They Passed This Way

The Cherokee Nation once occupied parts of Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama and was home to thousands of men, women, and children. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 required the Cherokee and other southeastern tribes to surrender their lands and move west. In 1838, more than 15,000 Cherokee began the forced migration from their eastern homeland to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma along the Trail of Tears, traveling by roads and rivers and stopping in Paducah for supplies. More than 1,000 died during the journey westward, and more than 4,000 died as a result of the forced relocation. Travel by boat brought dangers including the rapid spread of sickness onboard, fear of disease in the river lowlands, fires aboard steamers, unpredictable water levels, impassable shoals, and weather that affected navigation, while food was prepared on deck or in steerage from rations of flour, cornmeal, and bacon. At the time, the 1794 Fort Massac lay in ruins as four detachments of Cherokee passed by on steamboats and flatboats bound for Indian Territory, and U.S. Army Lieutenant Edward Deas wrote that after leaving Paducah at sunset, the boats continued through the night and reached the mouth of the Ohio about midnight, so his detachment passed Fort Massac in the dark. Federal Indian removal policy provoked fierce debate, with supporters calling it benevolent and opponents condemning its inhumanity and tragic consequences, while millions of acres of Indian lands went to white settlers. Despite the hardships, members of the five removed tribes established new lives in the West as sovereign nations preserving cultural traditions while adapting to later challenges; Cherokee survivors of the Trail of Tears joined those removed earlier to form a new government in present-day Oklahoma, while some Cherokee remained in North Carolina and formed the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

Metropolis, Illinois · United States