They Passed This Way
“I have no more land. I am driven away from home, driven up the red waters, let us all go, let us all die together and somewhere upon the banks we will be there.” – Sin-e-cha’s Song, heard on several removal boats along the Trail of Tears.
The Trail of Tears – Water Route
After passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the United States Government forced tens of thousands of American Indians to leave their ancestral lands in the southeast for new homes in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). They traveled over established land and water routs, all of which led through Arkansas. Rather than risk disease and other hazards of summer travel, many groups left in the fall and faced, instead, treacherous winter weather. Thousands died during the ordeal – remembered today as the Trail of Tears.
Illustration by Cherokee artist Sam Watts-Scott, 2005
Despite the hardships of the journey, the people of the five tribes of the Southeast established new lives in the West. They stand now as successful sovereign nations, proudly preserving cultural traditions, while adapting to the challenges of the 21st century.
The unreliability of navigable rivers, safety concerns, and severe health threats meant that only a minority of those removed would travel by river rather than over land. But steamboats pulling long flatboats and keelboats loaded with American Indians were common on the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers in the 1830s.
This panel is supported in part by a grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council and the Department of Arkansas Heritage.
Federal Indian Removal
In the 1830s, the federal government forcibly removed approximately 16,000 Cherokee, 21,000 Muscogee (Creek), 9,000 Choctaw, 6,000 Chickasaw, and 4,000 Seminole from the southeastern United States.
Federal Indian removal policy aroused fierce and bitter debate. Supports of the policy claimed it was a benevolent action to save the tribes east of the Mississippi River from being overwhelmed and lost in the onslaught of an expanding American population. Opponents decried its inhumanity and the tragic consequences it would have for the Indian peoples. One thing was certain; removal freed millions of acres of Indian lands for use by American settlers.
In 1987, to commemorate this tragic chapter in American history, the United States Congress designated the primary land and water routs of the Cherokee removal as the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail.
Today, the National Park Service partners with the southeastern tribes; the Trail of Tears Association and other non-government organizations; federal, state, and local agencies; and private landowners to foster the appreciation and preservation of historic sites and segments and to tell the story of forced reomoval of the Cherokee people and other American Indian tribes.
You can visit certified sites, segments, and interpretive facilities along the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail by following the Auto Tour Route. For more information, see: www.nps.gov.trte.
