The trail of tears

 

The Trail of Tears is the name that received the forced transfer from their ancestral lands by the United States of the Choktaw people in 1831 and the Cherokees in 1838. As a result of this migration, it is estimated that about four died one thousand Cherokee. In the Cherokee language, this event is called "Nunna daul Isunyi", which in English could be translated as "the way where we cry."

The deportation was the result of the application of the Treaty of New Echota an agreement signed according to provisions of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which required the exchange of territories of the native peoples in the east for others west of the Mississippi River, but that was never accepted by the elected leaders of the tribe nor by the majority of the Cherokee people. In fact, a law was passed whereby Cherokee could remain in the states of Georgia and Florida, where the Indian Removal Act - which the Cherokee had denounced in court - was temporarily annulled. Despite this, US President Martin Van Buren ignored the new law and dispatched federal troops to rally about 17,000 Cherokee to camps before banishing them west.

Most of the deaths occurred due to weather conditions, racial harassment of Americans, and inadequate government planning of the food and shelter necessary to undertake the operation. After rallying the Cherokee, it was the Cherokee nation itself that oversaw most of the emigration.

The Cherokee were not the only Native Americans who were forced to emigrate in those years, and thus the expression Trail of Tears is sometimes used to refer to similar events suffered by other indigenous peoples, especially the Five Civilized Tribes. In fact, the phrase itself may have originated as a description of the deportation of the Choctaw nation.

The tension between Georgia and the Cherokee Nation led to a crisis with the discovery of gold near Dahlonega in 1829, which caused the first gold rush in the history of the United States. Hopeful gold speculators began to invade Cherokee lands, and pressure began on the Georgian government.

When Georgia wanted to extend state laws on Cherokee tribal lands, the matter went to the US Supreme Court. The court ruled that the Cherokee were not a sovereign and independent nation, and therefore refused to hear the case.

President Jackson strongly advocated the deportation of the natives to the west. With the Indian Renoval of 1830, the US Congress granted Jackson authority to negotiate treaties of removal, in which Indian territory in the east was exchanged for lands west of the Mississippi River. Jackson used the dispute with Georgia to pressure the Cherokee and get them to sign the treaty.1

The rapid expansion of the United States population in the early nineteenth century produced tensions with the North American indigenous tribes located within several states. While state governments did not want to have independent indigenous enclaves within their state borders, indigenous tribes did not want to be relocated or renounce their identities.

With the Pact of 1802, the state of Georgia gave up its claims to the national government for the territories to the west (which later became the states of Alabama and Mississippi). In exchange for this, the national government promised that it would finally agree to treaties to relocate all indigenous tribes located within Georgia, and therefore giving the latter control of all the territory within its borders.

However, the Cherokee, whose ancestral tribal lands overlapped with the borders of the states of Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Alabama, refused to move. They established a capital in 1825 in the city of New Echota (near present-day Calhoun, in the state of Georgia). In addition, and guided by Chief John Ross and Major Ridge, Speaker of the Cherokee National Council, the Cherokee adopted a written constitution on July 26, 1827, declaring the Cherokee Nation as a sovereign and independent nation.

Treaty of Removal and Resistance

With the reelection of Andrew Jackson in 1832 some of the most energetic opponents of the Cherokee relocation began to change their positions. Meanwhile, anticipating the removal of the Cherokee, the state of Georgia began bidding to divide the Cherokee tribal lands between the white Georgians.

Faced with the imminence of the transfer, the Cherokee Nation divided into two groups: the Cherokee of the west, led by Commander Ridge; and those of the east, who continued to recognize the authority of Chief John Ross as head of the nation

The US Government proposed to pay the Cherokee $ 4.5 million (among other compensation) to move themselves. The Cherokee Nation Council rejected the proposal in October 1835. Only five hundred Cherokee (out of several thousand) attended a call to rally Cherokee who were supposed to accept the removal treaty, and in 1835 twenty supporters signed or marked with an X of the Cherokee removal, the so-called Treaty of New Echota,

Chief Ross, unsurprisingly, didn't. The signatures violated the law of the Cherokee Nation, which had been approved in 1829, as it punished the transfer of Cherokee lands in writing with capital punishment.

Not a single official of the Cherokee Council signed the document. This treaty handed over all Cherokee territory east of the Mississippi River to the Americans. Despite protests from the Cherokee National Council and Chief Ross arguing that the document was a fraud, Congress ratified the treaty on May 23, 1836, albeit by a majority of a single vote.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   Genocide and stolen land in North America:

   the Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears
With the discovery of gold in Georgia in 1829, a land rush developed instantly. Much of where the gold was found happened to be on Cherokee land. The white men of the area began to immediately look for a way to remove the Native Americans from the land and claim it as their own.

