In 1827, the "leaders" of the Cherokee people took what they considered their final steps towards "civilization" with the establishment of a constitution, a bicameral legislature, and a judicial system.165 In their "first" electoral process, that elected John Ross as principal chief.166 This Constitution, however, was shaped by the progressives and displayed their interests in pursuing the course of civilization based upon the economic, social, and political institutions of the dominant culture. The Cherokee Constitution, in delineating what it meant to be a Cherokee, expressed the following position:
No person shall be eligible to a seat in the General Council but a free Cherokee male citizen who shall have attained to the age of twenty-five years; the descendants of Cherokee men by all free women except [of] the African race, whose parents may be or have been living together as man and wife according to the customs and laws of this nation, shall be entitled to all the rights and privileges of this nation as well as the posterity of Cherokee women by all free men. No person who is of negro or mullatage parentage, either by the father or mother's side shall be eligible to hold any office of profit, honor, or trust under this government.167
In a powerful strike against the "old ways" of Cherokee culture, the General Council, dominated by the "progressive" Cherokee, disenfranchised both women and blacks in the Cherokee Nation.168 In so doing, they set into motion powerful forces among the traditionalists, which were to profoundly affect Cherokee history for the next hundred years.169 The progressive Cherokee had finally gotten out from under a "government of petticoats,"170 yet little did they realize the implications of what they had done.171 In a symbolic gesture of resistance, the Ghigau Nancy Ward resigned as advisor to the Cherokee Council and "thus renounced her high office as Beloved Woman."172
The following year, the people of the United States elected Andrew Jackson, noted Indian fighter and slaveholder, to the presidency of the United States. In his first message to Congress, Andrew Jackson set forth his "benevolent policy of the Government, steadily pursued for nearly thirty years, in relation to the removal of the Indians beyond the white settlements," "The consequences of a speedy removal will be important to the United States, to individual States, and to the Indians themselves. The pecuniary advantages which it Promises to the Government are the least of its recommendations... It will separate the Indians from immediate contact with settlements of whites; free them from the power of the States; enable them to pursue happiness in their own way and under their own rude institutions; will retard the progress of decay, which is lessening their numbers, and perhaps cause them gradually, under the protection of the Government and through the influence of good counsels, to cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community."173
Eleven days after Jackson's message to Congress, the state of Georgia (bolstered by "their man in the White House") nullified all Cherokee laws, prohibited the Cherokee government from meeting, and ordered the arrest of anyone opposing emigration westward.174 The Cherokee were eloquent in their struggle against removal and they believed that their having made significant progress towards "civilization," they would be spared removal.175 However, when the Supreme Court of the United States led by Chief Justice John Marshall sided with the Cherokee Nation, President Andrew Jackson is reported to have replied to the actions of his fellow Freemason, "John Marshall has rendered his decision; now let him enforce it."176
In the minds of most of the people of the United States, especially among those inhabitants of the Southeast, the issues of slavery and removal were indissoluably linked.177 Among the reasons for removal of the Mvskoke, and especially the Seminole, was the presence of "another class" of citizens of the nation -- the African Americans who posed a significant threat to the whites and opportunity for runaway slaves.178 Moreover, the presence of missionaries who seemed not only to be preaching a message of equality, but also manifesting one in their missions, was a tremendous threat to the institution of chattel slavery.179 Indicative of the nature of the problem was the attitude of many of the missionaries, such as that of Sophia Sawyer who, when asked in 1832 by the Georgia Guard to remove to African boys from her classroom, replied, "...until the Supreme Court of the United States declares the Cherokee Nation to be a part of the State of Georgia I will obey Cherokee laws, which are just laws, not Georgia laws."180
