- I have not read enough to know the complete picture of this history, I am sure it was full of tears. I just started to ask some questions related to Indians, after getting to know a little bit about the Colonial Americas.
What were the populations in each regions of the Indian tribes? (the maps I found did not show that information.)
How much Indian influence left nowsdays in the regions where blood & tears were heavliy split? Feming is from DC area? The only things I remember from DC related to Indian is Redskin, the football team. In the NYC area, there are quite a bit Indian traces/influence left, street & town names, many summer camps name their the camps using Indian tribes name. School kids know many tribes because they are in the curriculum. There are treaties between state government to business run by Indians, museum, etc. I wonder what of Indians has left in the southwest where the Indian Countries were eliminated during the Westward Expansion.
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(American Military History )Trail of Tears (1838–39)
In the late eighteenth century, the Cherokees led all other tribes in responding to George Washington's policy of assimilation, establishing a written constitution, a bicameral legislature, and a supreme court. White Americans, however, sought their removal in order to use their land “more efficiently,” and President Andrew Jackson asked Congress to remove them west of the Mississippi. The Removal Bill and the failure to enforce the Worcester v. Georgia (1832) decision sealed the Cherokees' doom. A few unauthorized headmen signed away the nation's remaining land at New Echota, in present day Georgia, in December 1835, and the government gave them two years to remove themselves.
By May 1838, only 2,000 of approximately 16,000 Cherokees had moved, and Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott entered Cherokee territory with about 2,200 federal troops and nearly 5,000 state volunteers from Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, and Tennessee. They herded the Cherokees into stockades, and then, in June, forced three groups—approximately 2,745 men, women, and children—to begin the 850﹎ile march from Tennessee to Indian territory. Sickness and death in the stockades led Chief John Ross to request a delay until cooler weather. The remainder were removed, in thirteen detachments, between 23 August and 5 December 1838. Approximately 4,000 died as a result of their ordeal, most not on the trail itself.
Cherokee removal—the Trail of Tears—remains one of the greatest tragedies that the United States has inflicted upon a minority population. Removal and assimilation, however, remained incomplete. Remnants of the tribe comprise the Eastern Bank of Cherokees today, and many preserve traditional culture.
rzp