The Indian Removal Act of 1839 was the first step toward accomplishing that. Backed by then President Andrew Jackson, it permitted the US government to "negotiate" (imposing its will) with the Native Americans for their land and offer them "substitute land" west of the Mississippi, often in arid and less productive areas, and, of course, far from their ancestral countries.

Theoretically the native communities were to be compensated and all migration costs covered by the government. In fact, this "compensation" was seldom awarded and the native had to move their families and belongings through their own means.

Many skeptical natives began to move to Mexico. But the Mexican government became alarmed at how many were immigrating and imposed restrictions.

The Supreme Court, under the leadership of chief justice John Marshall ruled that Indian tribes were independent nations and not protected by federal law, therefore they did not have any means to find protection.

Things came to a head in 1831 when the state of Georgia moved to impose jurisdiction over the Cherokee people. The Cherokee Nation v. State of Georgia brought the problem to national prominence.

The chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Marshall, declared that Native American tribes were independent nations that should be capable of taking care of their own affairs.

In 1833, the Choctaw Nation was forcibly removed and “escorted” by armed guard to western territories. This set a precedent for things to come. Two years later, the Seminoles defied any attempts at forced removal of their people and started a war that would last for seven years.

Meanwhile, the Cherokee had been under extreme pressure by the state of Georgia to remove from their lands and relocate. This included both state-sanctioned and unsanctioned harassment of the Cherokee people on a regular basis.

Finally, in 1835, weary of their mistreatment by the state of Georgia and hoping to avoid a war like the Seminole and Choctaw were experiencing, some Cherokee "agreed" (obviously by force) to sign a treaty that would have them give up their Georgia lands and relocate 2,200 miles away.

The preparation and negotiation would stretch out over a period of nearly three years. But the delay pushed Government patience and conflict began to appear inevitable.

A Journey of Death – Into the Cruel Woods

On May 1838, 7,000 US soldiers entered the Cherokee lands in Georgia and forced the Native Americans from their homes. The men were led to the stockades, arrested while working in the fields for no other crime than being born a Native American.

The women and children were corralled into wagons with whatever belongings they had on them at the time. Very few had blankets with them for the cold and rainy nights ahead. Many were not given time to put on shoes and had to walk barefoot for the length of the journey. Grieving parents were not even given time to bury their dead properly.

This sign marks the path of the infamous Trail of Tears stretching from Georgia to Oklahoma

The Trail of Tears is a term used to describe the forced relocation of the Cherokee Nation from Georgia to the Indian Territory in the western United States. Actually, there were two main paths, one known as the Northern Route and the other as the Water Route.

Each trail was over 2,000 miles long, crossing nine states combined, and along the way more than a third of all Cherokee people died. For the Cherokee Nation, this incident is known as the “The Trail Where They Cried.”

Under orders from General Winfield Scott, the Cherokee were pushed along the trail at a merciless pace, only stopping when their “escorts” allowed it. Many of the soldiers, 3,000 in fact were volunteers. Many of them sympathized with the natives’ plight and some even tried to stop the numerous beatings and mistreatment of the natives along the way. But they were quickly punished by their superiors and locked in stockades for their compassion.

Death was a regular occurrence on the trail, and it wasn’t unusual to lose 20 Cherokee in a single night to pneumonia and mistreatment. Very few of them had ample protection against the elements, so the old and very young tended to die first. Many mothers gave up their blankets for their children, allowing the little ones to make it through the journey when their parents did not.

By November, the procession of soldiers and natives had only reached about halfway to their destination. They were met by terrible sleet and snowstorms that killed off Cherokee by droves. They were buried in unmarked, shallow graves far from their homes and families.

The Cherokee Arrive at Their New Oklahoma Territory

In March of 1839, after almost a year of riding in wagons, walking across dirt trails and knowing nothing but suffering for as long as they could remember, the remaining two thirds of the Cherokee arrived at their new lands. They weren’t greeted by ready-built structures and new homes to live in. The vast, open land lay before them, untamed and as tough as any they had encountered yet.

Many of those that arrived in the new Indian Territory were children whose parents had perished along the way. They were homeless and without families, and they had to find someone to care for them or try to fend for themselves. Even though their relocation was over, the journey for survival had just begun. Many of them would not survive the following months in this new land, as there was no food prepared for them and growing crops was an uncertain prospect in these wild lands.

This Trail of Tears and the mistreatment of the Cherokee were all approved by Andrew Jackson. He openly defied the Supreme Court to make it happen, but was still using the Indian Removal Act as his reasoning for the forced relocation.

This law was, of course, intentionally misused during the Trail of Tears, and its concession for assistance with migration became an excuse for armed soldiers to force the Native Americans out and march them to their destination, harassing and hurrying them along at every opportunity, pushing the old and feeble harder than they could tolerate and making the journey as miserable as possible for the Cherokee.

