The Trail of Tears

A detailed Summary of The Trail of Tears

More than 150 years ago, in 1839, the United States forced the Cherokee Nation West of the Mississippi River into what later would become the state of Oklahoma. The weather was unusually harsh that winter and the cold, the disease and the hunger cost the Cherokee Nation the lives of "at least four thousand of the fifteen thousand people who traveled the thousand miles West" (Perdue 93). Not only was the journey a very cruel and dangerous one for the Native Americans, but it also upset their tribal lives, particularly the tribal lives of the Cherokee women. This essay will focus on the position of the Cherokee woman in her tribe before and during the relocation West.

Native American woman, particularly the Cherokee, lived and thrived in a matrilineal society long before the Europeans immigrated to North America. "Traditionally Cherokee women had a voice in Cherokee government. They spoke freely in council, and the War Woman (or Beloved Woman) decided to the fate of captives" (Perdue 94). The Cherokee men would live in houses that belonged to their wives and to their wife's family. Many tribal members believed that "marriage gives no right to the husband over the property of his wife; and when they part she keeps the chil

These Cherokee Indian women were brutalized and savagely handled. Almost worse than the physical treatment, was the mental anguish and upset that these government troops caused:

These Natives had the right idea about their place in the family, and unlike their European sisters, they demanded and received respect. The instances of the Native American woman's role in politics are numerous. "As late as 1785 women still played some role in the negotiation of land transactions. Nancy Ward, the Beloved Woman of Chota, spoke to the treaty conference held at Hopewell, South Carolina, to clarify and extend land cessions stemming from Cherokee support of the British in the American Revolution" (Perdue 95).

The Cherokee women were also very adamant and vocal peacekeepers. In 1787, Benjamin Franklin received a letter from a Cherokee woman telling him that she had told her people to maintain peace with the white settlers. "She had filled the peace pipe for the warriors and she enclosed some of the same tobacco for the United States Congress in order to unite symbolically her people and his in peace". She continued, " I am in hopes that if you rightly consider that woman is the mother of all-and the woman does no pull children out of trees or stumps nor out of old logs, but out of their bodies, so that they ought to mind what a woman says" (Perdue 94).

Men working in the fields were arrested and driven to stockades. Women were dragged from their homes by soldiers whose language they could not understand. Children were often separated from their parents and driven into the stockades with the sky for a blanket and the earth for a pillow (Burnett).

After their capture, many Cherokees had to march miles over rugged mountain terrain to the stockades. Captain L.B. Webster wrote to his wife about moving eight hundred Cherokees from North Carolina to the

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Approximate Word count = 1261
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History