Where the Tears Began

In the 1830s, Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act

forced the Cherokee Indians to give up their land and migrate to Oklahoma.  This journey became known as "The Trail of Tears". 

 

Why just read about it in history books,
when you can stand on the land where it all began? 

Sophie's first school field trip allowed us to learn about this sad aspect of our history by seeing it...and experiencing it.  Learning at its best. 

After learning about Sequoyah's invention of the Cherokee alphabet
in the museum, 

we headed out to the grounds to
tour original and reconstructed buildings.




The sunny and mild weather added to the sweetness of this experience 


of touchable history. 

"I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven at the bayonet point into the 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....On the morning of November the 17th we encountered a terrific sleet and snow storm with freezing temperatures and from that day until we reached the end of the fateful journey on March the 26th 1839, the sufferings of the Cherokees were awful. The trail of the exiles was a trail of death. They had to sleep in the wagons and on the ground without fire. And I have known as many as twenty-two of them to die in one night of pneumonia due to ill treatment, cold and exposure..."

Private John G. Burnett
Captain Abraham McClellan's Company,
2nd Regiment, 2nd Brigade, Mounted Infantry
Cherokee Indian Removal 1838-39