Recently I wrote about the May 1999 national conference of the Trail of Tears Association or “TOTA.” I also mentioned the ongoing archeological digs at the 8,000 year old Indian site on the campus of Warren Wilson College east of Asheville.

En route to the conference, my wife and I visited a restored schoolhouse near Maryville, Tennessee where 18 year old Sam Houston taught in 1812-1813. The future statesman of both Tennessee and Texas, in his own words, “ran”  between Indian and white worlds. At 15 he packed his beloved copy of Pope’s ILIAD and ran away from home. He lived for three years with Cherokees, who called him Co-Lon-neh, “The Raven.” He enlisted for the War of 1812. He was wounded in March 1814 at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, fighting with the pro-American Cherokees against the pro-British Creeks. He acquired the political patronage and friendship of General Andrew Jackson. 

Houston dressed as an Indian in 1818 when he led a delegation of Cherokees to Washington to meet with President James Monroe. In 1829, after resigning as Tennessee Governor, Houston separated from his wife and returned to the Cherokees. In 1838, while President of the Republic of Texas, Sam Houston appeared in Nacogdoches where he tried to prevent trouble between Mexicans, Indians and a large group of my Scots-Irish family who had just migrated from Talladega County, Alabama. He failed to prevent the largest massacre in East Texas history, when 18 Killoughs were killed and eight survived. The Indians, under chief Samuel Benge, spared the women. In the cemetery where the victims lie buried, during the New Deal the WPA erected a tall obelisk commemorating “the Killough Massacre.” When I attend biennial Killough reunions just north of Jacksonville, Texas, I remember the cross cultural links: Sam Houston and the Cherokees, Tennessee and Texas, Andrew Jackson and the Trail of Tears.

Striking about the Trail of Tears Association (TOTA) is the esteem in which the work of its volunteers and amateur historians and archeologists is held by government agencies and private foundations. From conversations I held at the May 1999 TOTA conference,  it is clear that both groups have money to spend and are looking for worthy organizations to put their money to work. To them six-year old TOTA is already a winner.

The National Park Service of he U.S. Department of the Interior distributes an information-packed four-page brochure on the Trail of Tears. It pulls no punches about how Federal Government policy began to disadvantage Native Americans as early as the administration of Thomas Jefferson. He “proposed the creation of a buffer zone between U.S. and European holdings, to be inhabited by eastern American Indians.” Prior to the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson had envisaged his white countrymen expanding up to but not beyond the Mississippi River. Suddenly, the acquisition of massive lands west of that river made it feasible to imagine tribes  being removed to the Purchase territories.

Between 1816 and 1840 Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, Seminoles and others signed over 40 treaties with the U.S. A pattern developed: the Choctaws and others gave up ancestral homes partly for cash but mainly for vastly more territory promised in Indian Territory. Andrew Jackson’s 1829 inaugural address announced a firm policy to relocate eastern Indians. In 1830 Congress passed the Indian Removal Act to compel relocation. According to the cited National Park Service document: “Between 1830 and 1850, about 100,000 American Indians living between Michigan, Louisiana and Florida moved west....Many were treated brutally....Some were transported in chains.”

Cherokees and others tried to salvage what they could. They gave up  more or less voluntarily 90% of their land. Many accepted the white man’s religion, clothing and forms of government. By the 1820s many were also literate: the Cherokees both through Sequoyah’s syllabary and in English. Their fate was sealed after gold was discovered in 1830 on Cherokee lands in northwest Georgia. With the hostile Andrew Jackson in power and unwilling to enforce a major pro-Cherokee Supreme Court judgment against the State of Georgia, the Indians had two choices: fight or migrate. The Trail of Tears officially began in May 1838 with a general round up of  Indians and ended when the last survivors crossed the Mississippi River in March 1839. About 1,000 Cherokees in Tennessee and North Carolina either escaped or altogether avoided corralling by Federal and State Militia troops.

Since 1987 the National Park Service has steadily expanded the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail. TOTA has been a valued working partner since its founding in 1993. The Park Service urges people who want to understand and develop the Trail of Tears to join or support TOTA. or other “state and local historical societies” ”Donations of money, land or easements may qualify as tax-deductible gifts.” More ideas on how to help are available from the Park Service.

At the May 1999 national TOTA conference in Tennessee, reports were presented by private scholars, representatives of State and Federal Government agencies, professional and amateur historians and archeologists, by  American Indians and non-Indians. All are burrowing into  this important aspect of American history.

Both scholars and amateurs are searching for old maps, letters, diaries, drawings and other documents in the National Archives. They also know that church records, family attics and albums are out there with nuggets of insight. Private citizens are personally rediscovering old Indian assembly points and forts. Cherokees are most heavily involved in TOTA’s work to date, but Choctaws, Creeks, Seminoles and others are also increasingly enthusiastic.

Around Asheville and Buncombe County what is being done? The regional archeologist, the regional archivist and other NC State officials based in Biltmore Village are working with  private citizens and voluntary agencies. The Indian site at Warren Wilson College is inspiring many to explore our past. Go there this week [June 1999] and see excavations in progress. Protestant, especially Presbyterian, Church records of the Department of History in Montreat are waiting to be researched. Clergymen accompanied the deported Indians. Many churches eased their pain and humiliation.

-OOO-
============
for Asheville TRIBUNE