Sara Watson HIST 1301-325
Trail of Tears

Major General Winfield Scott arrived May 8 to take command of the military operation of the removal of the Cherokee Indians. His May 10, 1838 address to the Cherokee people basically said that the president had sent him with an army to make them obey the Treaty of 1835 to move to the other side of the Mississippi. He says that they need to leave with haste but hopefully without disorder. Scott states that his troops are coming to help “assist” the Cherokees if they are refusing or not leaving fast enough. Scott really did want them to leave without having to shed any blood or have any resistance. Scott had told his troops to be kind to the Cherokees and compatible with their removal. His intentions were humane but the larger portion of his army was state levies unaccustomed to discipline and without his professional susceptibilities. Most of the Cherokee to be removed were inhabitants of Georgia and their apprehension was conducted by Georgia militia who had long as a matter of policy been habituated to dealing harshly with Indians. Cherokee were to be herded and confined while awaiting transportation west. There was little to no likelihood of attempted resistance. Within days nearly 17000 Cherokee had been crowded into the stockades. Sanitation measures were inadequate and many inmates sickened. Many lost any will to live and lost all glimmer of hope. In the first and second weeks of June 2 detachments of some 800 exiles were driven aboard the waiting fleets of steamboats. The troops assembled for Cherokee expulsion had been by considered governmental design so numerous as to present a show of military power so overwhelming as to provide no faintest invitation to Indian resistance. The army’s first try of rounding them up they got more than nine tenths of the population and drove them into the stockades. The remaining handful of wilder and more primitive to residents was higher in the mountains, which caused a serious problem for Scott. Tsali, was an attempted resistance episode that eventually became a notable story within the Cherokee people where he volunteered himself as sacrifice so that a few of his people could stay on their land in the mountains. Besides this attempt of resistance, the roundup of the Cherokee proceeded without interruption. Many of the migrants, however, had still been dying due to the drought and heat. Scott decided to put it off until cooler weather conditions. The first detachment set out October 1, 1838 on the dreaded journey over the route, which in Cherokee memory became known as the Trail of Tears. The last detachment started November 4. The Cherokees soon realized that the fall weather conditions had just as bad consequences as the spring. They were encountering excessive rainfall and intense cold. The first migrants reached their destination on the plains beyond the western border of Arkansas on January 4, 1839. Indian removal had now been accomplished. Aside from a few scattered remnants, every Indian nation that had originally occupied the immense expanse of woodland extending across the eastern half of the United States had been compelled to seek new homes on the plains beyond that woodland’s western margin. It had required persistent effort over a period of 15 years, distinguished not only by the sufferings inflicted upon Indians but by the virulent disagreements excited among Americans. Removal had been a contemporary success in the sense that the national government had proved to impose its will and the states concerned had been rid of unwanted Indian inhabitants. But for the Indians and for the larger interest of the Untied States it had been a deplorable failure. The opportunity for Indians to become useful and valued members of American society, had been heedlessly postponed for more than a century. For the Indians there was no way back. There was only the way ahead.