Sophie Sawyer's position was symbolic of a greater resistance.181 The opposition to removal of the Indians was a potent force among the religious bodies working among the Indians for so many years.182 There also began an organized opposition to removal among women's groups in towns and communities across the nation; women who were not empowered politically became empowered socially and an unprecedented national women's petition drive against Indian removal was initiated. Many of these were future leaders of the abolitionist movement such as Angelina Grimke, Theodore Weld, Arthur Tappan, Catharine Beecher. Benjamin Lundy, and William Lloyd Garrison cut their political teeth in the antiremoval debate. It was the irony of calling for African colonization and yet opposing Indian colonization that led to the development of the "immediatist" movement among American abolitionists. In the first issue of Garrison's The Liberator, the path to the slave auction block was littered with copies of trampled Indian treaties; "from the Indian to the Negro, the transition was easy and natural...the suffering of the Negro flowed from the same bitter fountain."183
The relationship between slavery and removal was neither lost upon the Cherokee, though their understanding of the situation was propelled by a different focus. Sawyer reported that, following a sermon by Evan Jones in one of his churches on "If Providence does not favor a nation, it cannot prosper," a discussion ensued regarding what sins could have turned God's face away from the Cherokee Nation. "God cannot be pleased with slavery," said one of the Cherokees. There followed "some discussion respecting the expediency of setting slaves at liberty." When one of those present noted that freeing the slaves might cause more harm than good, a Native Baptist preacher replied, "I never heard tell of any hurt coming from doing right."184
In 1835, a movement to free the African slaves that lived in the Cherokee Nation was put into motion by several "influential men" of the nation. They were making arrangements to emancipate slaves and receive them as Cherokee citizens. The following December, the "Treaty Party" of the progressive slave-owning Cherokees signed the Treaty of New Echota, relinquishing all lands east of the Mississippi and agreeing to migrate to the Cherokee lands beyond the Mississippi.185 According to missionary Elizur Butler, the Treaty of New Echota prevented the abolition of slavery within the Cherokee Nation. Though the signers of this treaty were ultimately punished for treason, the impact of this treaty upon Cherokee and African alike would be disastrous for many years.186
On the eve of the forced displacement of the Five Civilized tribes, the African-American presence among the Cherokees was estimated by an 1835 Census at approximately ten to fifteen percent of the Nation.187 Taking into account that free blacks and maroons of outlying communities were seldom counted, we can assume the number to be much higher, especially among the Mvskoke and Seminole. Tales were used to support the emigration of the Five Nations, "they told em they was hogs runnin' around already barbecued with a knife and fork in their back. Told em cotton growed so tall you had to put little chaps up the stalk to get the top bolls."188 In spite of this enticement, the traditionalists were reluctant to leave their ancestral homelands.
In the Spring of 1838, the removal began for the Cherokee Nation. An African American member of the community described the process:
The weeks that followed General Scott's order to remove the Cherokees were filled with horror and suffering for the unfortunate Cherokees and their slaves. The women and children were driven from their homes, sometimes with blows and close on the heels of the retreating Indians came greedy whites to pillage the Indian's homes, drive off their cattle, horses, and pigs, and they even rifled the graves for any jewelry, or other ornaments that might have been buried with the dead. The Cherokees, after having been driven from their homes, were divided into detachments of nearly equal size and late in October, 1838, the first detachment started, the others following one by one. The aged, sick and young children rode in the wagons, which carried provisions and bedding, while others went on foot. The trip was made in the dead of winter and many died from exposure from sleet and snow, and all who lived to make this trip, or had parents who made it, will long remember it, as a bitter memory.189
A Cherokee woman described the process in almost similar terms:
