— ~4,000 Cherokee Nation Cultural Resource Center. “Brief History of the Trail of Tears.”

— ~4,000 Coggins. Tennessee Tragedies: Natural, Technological, and Societal… 2011, p. xxix.

— 4,000 Foreman, Grant. Indian Removal. Norman: University of OK Press, 1932, p. 312.[2]

— ~4,000 Heslep / Shaw. “Environment: The Trail of Tears and its Effect on Organisms,” p. 37.

— >4,000 Howard & Allen. “Stress and death in the settlement of Indian Territory.” 1975, 354.[3]

— ~4,000 Knight. “Cherokee society under the stress of removal, 1820-1846.” 1954-55, p. 354.[4]

— >4,000 McClary. “Trail of Tears, or Nunna-da-ul-tsun-yi.” TN Encyclopedia of History…

— >4,000 Mooney, James. Myths of the Cherokee. 1900, republished 1982; in Thornton p. 74.

— 4,000 Thornton, Russell. The Cherokees: A Population History. U. of Nebraska, 1990, 74.[5]

— 2,000 England. A Demographic Study of the Cherokee Nation (Ph.D. dis.), U of OK, 1974.[6]

— 2,000 Thomas, William H., attorney for Eastern Cherokee (by end of 1838).[7]

— 1,200 Hayn and Grable (Eds.). Trail of Tears Curriculum Guide. Little Rock: 2010, p. 37.[8]

Cherokee Nation: “….White resentment of the Cherokee had been building and reached a pinnacle following the discovery of gold in northern Georgia. This discovery was made just after the creation and passage of the original Cherokee Nation constitution and establishment of a Cherokee Supreme Court. Possessed by “gold fever” and a thirst for expansion, many white communities turned on their Cherokee neighbors. The U.S. government ultimately decided it was time for the Cherokees to be “removed”; leaving behind their farms, their land and their homes.

“President Andrew Jackson’s military command and almost certainly his life were saved thanks to the aid of 500 Cherokee allies at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814. Unbelievably, it was Jackson who authorized the Indian Removal Act of 1830 following the recommendation of President James Monroe in his final address to Congress in 1825. Jackson, as president, sanctioned an attitude that had persisted for many years among many white immigrants. Even Thomas Jefferson, who often cited the Great Law of Peace of the Iroquois Confederacy as the model for the U.S. Constitution, supported Indian Removal as early as 1802.

“The displacement of native people was not wanting for eloquent opposition. Senators Daniel Webster and Henry Clay spoke out against removal. The Reverend Samuel Worcester, missionary to the Cherokees, challenged Georgia’s attempt to extinguish Indian title to land in the state, actually winning his case before the Supreme Court.

“Worcester vs. Georgia, 1832 and Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia, 1831 are considered the two most influential legal decisions in Indian law. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled for Georgia in the 1831 case, but in Worcester vs. Georgia, the court affirmed Cherokee sovereignty. President Andrew Jackson arrogantly defied the decision of the court and ordered the removal, an act that established the U.S. government’s precedent for the future removal of many Native Americans from their ancestral homelands.

“The U.S. government used the Treaty of New Echota in 1835 to justify the removal. The treaty, signed by about 100 Cherokees known as the Treaty Party, relinquished all lands east of the Mississippi River in exchange for land in Indian Territory and the promise of money, livestock, various provisions, tools and other benefits.

“When these pro-removal Cherokee leaders signed the Treaty of New Echota, they also signed their own death warrants, since the Cherokee Nation Council had earlier passed a law calling for the death of anyone agreeing to give up tribal land. The signing and the removal led to bitter factionalism and ultimately to the deaths of most of the Treaty Party leaders once the Cherokee arrived in Indian Territory.

“Opposition to the removal was led by Chief John Ross, a mixed-blood of Scottish and one-eighth Cherokee descent. The Ross party and most Cherokees opposed the New Echota Treaty, but Georgia and the U.S. government prevailed and used it as justification to force almost all of the 17,000 Cherokees from their southeastern homeland.

“Under orders from President Jackson the U.S. Army began enforcement of the Removal Act. The Cherokee were rounded up in the summer of 1838 and loaded onto boats that traveled the Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi and Arkansas Rivers into Indian Territory. Many were held in prison camps awaiting their fate.

“An estimated 4,000 died from hunger, exposure and disease. The journey became a cultural memory as the “trail where they cried” for the Cherokees and other removed tribes. Today it is widely remembered by the general public as the “Trail of Tears”. The Oklahoma chapter of the Trail of Tears Association has begun the task of marking the graves of Trail survivors with bronze memorials….” (Cherokee Nation Cultural Resource Center. “Brief History of the Trail of Tears.”)

Coggins: “Of 14,000 Cherokees who were forced to march westward during the infamous Trail of Tears of 1838-39, 4,000 are estimated to have died en route.[9] In their hast to drive the Native Americans as rapidly as possible through the cold and snows of that winter, U.S. soldiers gave them little time in which to bury their dead. Deaths occurred almost daily from exposure, exhaustion, disease, and starvation. The dead were interred in shallow and unmarked graves. There was no time for ceremony and little time for mourning. When daylight came, the men, women, and children were expected to begin moving again. Historical markers in Tennessee and other states have been erected along the various routes of the Trail of Tears to commemorate those who died in this tragic episode.” (Coggins, Allen R. Tennessee Tragedies: Natural, Technological, and Societal Disasters in the Volunteer State. 2011, pp. xxviii-xxix.)

