Fight For Survival

The Cherokee people resisted the government's order to leave the Tennessee Valley by signing petitions and lobbying Congress, but the Indian Removal Act of 1830 still passed. In March 1837, the first detachment, a group of Cherokee families, slaves, and a doctor, loaded onto 11 flat boats with Cherokee leader Major Ridge. In 1838, two more detachments traveled through Decatur on the Trail of Tears and faced hunger, disease, and death. Major Ridge had signed away Cherokee land in the Treaty of New Echota in 1835, hoping to preserve Cherokee rights to Indian Territory, and his detachment reached Decatur on March 7, 1837, with 471 Cherokee, followed by Lt. Edward Deas on June 9, 1838, with 800, and Lt. Robert H.K. Whiteley on June 21, 1838, with 1,000.

Decatur, Alabama · United States