The soldiers gathered them up, all up, and put them in camps. They hunted them and ran them down until they got all of them. Even before they were loaded in wagons, many of them got sick and died. They were all grief stricken they lost all on earth they had. White men even robbed their dead_s graves to get their jewelry and other little trinkets. They saw to stay was impossible and Cherokees told Gen. Scott they would go without further trouble and the long journey started. They did not all come at once. First one batch and then another. The sick, old, and babies rode on the grub and household wagons. The rest rode a horse, if they had one. Most of them walked. Many of them died along the way. They buried them where they died, in unmarked graves. It was a bitter dose and lingered in the mind of Mrs. Watts' Grandparents and parents until death took them. The road they traveled, history calls the "Trail of Tears". This trail was more than tears. It was death, sorrow, hunger, exposure, and humiliation to a civilized people as were the Cherokees.190
Resistance among the Cherokee was high; many were bound before being brought out.191 Others never knew what hit them:
Families at dinner were startled by the sudden gleam of bayonets in the doorway and rose up to be driven with blows or oaths along the weary miles of trail that led to the stockade. Men were seized from their fields or going along the road, women were taken from their wheels and children from their play. In many cases, on turning for last look as they crossed the ridge, they saw their home in flames fired by the lawless rabble that followed on the heels of the soldiers. So keen were these outlaws on the scent that in some instances they were driving off the cattle and other stock almost before the soldiers had fairly started their owners in the other direction. The same men made systematic hunts for Indian graves to rob them of the silver pendants and other valuables deposited with the dead. A Georgia volunteer, afterward a colonel in the Confederate service said: "I fought through the Civil War and have seen men shot to pieces and slaughtered by thousands, but the Cherokee removal was the cruelest work I ever knew."192
In July 1838, Evan Jones wrote to his Board on the state of his parishioners, "The overthrow of the Cherokee Nation is completed. The Cherokee population are made prisoners. The work of war in time of peace, was commenced in the Georgia part of the Nation, and was executed in most cases in an unfeeling and brutal manner."193 All of the members of the Cherokee Nation were rounded up into "concentration camps"194 where they were kept as "pigs in a sty."195 Starvation and disease were so rampant among those forcibly marched to the West that missionary Daniel Buttrick said "we are almost becoming familiar with death."196 A month later, he was to say that the government might more mercifully have put to death everyone under a year or over sixty; rather it had chosen "a most expensive and painful way of exterminating these poor people."197
The "Trail Where We Cried" fell hardest upon those least able to withstand the forced march through the dead of winter into Indian Territory.198 The newspaper reports of the time detailed a "peaceful and deathless trek of the Cherokees,"199 but missionary Elizur Butler estimated conservatively that over 4,600 died on that nine-month march. More recent estimates put the number of deaths at nearly 8,000, people who died as a more or less direct result of the Cherokee Trail of Tears.200 The numbers of African Americans who died on the "Trail Where We Cried" could be as much as one-fourth of those who made the trek west. A soldier who was forced to accompany the Cherokee could not believe his eyes, "Murder is murder and somebody must answer. Somebody must explain the streams of blood that flowed in the Indian Country in the Summer of 1838. Somebody must explain the four thousand silent graves that mark the trail of the Cherokee in their exile." 201
Among the Mvskoke and Seminole where Africans played prominent roles in their society, the question of removal was deadly serious.202 The Africans knew that they were considered the property of men from whom they, or their ancestors, had fled, that the burden of proof lay upon them, and that their losing to the United States government meant they would become the property of whoever claimed them.203 In 1836, the United States government sought to remove the Mvskoke and their relatives from their lands in the deep South, and initiated simultaneous assaults upon the Creek and Seminole. The process was not completed until the commitment of nearly forty thousand troops, ten years, forty million dollars, and fifteen hundred soldiers' lives later. The removal of the Creek, Seminole, and their African counterparts was the costliest war in American history until the Civil War.