The Trail of Tears Aftermath – A Permanent Stain

In 1835, President Andrew Jackson addressed Congress with a message about the Indian Removal Act. He promised that the Native Americans would be treated fairly, that they would be amply provided for and that the removal would be for their physical and moral improvement.

Even if Andrew Jackson had good intentions at the time (which is doubtful, looking at his indifference toward Native Americans), the reality is that the removal of thousands of Cherokee and other natives from their homes was anything but beneficial to them. It wasn’t simply the massive number that died on the trail that suffered. The relocating had numerous long-term effects that are still being felt today.

The post-removal death and illness rates were extremely high for the Cherokee. People were dealing with the grief and stress of not knowing where their loved ones were. Many of their family members were still back in Georgia, incarcerated and awaiting an unknown fate. Families had been divided, never to be rejoined again.

Difficult Times Settling in Oklahoma

The Cherokee leaders did what they could to take care of those who were without parents. They established laws to care for the education and welfare of orphaned children in 1841. By that time, many who made it to the new territory in Oklahoma had already died, but the Cherokee government was trying to recover as well.

There was little food to be had there, and the Native Americans had to resort to hunting and gathering for most of their food as opposed to the lives of farming and cultivating they had enjoyed back in Georgia. This meant there was less food to go around and many died of starvation as the people slowly recovered.

Over the long term, physical recovery finally took place. The Cherokee repopulated, they established homes and a nation for their people once more and they began to thrive and ensure their culture lived on in their descendants. But the tragedy they had lived through continues to define them today.

It bred a deep distrust of outsiders and government in particular. It also created tension that is still evident today between all native peoples and the whites. The idea that the Supreme Court can be defied by a president and government that wants gold is not something that is easily forgotten.

Who is Native American?

In a February 9 tweet US President Donald Trump is referring to not only Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren's enduring claims of Native American identity, and the pushback she received from various native communities, but also one of the most infamous and traumatic events in Cherokee history, the Trail of Tears - the forced relocation of Native Americans in the 19th century that caused thousands of deaths.

Trump's tweet sparked much debate over whether it is ever acceptable for a US president to use a racial slur or a genocide reference to attract attention to a political opponent's alleged past indiscretions. However, the public discussions largely left out the very real complexities of Native American identity and history unexplored. The truth is, many Native American nations have struggled to define belonging for decades.

False claim to tribal membership

The controversy about Warren's claims to Native American identity first surfaced in the public domain during her 2012 Senate campaign, when her opponent accused her of having lied about her heritage to gain an advantage in her academic career.

Consequently, an investigation by the Boston Herald revealed that Harvard Law School listed her as Native American in its federal affirmative action forms from 1995 to 2004. Further inquiries demonstrated that she also claimed Native American ancestry while working at the University of Pennsylvania in 1989 and identified herself as "American Indian" on a Texas bar registration card in 1986. 

In response to accusations that she fraudulently assumed a minority identity for professional gain, Warren maintained that she based all her claims to "family stories" passed down over generations, and that she never furthered her career by using her heritage to gain an advantage. An expansive Boston Globe investigation  in September 2018 appeared to confirm that Warren did not profit from the claims she made about her ancestry. However, the expose failed to stop President Trump and other Republicans from continuing to accuse the senator of lying about her heritage. 

The storm over Warren's ancestry claim only deepened when she sought to neutralise the attacks by releasing a DNA analysis in October 2018, which said that she had a Native American ancestor "six - 10 generations ago". The Cherokee Nation blasted Warren for the test, which they said was a false claim to tribal membership, leading the senator to apologise.

But why does it matter if Warren alleges that she is Native American? And why did the Cherokee Nation denounce her claims?

Who is Native American?

By claiming to be of Cherokee heritage, Warren tapped into a long-running trope in American history: phenotypically white people, privy to all of the privileges associated with whiteness in the US, claiming a Native American identity. 

From the colonists at the Boston Tea Party to the hippies and hipsters of today, white Americans take on Native American accoutrements (feathers, buckskin, headdresses) or Native American ancestry (almost always a small percentage - enough to make them interesting and exotic, but not enough to actually make them a person of colour) as easily as putting on a pair of shoes, using it to signal independence from state structures and responsibilities, a connection to the Earth, a certain brand of spirituality (often used to make a profit), or a desire to return to a bygone era.

By participating in this roleplaying game, these white Americans demonstrate that they view native people as exotic artefacts from an imagined past, rather than modern-day citizens who wear the same clothes, listen to the same music and deal with the same contemporary issues as themselves.

While Senator Warren grew up in Oklahoma, the state with the highest percent of Native Americans in the nation and one where the Cherokee are the largest minority group, she was raised as a white person, not as a Cherokee. She did not learn about Cherokee culture, language, or history, and shared no formal or informal ties with the Cherokee Nation.

