Posted on 03/07/2008 11:21:32 AM PST by Tennessee Nana
A lone Cherokee Indian walked the barren earth where bulldozers had cleared the way for construction of a monument to the people who were at the Blythe Ferry staging area prior to the Trail of Tears in 1838.
Alva Crow of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee from Cherokee, N. C., arrived at Blythe Ferry Landing, west of Georgetown, two hours early. It was a difficult journey for Crow, who is undergoing chemotherapy.
“I am blessing the people who were here that made the removal on the Trail of Tears is here,” he said. “The people who passed away is here.”
He blessed the people to help them relieve their anger and help them go home.
“It’s time for them to go home,” Crow said. “It’s time for them to welcome the new world, the new Trail of Tears, to make it a beautiful place for them, not for us. They can go on and be happy now.”
He said it is important for people to remember how America was in the freedom they had.
US Congressman Zach Wamp has been in the forefront of passing national Trail of Tears legislation that will double the size of the trail based on 29 immigration depots and two other routes that were never documented or recorded as the Trail of Tears. A full length feature film will be released in the next two years.
“This is part of who we are. This is one of the great lessons of history that mistakes can be made by the greatest government in the history of the world,” Wamp said. “The US Supreme Court said it was unconstitutional and couldn’t be done. President Andrew Jackson did it anyway. He basically told the Supreme Court to enforce their ruling, knowing full well they had no enforcement power.”
Wamp said Jackson denied his responsibility and ordered the forced removal that led to the death of 4,000 to 5,000 before their arrival in Oklahoma.
“Here at Blythe Ferry is where 9,000 Cherokee crossed the Tennessee River,” he said. “That’s why this is a special place. That’s why it is appropriate the Cherokee Removal Memorial is here.”
The 2,400 sq. ft. memorial was funded by $1.3 million of federal transportation enhancement funds. There is an overlook on a bluff above Jolly Island where Sam Houston lived for a time. Eventually, there will be a boat dock at Blythe Ferry.
“There will be three amenities here where 9,000 Cherokee spent quite some time before they headed west,” he said. “The bright spot in this tragedy is they survived and they have very strong character. The Cherokee Nation is a strong tribe.”
The Cherokee Removal Monument was the dream of one woman, then two and then a third.
Shirley Hoskins, who had relatives on the trail was born in Oklahoma, but moved to Tennessee when her husband went to work for the Tennessee Valley Authority. A monument has been a dream of hers for 30 years.
“I lived in Chattanooga 15 years before I even knew where the Cherokee came from,” she said.
The dream began to solidify 12 years ago when Gloria Schouggins and Shirley Lawrence, of Decatur, began helping her.
County Mayor Ken Jones said Schouggins was a constant picture on his radar screen. “Every time I looked up from my desk, Gloria was right there in front of me.”
Jones said it is important the memorial be built so we do not forget.
“Building this is just, and it is right,” he said.
Agreed. This group loved Jefferson and Washington & Madison in particular.
Thanks for posting this, Nana. I’m glad to see the memorial. I do hope the taxpayers aren’t paying for it, I was afraid to look. This hits on what I’m doing when I’m not around. Much of the Trail of tears is covered in the book I’m STILL working on....
Many of the Cherokees didn’t leave primative homes. Let me give you one instance.
Elias Boudinot, son of OOWatee and brother of Stand Watie , had been educated at a school established by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions at Cornwall, Connecticut. Here he took the name of a rich colonial benefactor, a citizen of New Jersey and a friend of George Washington who had served as the tenth president of the Continental Congress.
Elias married a white woman, Harriet Gold from Connecticut, much to the dismay of her cultured neighbors and family of New England. They settled along the Coo-sa-wa-tee River near New Echota, the Capitol of the Cherokee Nation, among other Deer Clan families such as Bell, Adair, Lynch, Vann, Starr, Ridge.
After some time had passed, Benjamin Gold, Harriet’s father traveled to the ‘wilderness’ to look in on his daughter living among the savages. On the 8th of December, 1829, he wrote from New Echota to his brother in New England describing his daughter’s home.
“She has a large and convenient framed house, two story, 60 by 40 ft. on the ground, well done off and well furnished with comforts of life. They get their supplies of clothes and groceries—they have their year’s store of teas, clothes, paper, ink, etc.,—from Boston, and their sugars, molasses, etc., from Augusta; they have two or three barrels of flour on hand at once.
This neighborhood is truly an interesting and pleasant place; the ground is smooth and level as a floor—the centre of the Nation—a new place laid out in city form, —one hundred lots, one acre each—a spring called the public spring, about twice as large as our saw-mill brook, near the centre, with other springs on the plat; six framed houses in sight, besides a Council House, Court House, printing office, and four stores all in sight of Boudinot’s house.”
Elias was the brother of Confederate Brigadere General Stand Watie.
A photo of his home (& others) in New Echota, before removal to Indian Territory West is here:
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/Chronicles/v011/v011p0927.html
Boudinot, the Ridges went ahead to Indian Territory West in 1837 and established trade centers at Honey Springs to meet the arriving 13,000 Cherokee refugees from the Trail of Tears.
I have Cherokee grandchildren...
Thanks and bookmarked for more reading later tonight.
Perhaps so.
But I doubt that kind of thinking was prevalent anywhere in the world at the time.
It is easy to cast judgment looking back with modern ethics.
We have changed since then. All of us.
Let us not forget that native Americans were also quite capable themselves of atrocities to other indians.
The Spanish were forbidden by the Pope and their king to enslave the Indians. Does this mean independent Spanish expeditions did not enslave Indians? Of course not - Madrid was far away.
But slavers were punished. Columbus himself was actually imprisoned by the Spanish government for having sold Caribbean natives into slavery.
The black slaves were sold in Spain by the Muslim slave traders, who were also the ones who revived the practice among the British. However, slavery in Spain was more like indentured servitude: a slave had to be free to receive religious instruction and be baptized, marry (and then he could only be sold with his family), own property, and buy his own freedom or be manumitted upon the death of his owner.
By contrast, the British colonists in Georgia and SC not only forbade all of these things (baptism, marriage, buying of freedom), but at various points their law provided for the death penalty for people who gave religious instruction to slaves.
There was a big difference, which is the reason that Latin America has a mestizo population and the US does not.
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