Let us make no mistake about the nature of this endeavor. As General Jessup, the leader of the campaign, stated it in 1836, "This, you may be assured, is a negro, not an Indian war: and if it be not speedily put down, the South will feel the effects of it on their slave population before the end of the next season."204 Joshua Giddings saw the war in a similar light; the Second Seminole War "on our part had not been commenced for the attainment of any high or noble purpose.... Our national influence and military power had been put forth to reenslave our fellow men: to transform immortal beings into chattels; and to make them to property of slave holders; to oppose the rights of human nature; and the legitimate fruits of this policy were gathered in a plentiful harvest of crime, bloodshed, and individual suffering."205
The war was finally brought to a conclusion, and the people began the removal. As they were proceeding west upon the trail watered by their own tears and sanctified by the many gravestones of their children and elders, many of the Mvskoke Indians began to sing the spiritual "We are going home."206 The words "We are going home to our homes and land; there is one who is above and ever watches over us" rang true to those nurtured in a Christian religion birthed in the cauldron of oppression. It also rang true to those traditionalists among the Mvskoke who believed that they had emerged from caves in the West and come east to settle in the Southeast.207
African Americans blazed the Cherokee route to the Indian Territory: "my grandparents were helped and protected by very faithful Negro slaves who...went ahead of the wagons and killed any wild beast who came along."208 In spite of the fact that they were given the responsibility to guard with "axes and guns" the caravans at night, few of the slaves made their escape. However, what for the Cherokee became known as "the Trail Where We Cried"209 was for the Africans an exodus.210 Large numbers of slaves and free Africans fled with the Cherokee and the other southern nations to Indian Territory; they realized that as rough as life on the trail could be, there could be no life for them in what was their adopted homeland. By the outbreak of the Civil War, the African American population within the Cherokee Nation would amount to about twenty percent of the Nation.211
The missionaries would be with the Cherokee through the struggle in the homelands, the concentration camps, and the agony of the journey; they would also be with many of the Cherokee at their deaths. A revival swept through the camps212 as they were gathering to face what lay ahead "They never relaxed from their evangelical labors, but preached constantly in the fort. They had church meetings, received ten members, and one Sabbath, June 17, by permission of the officer in command, went down to the river and baptized them (five males and females). They were guarded to the river and back. Some whites present affirm it to have been the most solemn and impressive religious service they ever witnessed."213
The ministers Evan Jones, Jesse Bushyhead, and Stephen Foreman of the American Board led contingencies heading west; the records of the Trail of Tears show that along the way the churches themselves were allowed to congregate and express their faith.214 Reverend Jesse Bushyhead expressed his thanks that they were able "to continue, amidst the toil and sufferings of the journey, their accustomed religious services;" 215 he described worship amidst the travail, "There were 66 members of the church in the Baptist connection in the detachment. Out of this number, we selected two brethren to keep up regular worship during our travel; to wit Tsusuwala, and Foster, who has lately joined the Baptist Church, quite an active and useful man.... On the 3rd of February, three members were received by the church, and were baptized, and on the 10th, we collected together, in the midst of our camps, and surrounded the Lord's table. The brethren and sisters apparently enjoyed the presence of God. Several came forward for prayer. In the many deaths which have taken place on the road, several of the members of the church were called from time to eternity, and some evidently died in the full triumph of faith." 216
We can rest assured that, whenever faces gathered around the campfire, there were Africans there to serve as spiritual guides into the wilderness. When there were dances to celebrate, lost children to mourn, or seasons passing to be marked, there were Africans present. In addition, we must never forget that on the "trail where we cried," there were also African tears.