While she may be able to show that she possesses some degree of Native American DNA, this does not necessarily make her any more Native American than all the clueless white youths wearing feathers and headdresses as fashion accessories at music festivals. Besides, tying DNA to a specific tribe is almost impossible, as North American indigenous people consistently migrated and intermarried, and DNA companies use databases that overwhelmingly feature European genetic data, with small sample sizes from Native Americans and other people of colour.

Claims of Native American ancestry are closely tied to tribal citizenship rights - a sensitive issue combining identity politics with economics and political jurisdiction.

"Native American" is not just a racial category, it is also a political identity because tribal nations are acknowledged as sovereign governments in the US. When someone claims to be Native American, he or she also claims access to political and economic benefits hard-won by native governments in brutal legal battles over tribal sovereignty.

This is why the Cherokee Nation denounced Warren's DNA test as "inappropriate and wrong" and accused  the senator of "undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage".

In this context, it is easy to see why Warren's claim of Cherokee identity, as a phenotypically white woman with no real connection to the tribe, is problematic. However, the Cherokee Nation's refutation of the senator's claim is also not as honest and straightforward as it first appears. 

Inclusion and exclusion

In his response to Warren's press release about the result of her DNA test, Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin, Jr stated that a "DNA test is useless to determine tribal citizenship", implying what determines who is a Cherokee is not blood, but an individual's proven shared history with the tribe. 

Yet, the Cherokee Nation have denied one group of people - the descendants of their former slaves - who had this very shared history, generations spent living alongside native people, simply because they did not see them as native "enough".

Tribal membership has always been dependent upon induction into a native peoples' community, either through birth, intermarriage, or adoption. But the formalisation of the idea of citizenship, a status that can be conferred (or disavowed) by a specific governmental body, is the product of colonisation.

Largely beginning in the 19th century, when native nations interacted with the American government to sell their land and receive annuities for it or distribute it in allotments, the US would send representatives to compile a list of the people who would then qualify to receive these annuities or land parcels. These people would then also be considered tribal citizens. Over time, many nations, such as the Cherokee Nation, have continued to use these same lists as the basis of tribal citizenship.

For Indian nations such as the Cherokees, as well as the Choctaws, Creeks, Seminoles, and Chickasaws, who owned black slaves the evolution of tribal citizenship was more complicated. Their black slaves had lived among them, sharing their language, food, and homes, and this shared history spanned decades and generations.

Yet, many native people considered the people of African descent who resided in their nations a separate group, and when these five nations assembled their membership lists in partnership with the American government, they separated themselves from their former descendants, creating two categories of citizenship - one for "Indians by blood" and one for former slaves.

Then, throughout the 20th century, the Cherokees, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles eventually rescinded the tribal membership of all the descendants of their former slaves, claiming they had no place in their nations because they did not have native ancestry.

The descendants of the former slaves of Cherokee women and men, an estimated 3,000 people, many of whom bear Cherokee ancestry, were denied the rights and privileges of Cherokee citizenship for years - but they fought back, filing lawsuits in tribal courts and then in American courts. In 2017, with the successful outcome of US District Court case, Cherokee Nation v Nash Vann, et al, these descendants, referred to as Cherokee Freedpeople, have been welcomed back into the fold.

Following this decision, the Cherokee Nation turned over a new, inclusive leaf and even celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr Day as an official holiday for the first time this January, in honour of their Freedmen citizens. Hopefully, this signals a readiness to return to traditional definitions of tribal inclusion that acknowledge the informal belonging and historical connection.

Now the descendants of former slaves of Creek Indians have filed a similar case in the US federal court, also seeking to reestablish their tribal membership.

As the largest of the former slaveholding Indian nations, the actions of the Cherokee Nation and the reactions of Cherokee Freedmen descendants have received the most publicity.

But all Indian nations deal with issues related to tribal membership (who should be allowed to be a member, how tribal resources should be used to provide for every member, etc), particularly in a historical moment when it is trendy to claim a Native American identity. Indian nations' answers to these membership questions are shaped by the economic resources they do or don't have and by their ideas of how a member of their tribe should live and what they should look like.

There is no one answer to how a Native American nation should decide tribal membership. After all, it is largely their prerogative based on tribal sovereignty. It is not the duty of Indian nations to welcome every person who takes a DNA test and finds that they supposedly possess native ancestry; it is not their duty to take lightly a prominent, completely unaffiliated person's claims of belonging.

But as they begin to more publicly define the parameters of their definitions of citizenship, it should be their moral obligation to fully acknowledge and rectify the wrongful exclusions they have made in the past.

And, as Elizabeth Warren's election campaign gains speed and this controversy, no doubt, resurfaces again and again, journalists have an occupational obligation to transition this narrative of Indian identity from a mere punch line to a nuanced conversation about race and belonging.

by Alaina E. Robert 

Reference:

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/native-american-190220092329850.html