October: For most Cherokee, the “Trail of Tears” begins.
* These are my conclusions after “Part 1”:
Prison Camps and the Trail of Tears
and “Part 2”:
Prison Camps and the Trail of Tears (Part 2)
I almost thought Fox News was responsible for posting some of the information on the web about Native American history. Omission and blatant misleading misinformation such as the soldiers weren’t with the Cherokee on the Trail of Tears. Then who was it that forced the Cherokee to leave their dead relatives on the trail? I also found numbers that were disgustingly off and blame like, “Remember they agreed to this.” The tribal museums, eyewitness accounts, and reports on those eyewitness accounts provide the best information; not Wikipedia or any other “source” that contradicts what really occurred, even if only in parts. The truth still wants to be forgotten by some, I can only speculate as to who they are.
I made the error of trying to understand the “why” the Trail of Tears happened when I wrote this:
And then, only a fictional movie can begin to explain it to me.
Scene from “Exorcist III”:
EXORCIST IIIThe Gemini Killer: I kill at random… no motive… that’s the fun.
Dt. Kinderman: This I believe in… I believe in death. I believe in disease. I believe in injustice and inhumanity, torture and anger and hate… I believe in murder. I believe in pain. I believe in cruelty and infidelity. I believe in slime and stink and every crawling, putrid thing… every possible ugliness and corruption, you son of a bitch. I believe… in you.
“Why” only led me to my own esoteric philosophies and trying to align some of those with the research and conclusions of Alice Miller to “understand it.” However, the result was just more and more confusion.
I decided I could only barely grasp it by looking at the behaviors that resulted from prior events. I asked myself “what,” in terms of what the behavior was that the author of this statement refers to.
The Trail of Tears and the Middle Passage are journeys to the first of the concentration camps-Indian reservations and plantations-and the beginnings of the U.S. strategy to work the captured and colonized to death.
Asking “why” also led me searching prior events. I remembered Wilma Mankiller mentioning the Panic of 1837 in her book when I came across it again.
The Panic of 1837 resulted from President Andrew Jackson’s attack on the Second Bank of the United States. Following the War of 1812, the United States government recognized the need for a national bank to regulate the printing of currency and the issuance of government bonds.
It turned out to be the worst economic depression that the young nation had yet known.
First Depression in American history. Banks lost money, people lost faith in banks, and the country lost faith in President Martin van Buren.
Thousands of people were out of work in a country that had never been through such an experience. In the cities, mobs stormed the warehouses for food, flocked to the poorhouses, and committed crimes so they could go to jail, where they could at least survive. Although prosperity began to return within two years, it came too late to save Van Buren politically. In the 1840 election, he was badly defeated by his former opponent, William Henry Harrison, and suffered what was to him the disgrace of being a one-term president.
Social analysis of “why” it occurred could only be understood case by case of the entire population, so the more useful question that may lead to solutions and learning its lessons now is, “What happened?”
“What”
Radical supremacist beliefs with religious fundamentalist views (labeling the Cherokee and all indigenous as evil, in service to the Devil, and inferior. Ex.: Extermination and Manifest Destiny).
“Gold fever” and greed was in the midst of great economic collapse and social upheaval.
Hasty conclusions were made regarding land and natural resources.
False claims by the U.S. government were made of a legitimate treaty(s).
Bullying was done to the Cherokee as a social phenomenon.
Only while military power was too weak to force the Cherokee’s removal, was deception used.
Military power was built while bullying and deception was used to buy time.
Military power was established.
Announcement of the hostile military takeover and forced relocation with false blame was made, deception ceased.
Cherokees were forced from homes at gunpoint. Theft, destruction, and complete loss of their property and homes were also traumatic consequences of the “roundup.”
Cherokees were transported to military forts, which transformed into prison, concentration and death camps for approximately ½ year.
The greatest atrocities occurred in the internment camps, because the prisoners were helpless while the soldiers were fully armed.
The approximate 70,000 Native American Indians that were forced to relocate, were the only ones left to relocate. The Government’s use of extermination was successful. Smallpox and diseases used as germ warfare by “trading” or “gifting” infected blankets after germ warfare’s “discovery” continued to exterminate 90% of the indigenous population.(1) First, it was unintentional with the discovery of the Americas, then diseases were used deliberately. Massacres, wars, murders, and mutilations killed the rest even before the forced relocations began. This only left approximately 5% to forcibly remove.(1)
The Trails of Tears were several trails that the Five Civilized Tribes traveled on their way to their new lands. Many Indians died because of famine or disease. Sometimes a person would die because of the harsh living conditions. The tribes had to walk all day long and get very little rest. All this was in order to free more land for white settlers… At that time there was reported to be sightings of gold in the Cherokee territory in Georgia which caused prospectors to rush in, tearing down fences and destroying crops. In Mississippi, the state laws were extended over Choctaw and Chickisaw lands, and in 1930 the Indians were made citizens which made it illegal to hold any tribal office.
The term “Trails of Tears” was given to the period of ten years in which over 70,000 Indians had to give up their homes and move to certain areas assigned to tribes in Oklahoma. The tribes were given a right to all of Oklahoma except the Panhandle. The government promised this land to them “as long as grass shall grow and rivers run.” Unfortunately, the land that they were given only lasted till about 1906 and then they were forced to move to other reservations.