165 MaryYoung, "The Cherokee Nation: Mirror Of The Republic, " American Quarterly 1981 33(5): 502-524. 166 Paula Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986), 36-37. 167 Cherokee Nation, Laws of the Cherokee Nation adopted by the Council at various periods [1808-1835]: printed for the benefit of the nation (Tahlequah, Cherokee Nation: Cherokee Advocate Office, 1852), 119. 168 See Mary E. Young, Women, Civilization, And The Indian Question, in Clio Was a Woman: Studies in the History of American Women (Washington, D.C.: Howard U. Pr., 1980): 98-110. 169 The initial resistance movement to the europeanization of Cherokee culture and government found expression in what became known as "White Path's Rebellion." Its importance lies in its expression of organized resistance of traditionalists to the "apostacy and swift national decay" [Mooney, 113] evident in Cherokee society. It laid the foundations of latter cultural resistance movements such as the Keetoowah Society. See also William G. McLoughlin, "Cherokee Anti-Mission Sentiment, 1824-1828" Ethnohistory 1974 21(4): 361-370; Theda Perdue, "Traditionalism In The Cherokee Nation: Resistance To The Constitution Of 1827," Georgia Historical Quarterly 1982 66(2): 159-170. 170 Raymond Fogelson, "On the `Petticoat Government' of the Eighteenth-Century Cherokees" in David K. Jordan and Mark J. Schwartz, eds., Personality and the Cultural Construction of Society: Papers in Honor of Melford E. Spiro (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990), 174. 171 Paula Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986), 36. 172 Carolyn Thomas Foreman, Indian Women Chiefs (Washington, D.C.: Zenger Publishing Company, 1976), 79. 173 "President Andrew Jackson's Case for the Removal Act; First Annual Message to Congress, 8 December 1830" in Patrick Jennings, North American Indian Removal Policy: Andrew Jackson Addresses Congress, ( http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/ejournal/jackson.htm0, June 10, 2000. 174 Roethler, 136; See also Elizabeth Watts in Appendix B. - Section II: Paragraph 3. 175 Alice Taylor Colbert, "Cherokee Adaptation To The Ideals Of The American Republic 1791-1838: Success Or Failure?" Proceedings and Papers of the Georgia Association of Historians 1992 12[i.e., 13]: 41-56. 176 Andrew Jackson quoted in Grant Foreman, Indian Removal (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1932), 235. For a more detailed and nuanced discussion of this controversy, see Mark R. Scherer, "`Now Let Him Enforce It': Exploring The Myth Of Andrew Jackson's Response To Worcester V. Georgia (1832)," Chronicles of Oklahoma 1996 74 (1): 16-29. 177 "The agitation for the return of the Negro slaves, moreover, was kept up through this period, as a reason for removal, inasmuch as the Indians were disinclined to return fugitive Negroes who had become connected with them by blood." [Carter G. Woodson, The Negro in Our History (Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1922), 193]. 178 J. Leitch Wright, Creeks and Seminoles (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), Creeks and Seminoles, 232. 179 Wright, Creeks and Seminoles, 226. 180 Elizur Butler to David Green, March 14, 1832, American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Papers of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions [microform]. (Woodbridge, Conn.: Research Publications, 1982). 181 For more on Sophia Sawyer's career as missionary and educator, see Kimberly C. Macenczak, "Sophia Sawyer, Native American Advocate: A Case Study In Nineteenth Century Cherokee Education," Journal of Cherokee Studies 1991 16: 23-37. 182 The politics of Indian removal placed great stress upon the churches, which tried to refrain from politics. There were splits in the religious bodies over the issue; many of the missionaries were opposed to removal but their governing boards and congregations were reluctant to take what they considered a "political" position. See Christopher H. Owen, " `To Refrain From . . . Political Affairs': Southern Evangelicals, Cherokee Missions, And The Spirituality Of The Church," Tennessee Historical Quarterly 1994 53(1): 20-29; Francis Paul Prucha, "Protest By Petition: Jeremiah Evarts And The Cherokee Indians," Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 1985 97: 42-58. 183 Beriah Green quoted in Mary Hershberger, "Mobilizing Women, Anticipating Abolition: The Struggle Against Indian Removal In The 1830s," Journal of American History 1999 86(1): 39. 184 Robert Walker, Torchlights to the Cherokees (New York: MacMillan Company,1931), 298-299. 185 See Elizabeth Watts in Appendix B - Section II: Paragraph 4. 186 Elizur Butler to David Green, March 5, 1845, American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Papers of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions [microform]. (Woodbridge, Conn.: Research Publications, 1982). 