The 'Trail of Tears': Let’s stop pouring salt in an old wound...

[Padraig18]

Every step toward the west was a torment. Every step took the men and women and children further from their homes . . . from all that was familiar. Every step weakened the old and the infirm, the young and the frail. Death stalked the columns as they marched.

As autumn deepened into winter, thin blankets and even thinner clothes were little protection from the howling winds, the icy creeks, the daunting fords across wild rivers. The only escape was death and when it arrived – as it frequently did -- it was often welcome.

Every step west meant more of the familiar grip of hunger, of empty bellies – matched only by the equally grim taste of fear, betrayal and deep loss. It had a distinctive taste, like old copper at the bottom of an empty pot.

It all took place in America. At the point of a gun. In front of glinting bayonets. Courtesy of President Andrew Jackson.

To most Americans today, the Trail of Tears is nothing more than an unpleasant footnote in our common history. To the Cherokee tribes who experienced it first hand, it was: “nu na hi du na tlo hi lu i” or the “place where they all cried.”

Jackson is long gone, but hardly forgotten. The victors always write history. Today Jackson is hailed as the hero of the Battle of New Orleans. His inevitable ascendancy to the White House is seen as a victory of people, just as Jackson is thought to have been a champion of the common man. Why he even allowed free men of color to join him in the wholesale slaughter of King George III’s battle-hardened troops on the plains of Chalmette outside New Orleans. His stern visage peers at us all every time we throw down a twenty dollar bill.

Jackson may not have been squeamish about using black troops – or even pirates – out of military necessity. When the notorious LaFitte brothers told Jackson they had barrels of gunpowder, cannon, and the men to operate them, Jackson conveniently forgot their shady past and upgraded them to the barely respectable status of “privateers.”

Jackson may well have been the champion of the common man, but he was hardly the champion of Indians. Actions always speak louder than words, and he had less regard for an Indian than for a good hound.

To recall the details of the Trail of Tears is akin to rubbbing rock salt into an oozing wound. It runs the gamut of negative emotions. It is a tale full-to-bursting of theft, heartache, hunger, longing, regret, anger and the quiet tears – bitter tears – of resignation.

The bare outlines are enough: Between 1838 and 1840, the federal government – our government – used legal maneuvering to dispossess the Cherokees from their homes in Georgia. Once the legal niceties had been observed, Jackson sent 7,000 federal troops under Gen. Winfield Scott to drive the Cherokees from their homes. The troops then put the Cherokees into a forced march – without regard for age or sex – across the country from Georgia to their new home in the Indian Country, a land that became present-day Oklahoma.

Bear in mind that there were no highways, no interstates, only rough roads and crude trails. The only smooth, swift mode of travel was by water. Indeed, some Cherokee made the journey by boat. Yet even the rivers ran wild and free. There was no easy way to travel from Georgia to Oklahoma. The cost was paid in blood and tears.

If the Trail of Tears were the only stain upon our country’s history, it alone would be enough to make any red-blooded American weep bitter tears and hang his head in shame. But the Trail of Tears is only the most notorious example of a patchwork of atrocities visited upon the Indians whose only crime was living on the land as their ancestors had done since time immemorial.

During the Trail of Tears some 14,000 Cherokees were forced to relocate. Of those people, 4,000 died and were buried in unmarked graves – lost and forgotten – along the way.

Overall, as American presidents pursued the policy of Manifest Destiny between 1820 and 1840, about 100,000 Indians were forcibly transported to Indian Country. There were, of course, Cherokee. But there were also Chicassaw and Creek and Seminole and Choctaw, to name a few. No one knows how many died, but it was commonly thought that “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.” Could we not safely assume a similar ratio?

It is against this grotesque orgy of ethnic cleansing and genocide that a few descendants of those who survived that hideous epoch ask that the University of Illinois end its use of “Chief Illiniwek” as a sports mascot. Is it too much to ask that we stop pouring salt in a wound that, for some, will never heal?

*For the record: I support ending the "Chief Illiniwek" mascot here at the university.