Most Cherokees live on the Qualla Boundary, the area adjacent to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park known as “Cherokee.” The Eastern Band of Cherokees own four other sections of land in Western North Carolina. These are the 3200-acre tract in the Cowee Mountains south of Bryson City, the Tomatla holdings near Marble, the recently pruchased 300-acre Katuah (Ferguson Fields) tract alongside the Tuckaseigee River between Bryson City and Cherokee, and the Snowbird Indian lands in Graham County near Robbinsville.

The Snowbird Cherokees are among the most traditional members of the Eastern Band. This is no doubt partly because there has been less exposure to tourism in Graham County than in Cherokee. But also they just seem by nature to be inclined toward a traditional attitude.

This attitude was evidenced once again by a “Trail of Tears Twelve Mile Walk” that took place along the Tatham Gap Road this past April 20-21. Members of the Snowbird community and white friends took part, with some spending the night at Tatham Gap before finishing the walk Saturday morning.

The event was, of course, in commemoration of the infamous forced removal and Trail of Tears events that took place in 1838. The Cherokees have long memories. Stories concerning the Trail of Tears have been passed down in their families for 163 years and will not die. Since many non-Cherokees are also interested in those tragic events, I thought that I’d devote a column to a brief and sketchy summary.

The best concise account of Cherokee history and culture is Theda Perdue’s The Cherokee (New York, Chelsea House Publishers, 1989). In a chapter titled “Removal,” Perdue summarizes the events in this manner: “The vast majority of Cherokees supported Principal Chief John Ross in his steadfast opposition to removal. Nevertheless, U.S. treaty commissioners met with about 100 treaty party members in December 1835, and they negotiated the Treaty of New Echota. This treaty provided for the exchange of all Cherokee territory in the Southeast for a tract of land in what is today northeastern Oklahoma.

“Fifteen thousand Cherokees, almost the entire population, signed a petition protesting this treaty, which had been signed by an unauthorized minority. Nevertheless, the U.S. Senate ratified the document. The treaty gave the Cherokees two years to go west. Confident that justice would ultimately triumph, the Cherokees made no preparation to move. Finally, in the summer of 1838, federal troops entered the Cherokee nation and began rounding up the Cherokees and imprisoning them in stockades. The soldiers often burned the captives’ cabins and crops in order to discourage them from escaping and returning home. In the soldiers’ sweep of Indian villages, parents and children often became separated.

“Once they reached the stockades, the Cherokees did not have enough food or water. Chief Ross and other Cherokee leaders appealed to President Martin Van Buren ... to permit the Cherokees to conduct their own removal to the West. Van Buren consented, and in the winter of 1838-39, the Cherokee nation moved west. This forced migration came to be known as the Trail of Tears because of the Cherokees’ suffering. Between one-fourth and one-half of them died before reaching their new home in the West.

“Cherokee removal ranks as one of the greatest tragedies in American history. The Cherokees, more than any other native people, tried to comply with the United States ‘civilization’ program. They had become literate, Christian farmers governed by republican laws. Yet in the end none of that mattered as much as the whites’ desire to clear the southeastern United States of Cherokees in order to make way for the territorial expansion of the United States.”

The main fort established by the U.S. military in North Carolina was at Fort Butler, present-day Murphy. Stockade roads were established to points in present-day Cherokee, Graham, Swain and Clay counties where other “forts” were established. In reality the outlying “forts” were little more than holding pens, hardly suitable for livestock much less human beings. Many Cherokees perished in these pens and never even had the opportunity to be herded to the west. You can visit the site of Fort Butler, where there is a historical marker in present-day Murphy.

A small-scale model of the fort is on display in the Cherokee County Historical Museum adjacent to the Cherokee County Courthouse. The model is based on excavations of the site made by North Carolina State Department archaeologists. One of the best sources for this period was a product of that effort. Authored by Jerry Clyde Cashion with notes by Stanley South and George G. Demmy, the report is titled Fort Butler and the Cherokee Indian Removal from North Carolina (Raleigh NC: State Department of Archives and History, 1970).

The Tatham Gap Road was established as the stockade road from present-day Cherokee County to Fort Hill in present day Robbinsville. A fine article by Pamela Sheffey titled “History of Tatham Gap Road” appears in “Graham County Heritage,” vol. 1 (Waynesville: Don Mills Inc., 1992). She records that this road, which passes over some of the most rugged terrain in WNC, was surveyed by Lt. James Tatham and his son, James G. Tatham, of old Valley Town in present-day Cherokee County. “He (Lt. Tatham) and his son walked the trails and surveyed this route by sight without any instrument, not even a compass. Then the soldiers, following this route, carved the road out of the wilderness. . . . While the road was never meant to be a free highway, it soon became the road over which settlers came.”

The story of the forced movement westward to Oklahoma of the Southeastern Indians has been told numerous times in various publications and videos. A handy synopsis of these events is contained in the “Trail of Tears National Historic Trail” a 15-page booklet published by the National Park Service in 2000. Many of the documents related to the era are reprinted in the “Journal of Cherokee Studies” vol. 3 (Summer 1978). A remarkable account titled “The Diary of Lt. John Phelps,” edited and annotated by Sarah H. Hill, was recently issued as vol. 21 of the “Journal of Cherokee Studies.” Phelps (1813-1885) was a Vermont native assigned to assist with the Cherokee removal at Fort Butler.

(With the exception of the Graham County history, the other items cited herein are available at the Museum of the Cherokee Indian or the Talking Leaves book shop in Cherokee.)

(George Ellison is a writer who lives in Bryson City. He wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 287713, or at ellisongeorge@cs.com).

 

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