187 Russell Thornton, The Cherokees: A Population History (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1990), 52. 188 Lewis Johnson in Works Progress Administration: Arkansas Writers Project, Slave Narratives, (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1932), 100. 189 Eliza Whitmire in George P. Rawick, ed. The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography (Westport CT.: Greenwood Press, 1972), 380-381. 190 Elizabeth Watts, Indian Pioneer History Collection [microform], Grant Foreman, ed. (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Indian Archives Division, Oklahoma Historical Society Microfilm Publications, 1978-1981). 191 "Daniel Butrick's Journal," February, 1838, American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Papers of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions [microform]. (Woodbridge, Conn.: Research Publications, 1982); 192 Mooney, 124. 193 Evan Jones to the American Baptist Missionary Union, July 10, 1838, "Correspondence of Missionaries to Native Americans, [microform], 1825-1865," American Baptist Historical Society, Rochester, N.Y. 194 Foreman, 290; E. Raymond Evans, "Fort Marr Blockhouse: The Last Evidence Of America's First Concentration Camps," Journal of Cherokee Studies 1977 2(2): 256-262. 195 "Daniel Buttrick's Journal," July 1838, American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Papers of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions [microform]. (Woodbridge, Conn.: Research Publications, 1982). 196 Ibid. 197 "Daniel Buttrick's Journal," August 1838, American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Papers of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions [microform]. (Woodbridge, Conn.: Research Publications, 1982). 198 Roethler, 150; Theda Perdue, "Cherokee Women And The Trail Of Tears," Journal of Women's History 1989 1(1): 14-30. 199 "Daniel Buttrick's Journal," March 1838, American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Papers of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions [microform]. (Woodbridge, Conn.: Research Publications, 1982). 200 Russell Thornton, "Cherokee Population Losses During The Trail Of Tears: A New Perspective And A New Estimate,"Ethnohistory 1984 31(4): 289-300. 201 John G. Burnett, "The Cherokee Removal through the Eyes of a Private Soldier" in Jouurnal of Cherokee Studies (Summer, 1978): 180-185. 202 Jill Watts, "`We Do Not Live For Ourselves Only': Seminole Black Perceptions And The Second Seminole War," UCLA Historical Journal 1986 7: 5-28; Carolyn T. Gassaway, "Black Indians In The Seminole Wars," South Florida History 1998-99 27(1): 10-15, 17; Russell Garvin, "The Free Negro In Florida Before The Civil War," Florida Historical Quarterly 1967 46(1): 1-17. 203 Porter, Relations, 50-51. 204 Executive Documents, 25th Congress, 2nd Session, 1837-1838, (Vol. iii, No. 78): 52 205 Giddings, 119. 206 Mary Hill, Indian Pioneer History Collection [microform], Grant Foreman, ed. (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Indian Archives Division, Oklahoma Historical Society Microfilm Publications, 1978-1981). 207 Wright, Creeks and Seminoles, 283. 208 Nathaniel Willis, Indian Pioneer History Collection [microform], Grant Foreman, ed. (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Indian Archives Division, Oklahoma Historical Society Microfilm Publications, 1978-1981). 209 Wilma Mankiller and Michael Wallis, Mankiller: A Chief and Her People (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), 46. 210 J.M. Gaskins, History of Black Baptists in Oklahoma, (Oklahoma City: Messenger Press, 1992), 84; Kenneth W. Porter, "Negroes on the Southern Frontier." Journal of Negro History 33 (1948): 53-78; Jimmie Lewis Franklin, The Blacks of Oklahoma (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980), 2. 211 Russell Thornton, The Cherokees: A Population History (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,1990), 89. 212 Evan Jones reports that one hundred and seventy people were converted during the revivals in the concentration camps and one hundred and thirty were baptized into the church upon their arrival in Indian Territory. "Report of Evan Jones" in American Baptist Missionary Union Annual Report, 1841, 51. 213 Letter from Rev. Evan Jones, in Baptist Missionary Magazine, XVIII, 236. 214 William G. McLoughlin, "The Reverend Evan Jones And The Cherokee Trail Of Tears, 1838-1839," Georgia Historical Quarterly 1989 73(3): 559-583. 215 Jesse Bushyhead, quoted in Foreman, Indian Removal, 103. 216 Jesse Bushyhead quoted in Carl Coke Rister, Baptist Missions among the American Indians (Atlanta: Southern Baptist Church Home Mission Board, 1944), 77.