Trail of Tears

Trail of Tears

Trial of Tears and the Five Civilized Tribes During the early years of 1800s,

valuable gold deposits were discovered in tribal lands, which by previous

cessions had been reduced to about seven million acres in northwest Georgia,

eastern Tennessee, and southwest North Carolina. In 1819 Georgia

appealed to the U.S. government to remove the Cherokee from Georgia

lands. When the appeal failed, attempts were made to purchase the territory.

Meanwhile, in 1820 the Cherokee established a governmental system

modeled on that of the United States, with an elected principal chief, a

senate, and a house of representatives. Because of this system, the Cherokee

were included as one of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes. The other four

tribes were the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and the Seminoles. In 1832 the

Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Georgia legislation was

unconstitutional; federal authorities, following Jackson's policy of Native

American removal, ignored the decision. About five hundred leading

Cherokee agreed in 1835 to cede the tribal territory in exchange for

$5,700,000 and land in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). Their action was

repudiated by more than nine-tenths of the tribe, and several members of the

group were later assassinated. In 1838 federal troops began forcible evicting

the Cherokee. Approximately one thousand escaped to the North Carolina

Mountains, purchased land, and incorporated in that state; they were the

ancestors of the present-day Eastern Band. Most of the tribe, including the

Western Band, was driven west about eight hundred miles in a forced march,

known as the Trail of Tears. The march west included 18,000 to 20,000

people, of whom about 4000 perished through hunger, disease, and

exposure. The Cherokee are of the Iroquoian linguistic family. Their

economy, like that of the other southeastern tribes, was based on intensive

agriculture, mainly of corn, beans, and squash. Deer, bear, and elk were

hunted. The tribe was divided into seven matrilineal clans that were dispersed

in war and peace moieties (half-tribes). The people lived in numerous

permanent villages, some of which belonged to the war moiety, the rest to the

peace moiety. In the early 19th century, the Cherokee demonstrated unusual

adaptability to Western institutions, both in their governmental changes and in

their adoption of Western method of animal harvesting and farming. Public

schools were established and in the 1820s, a tribal member invented an

85-character syllable script for the Cherokee language. Widespread literacy

followed almost immediately. In 1828 the first Native American newspaper,

the Cherokee Phoenix, began publication. Today in Oklahoma, much of the

culture has remained the same. Their traditional crafts are most strongly

preserved by the Eastern Band where their basketry is considered to be

equal to or better than that of earlier times. In Oklahoma the Cherokee live

both on and off the reservation, scattered in urban centers and in isolated