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The Trail of Tears
An Episode in How the West was Won
This month’s anniversaries include the India Removal Act, the legitimation of ethic cleansing and forced displacement, that was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on 28th May 1830. This kick started what later became known as the ‘trail of tears,’ a phrase coined to describe the forced migration of five Native American nations: the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminoles. Over the next decade they were forced from their homeland in the American southeast to Oklahoma, some 800 miles away.
The great socio-political commentator Alexis de Tocqueville witnessed the Choctaw crossing the Mississippi at Memphis in the bitter winter of 1831. This included the wounded, the sick, newborn babies, and elderly people, some nearing death, staggering over the snow hardened wastelands to reach the river where huge blocks of ice rode in its waters. He wrote:
No cry, no sob, was heard among the assembled crowd; all were silent. Never will that solemn spectacle fade from my remembrance.
Up until that time they had already suffered two centuries of ruthless colonial expansion, first from the British and then, following independence, from the Americans. The Cherokee had signed 28 treaties that had lost them 90% of…
