Continuing Disposition and Removal, from bad to worse

As most of you know, we’re moving through some history involving lots of hardship on part of the Native Americans. With the new American government, Indian removal and westward expansion became a reality.
The idea of a middle ground seems to be a thing of the past and some pretty harsh methods were being developed.
“Can’t we all just get along” between some Indians and Whites were hanging by a thread, neither side willing to compromise.
In late 1700s, the American government was in it’s infancy thus too weak to really do anything besides make ‘treaties’ and rely on the cyclic process of debt-land exchanges. It seems easy to just glance it as a ‘disagreement’ in ideals and culture where Whites view land as property and Indians think it can’t be owned. The harder aspect for the other side to understand was the spiritual ties and traditions rooted as part of the lands.
We will probably cover more on this topic later in the course but as you’re well aware, America got more and more powerful and eventually did have the capacity to enforce Indian relocation.

I remember reading a short novel back in my youth, called “The Cherokee Trail of Tears”
which described one particularly tragic event in the removal of Indians.

The storytelling is innocent and simple since it is through the eyes of a young Cherokee girl, Little Rain.

The pages begin with a nice peaceful lifestyle, describing their daily activities and close familiy and relatives. All is well until a US army soldiers begin to show up and forcibly commence
a relocation on order of the US government.
One soldier in particular, “Big Boots”, becomes the main “antagonist”.
He was portrayed as crude, less educated, and smelly, though I think he was more so a generalization of all army men and took it upon themselves to treat the Indians poorly.

In short, the exile was carried out by wagon-train (if you don’t know what a wagon train is look it up, or think of Oregon Trail…)
and endeared in misery, fatigue, pain, horrendous sanitary conditions. Many beloved friends succumbed to cold, disease, hunger, sickness, exposure, a general result of the poor provisions provided.

Trail of Tears

Imagine being forcibly removed from your home and marched those distances…

2500 to 6000 died in the removal efforts.
The Choctaw nation including the Cherokees are now mostly in Oklahoma.

This is featured more in our textbook, page 226 and in the Indian Voices, on pg 229 which I will be talking more about next Tuesday.

-Sam jin

“Trail of Tears.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 25 Apr. 2010. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears&gt;.

Edmunds, R. David, Frederick E. Hoxie, and Neal Salisbury. The People: a History of Native America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. Print.

“Slavery/Native American Removal.” Cal Poly CLA – College of Liberal Arts. Web. 25 Apr. 2010. <http://cla.calpoly.edu/~lcall/204/outline.weektwo.html&gt;.