The Choctaw’s long journey to their new home, which was often made without the supplies and wagons promised in the treaty, was arduous. Many did not survive. As with other Indian groups that were moved west, the Choctaw remember this trek as a “Trail of Tears.”
The most difficult information to find is: how many died on the Trail of Tears, total? Everyone can say 6,000,000 Jews died during the Holocaust, so what might “many did not survive mean,” at least for the Choctaw? “Many” means more than half died to me, but not “almost all.” Maybe it means 65%-75% of their total tribal population died. Even the records at the Oklahoma Historical Society stop at the forced removal; I heard so on T.V. just recently by accident. More research needs to be done, or the information may be lost? I don’t know.
To me, horror movies such as the “Exorcist III” are entertaining to a point; however, a simple superstitious rationalization like “possession” is easier to contemplate than what author Kurt Kaltreider, PH.D. says in his chapter entitled “The American Indian Holocaust”:
(1) Kurt Kaltreider, PH.D. “American Indian Prophecies,” p.44:
…It is estimated that 100 million Indians from the Caribbean, Central, South, and North America perished at the hands of the European invaders. Sadly, unbelievably, really, much of that wholesale destruction was sanctioned and carried out by the Roman Catholic Church and various Protestant denominations.(1: p.37)
From 100,000,000 to 70,000, prior to forced removal and relocation.
Since recognizing the past in the present is a key to not repeating it, I then asked myself what I’ve observed recently that mirrors this past.
First, “Dominionism” is the modern equivalent of Manifest Destiny.
Michelle Goldberg, “Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism.” p.13
Kingdom ComingAs the historian Garry Wiles has noted`Dominion theologians’lay great emphasis on Genesis 1:26-27, where God tells Adam to assume dominion over the animate and inanimate world. Thus the true inheritors of this world are Christians who can `name it’ and `claim it’ by divine right.”
Second, this was an instance where Stalin’s notorious quote, “Death solves all problems: no man, no problem” was used by Edwin Vieira in the “War on the Courts,” and is a modern example of “extermination.”
Michelle Goldberg, “Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism” p.160 :
Constitutional lawyer Edwin Vieira discussed Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion which struck down that state’s antisodomy law. Vieira accused Kennedy of relying on “Markist, Leninist, Satanic principles drawn from foreign law. “What to do about Communist judges in thrall to the Devil? Vieira said, “Here again I draw on the wisdom of Stalin. We’re talking about the greatest political figure of the twentieth century. He had a slogan, and it worked well for him whenever he ran into difficulty. No man, no problem.'”
I also consider the following current events to be strikingly similar to the Trail of Tears in terms of their potential usage, although not identical in language. They are: economic overextension due to the war, acquiring oil via war when other alternatives for energy production and consumption exist, NAFTA treaties have been signed without the consent of congress, “terror” was used in attempting to win a crucial election by the party in power at the time (bullying), the Patriot Act and Military Commissions Act with the added power of section 1076 and
Halliburton share much in common collectively for their potential usage as the Indian Removal Act and the Treaty of New Echota did in terms of empowering the military. Individual or collective “roundups,” transportation to prisons, and detention where torture ensued were the consequences of the Indian Removal Act and the Treaty of New Echota. Likewise, those consequences have followed for foreign nationals with the Patriot Act at least, but have yet to follow for a natural born American citizen as far as I know.
Perhaps in addition to this serious sentiment expressed in “Indian Country”:
Military Commissions Act raises painful memories:
Ghosts of Sioux warriors surround the controversy on the Military Commissions Act, 38 of them to be precise. They offer a warning that should not be ignored.
On June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the type of tribunal the Bush administration intended to use for terrorist trials. On Sept. 29, Congress passed a fix that met the court’s objections but left civil libertarians very nervous. The issues are an eerie echo of the debate over one of the most notorious of these tribunals, which 154 years ago ordered the largest mass execution in U.S. history. This was the military commission of Col. Henry Sibley, which tried and condemned alleged participants in the Minnesota Sioux uprising of 1862.
…the Trail of Tears should also be “offered as a warning,” as long as those “acts” are law and the Bush Administration or likewise politicians in the GOP control the executive branch. If 1/3 of our planet earth is DESERT IN 2100, I can imagine the cycle of panic, violence, and “forced removal” might possibly happen again.
”Those who do not know their history are condemned to repeat it.” -Georges Santayana.
Cherokee letter protesting the Treaty of New Etocha from Chief John Ross. “To the Senate and House of Representatives”:
LETTERBy the stipulations of this instrument, we are despoiled of our private possessions, the indefeasible property of individuals. We are stripped of every attribute of freedom and eligibility for legal self-defence. Our property may be plundered before our eyes; violence may be committed on our persons; even our lives may be taken away, and there is none to regard our complaints. We are denationalized; we are disfranchised. We are deprived of membership in the human family! We have neither land nor home, nor resting place that can be called our own. And this is effected by the provisions of a compact which assumes the venerated, the sacred appellation of treaty.
Cherokee Prayer:
SourceAs I walk the trail of life
in the fear of the wind and rain,
grant O Great Spirit
that I may always walk
like a man
2 comments
Missed this first time around, Winter Rabbit. Thank you.