CORONADO

Aura makes the point that human use of Santa Fe Trail started with the Indians. But I would like to point out that one group that wouldn’t have been on it except for the U S of A was five tribes who had been minding their own business in the American south. This is what I called the American Indian genocide when we first met. It wasn’t meant to be a genocide. It’s just that it sort of turned out that way. Apparently Aura saw a play the Cherokees used to do in Tsa-la-gui Oklahoma that told this story, and they still have a museum there that tells the story in the way museums tell stories. I’m still beating my drum for Coronado, but I think the history books also ought to mention what the Indians quite rightly called the Trail of Tears. There is still a theatrical production about this, but at the other end of the Trail of Tears, in North Carolina. It’s called “Unto these Hills”.

For a more detailed version of the outline I’ll give you here, go to the link in Wikipedia.

In brief, here’s what happened: the Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole, Chickasaw and Creek Indian tribes were forced to travel from areas they’d lived in in the Deep South since before Columbus, to reservations in present day Oklahoma 1000 miles away.

Of the 16,000 Cherokee Indians who journeyed across the Trail of Tears, some 2000 to 8000 died en route from disease and cold weather. Their removal came on the heels of gold being discovered in Georgia. What a coincidence, huh ?

Anyway, many settlers from Europe advocated total extermination of the "savages." And U.S.President Andrew Jackson was a servant of the people as much as their leader. He signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830 which reversed the U.S. policy of respecting the rights of Native American Indians, mostly to resolve the argument that was becoming more heated. The Treaty of New Echota in 1835 ceded all Cherokee land to the United States for $5.6 million. The Cherokees got the money and the U.S. got their land. But many Cherokees preferred to not move.

17,000 Cherokees were forced off their land in 1838 and onto the Santa Fe Trail of Tears, 1,000 at a time. U.S. soldiers did not allow the Indians to take extra clothing, food or blankets for their journey, though they were allowed 600 wagons and carts, 5,000 horses and just over 100 oxen for the journey.

Cherokee homelands were auctioned off to US citizens in a lottery.

● What happened

● The film

● Cherokee Heritage Center - Culture and history

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