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Forced Removal
Nearly every Indian tribe suffered a forced removal
Choctaw Removal
Not expecting 3,000 Choctaws, the removal agents had not purchased enough rations, and there were only a dozen Army wagons available to escort the Choctaws the remaining 150 miles plus to the boundaries of their new territory.
It is estimated that there were 19,554 Choctaw before removal, of which 12,500 moved to Indian Territory, 2,500 died along the way, and 5000 to 6000 remained in Mississippi. Most of those left in Mississippi were forced to move by the Federal government later in the century, but enough remained to form the Mississippi Band of Choctaw that was officially recognized as a tribe in 1945.
Chickasaw Removal
The history of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma began in 1818 when tribal leaders signed the Treaty of Old Town, ceding their lands in western Kentucky and Tennessee. Despite their refusal to cede their traditional lands in 1826, the election of Pres. Andrew Jackson in 1828, the Indian Removal Act of 1830, and the extension of Mississippi state laws over the Chickasaw foreshadowed their removal.
The Chickasaw Nation remained in existence until dissolved in 1906 to allow for Oklahoma statehood.
The Chickasaw Nation ceased to exist from 1907 through 1983
Potawatomi Trail of Death
The Potawatomi Trail of Death starts at the Menominee statue south of Plymouth.
Chief Menominee was the leader of the resistance and refused to sell his land and move west of the Mississippi River, per the treaty of 1836. He did not sign the treaty but was forced to go anyway. Hundreds of Potawatomi who did not want to leave Indiana moved to his village, which grew from 4 wigwams in 1821 to 100 wigwams and cabins in 1838.
Seminole Removal
Unlike the "Trail of Tears" that took place in a single, dreadful moment, in 1838, in which several thousand Cherokee people were sent on a death march to the West, the removals of the Seminole people from Florida began earlier and lasted 20 years longer. Just like that other event, however, the toll in human suffering was profound and the stain on the honor of a great nation, the United States, can never be erased. The Seminole people - men, women, and children, were hunted with bloodhounds, rounded up like cattle, and forced onto ships that carried them to New Orleans and up the Mississippi. Together with several hundred of the African ex-slaves who had fought with them, they were then sent overland to Fort Gibson (Arkansas), and on to strange and inhospitable new lands where they were attacked by other tribes, in a fierce competition for the scarce resources that they all needed to survive.
The Long Walk
Officials called it a reservation, but to the conquered and exiled Navajos it was a wretched prison camp.
The Long Walk of the Navajo, also called the Long Walk to Bosque Redondo, was an Indian removal effort of the United States government in 1863 and 1864.
Forced Removal Creek
An observer was moved to write: "Thousands of them are entirely destitute of shoes and many of them are almost naked, and but few of them have anything more on their persons than a light dress calculated only for the summer, or for a warm climate. In this destitute condition, they are wading in cold mud or are hurried on over the frozen ground... Many of them have in this way had their feet frost-bitten; and being unable to travel, fall in the rear of the main party... and are left on the road to await the ability or convenience of the contractors to assist them. Many... died on the road from exhaustion, and the maladies engendered by their treatment; and their relations and friends could do nothing more for them than cover them with boughs and bushes to keep off the vultures, which followed their route by thousands... for their drivers would not give them time to dig a grave and bury their dead. The wolves, which also followed at no great distance, soon tore away so frail a covering, and scattered the bones in all directions."
Forced Removal of the Cherokee
"My friends, circumstances render it impossible that you can flourish in the midst of a civilized community. You have but one remedy within your reach, and that is to remove to the west. And the sooner you do this, the sooner you will commence your career of improvement and prosperity." ~Andrew Jackson~
"I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven at the bayonet point into stockades. And in the chill of a drizzling rain on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle or sheep into six hundred and forty-five wagons and started toward the west." ~Private John G. Burnett~
Trail of Tears "The Cherokee are probably the most tragic instance of what could have succeeded in American Indian policy and didn't. All these things that Americans would proudly see as the hallmarks of civilization are going to the West by Indian people. They do everything they were asked except one thing. What the Cherokees ultimately are, they may be Christian, they may be literate, they may have a government like ours, but ultimately they are Indian. And in the end, being Indian is what kills them." ~Richard White~, Historian
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