed by the wagons while the horsemen and those on foot
brought up the rear, or when the road permitted, flanked the procession.
Crossing the Tennessee river near the south of the Hiwassee, the procession
passed through Tennessee by way of McMinnville and Nashville and thence
through Kentucky to Hopkinsville, where a halt was made to bury Whitepath,
who had fallen a victim to illness and exposure.
A severe winter had set in before the last detachment
reached the Mississippi. The river was choked with floating ice, crossing
was dangerous, and they were compelled to await the clearing of the current.
The weather was bitterly cold and hundreds of sick and dying filled the
wagons or were stretched upon the frozen ground with only a sheet or blanket
stretched above to protect them from the cutting blast. The hardships
through which they had passed during the last few months had reduced their
vitality, while homesickness and mental depression so preyed upon their
minds as to render them easy subjects to disease from which they could not
rally. Hundreds never lived to cross the Father of Waters, and their bodies
were left to moulder in an alien soil and among a people with scant regard
for the sanctity of an Indian grave.
When finally the last division was able to cross the
river and continue the journey, they found it necessary to take the northern
route through central Missouri by way of Springfield and Southwest City,
because those who had preceded them, going through the southern part of the
state to Fort Smith, had killed off the game upon which they depended
largely for subsistence. It was March when they reached their destination.
More than four thousand had perished on the way, among them the wife of
Chief Ross. For many years the road the exiles travelled on this fateful
journey was known to the Indians by a name in their language meaning the
"Trail of Tears."
Thus heartbroken, cowed and scorned, the last remnant
of this once mighty and fearless tribe had passed from the land they loved,
"broad, set between the hills," moving with bowed heads on toward the
setting sun. The history of Cherokee wrongs had been so long before the
public that it failed, for lack of novelty, to arouse fresh sympathy. With a
few exceptions the world read the story unmoved. The Indian was, after all,
only
"A savage! Let him bleed and eat his heart and swiftly
go; Our strength's our right. The tale is old! E'en so." "The
pantherfooted, lithesome Indian brave We thought not worth our while to
try to save. But welcomed hither hores of king-crushed souls, The worn
out serfs who cringed to lords for doles; We gave an eagle race the grave
as bed; Our fields yet bear his sign, the arrow head."
And yet who knows? Some great poet of humanity in the
future may find in the tragic story of the expatriation of these children of
the forest the theme for an epic or a drama of surpassing grandeur and
pathos which may stir all mankind to pity for their sorrow and admiration
for their virtues. If, peradventure, it come not too late, like tears and
flowers foil the dead, who in life would have been made happier and better
for the sympathetic word we had not sense to say, and the helping hand we
had no time to extend, then a recreant nation may awake to the enormity of
its injustice and inhumanity towards a valiant aboriginal people, and hasten
to make what amends it may to their crushed and decadent descendants crowded
back into remote corners of a country where once they were kings and
emperors.
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