Hayne and Grable: “To get around the Court’s ruling,[10] government officials signed a treaty with Cherokee leaders who favored relocation, even though they did not represent most of the Cherokee people. Under this treaty, the Cherokees were herded by the U.S. Army, like other nations before them, on a long and deadly march west. Of the 16,000 Cherokees forced to leave their homes, about 4,000 died on the march to the Indian Territory.”[11] (p. 37)

“…President Jackson ordered the removal of the Indians in 1838. Ordered to move on the Cherokee, General John Wool resigned his command in protest. His replacement, general Winfield Scott led over 7,000 men early that summer to begin the invasion of the Cherokee Nation and escort the Cherokee into stockades in Tennessee. From there, the Cherokee were forced to march to the new Indian Territory in Oklahoma. About 4,000 Cherokee died as a result of this forced march. They had minimal facilities, food, and protection along the way. The route they traversed and the journey itself became known as ‘The Trail of Tears’ or, as a direct translation from Cherokee, ‘The Trail Where They Cried’ (‘Nunna dual Tsuny’).” (p. 45)

“Of the 17,000 Cherokee Indians who were founded up for the westward migration in 1838, some 4,000[12] perished along the way or shortly after arrival in their new land. Most of the deaths were attributed to disease, although many of them died of exposure during the harsh winter.” (p. 66.) (Hayn and Grable (Eds.). Trail of Tears Curriculum Guide. Little Rock: 2010, p. 37.)

McClary: “The Trail of Tears (or Nunna-da-ul-tsun-yi in the Cherokee language: “the place where they cried”), next to the practice of black slavery, is arguably the most tragic story in Tennessee history. Covering the period from May 1838 to March 1839, the Trail of Tears was the federal government’s final, forceful effort to remove the Cherokees from the land on which they lived in upper Georgia and southeastern Tennessee….

“Compounding the problems of the Cherokees was the discovery of gold in Dahlonega, Georgia. Georgia officials immediately began devising a system of lotteries to distribute the Cherokee land and its supposed riches to white settlers. Suddenly denied the right to conduct tribal business under Georgia law, the Cherokees moved their capital to Red Clay, just across the Tennessee border. Not to be outdone, however, the Georgia governor allowed a minority group, led by Major Ridge, to gather at New Echota in December 1835 to sign a treaty ceding all eastern Cherokee holdings to the United States for $5 million and land west of the Mississippi River. Although the lawful Red Clay representatives protested the treaty through every legal channel, the U.S. Senate ratified the Treaty of New Echota on May 23, 1836, by a single vote.

“Accepting what they considered to be inevitable, Major Ridge and some other pragmatic Cherokees salvaged what they could and proceeded at their discretion to their new homeland. But the majority, led by John Ross, refused to believe the federal government would resort to force to remove them from their ancestral land.

“They were wrong. After two years of pleas and threats from various United States agencies, the roundup of the Cherokees began in May 1838 with seven thousand soldiers under the command of General Winfield Scott. The Cherokees were taken–young and old, poor and rich, along with their black slaves–with whatever possessions they could quickly gather before whites rushed in to claim their lottery winnings or to plunder what the unfortunate prisoners had been unable to take. The captives were taken to collection camps where most of them languished all summer while Indian representatives, most notably John Ross, and General Scott struggled with procedures for effecting their deportation.

“Originally the plan called for transporting the Cherokees by keel boats constructed for that purpose by the federal government. The proposed water route followed the Tennessee River to the Mississippi River, then up the Arkansas River to the new Cherokee territory. During the summer, three groups did leave by water from present-day Chattanooga, but they experienced great difficulty because drought had reduced the river levels. As finally organized by Ross, the mass of the Cherokees traveled by land, the first group leaving on August 28, 1838. They were followed at intervals by twelve other groups, each numbering approximately one thousand Cherokees and blacks. The “Trail,” in fact, included three routes. One crossed Tennessee to Memphis, then moved along the Arkansas River to Cherokee land. A second route went from Fort Payne, Alabama, through West Tennessee to Missouri, then down through Arkansas to Oklahoma. The third progressed through Nashville to Kentucky, Illinois, and Missouri before dropping down near the northwestern corner of Arkansas.

“Escorted by soldiers on horseback, the Cherokees were not prepared for the weather or the trauma of their trek. Lacking adequate clothing and food, often moving in deplorable weather conditions, more and more fell along the way. Each campsite served as a new burial ground, while the survivors moved on. Of the original estimated fourteen thousand marchers, it is believed that over four thousand died before reaching their destination….

“In 1987 the U.S. Congress established the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, which is administered by the National Park Service with the cooperation of a wide range of interested parties, including the Cherokee Nation. The Trial of Tears Association, a nonprofit organization with headquarters in Little Rock, Arkansas, was founded in 1993 to work closely with the National Park Service in identifying and marking all of the land routes used in the forced march westward.”[13] (McClary, Ben Harris. “Trail of Tears, or Nunna-da-ul-tsun-yi.” Published 12-25-2009 and updated 2-28-2011 in Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture, Version 2.0. Nashville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, online Edition © 2002 ~2015.)

Mooney (1900 and 1982): “It is difficult to arrive at any accurate statement of the number of Cherokee who died as a result of the Removal. According to the official figures those who removed under the direction of Ross lost over 1,600 on the journey. The proportionate mortality among these previously removed under military supervision was probably greater, as it was their suffering that led to the proposition of the Cherokee national officers to take charge of the emigration. Hundreds died in the stockades and the waiting camps, chiefly by reason of the rations furnished, which were of flour and other provisions to which they were unaccustomed and which they did not know how to prepare properly. Hundreds of others died soon after their arrival in Indian Territory, from sickness and exposure on the journey. Altogether it is asserted, probably with reason, that over 4,000 Cherokee died as the direct result of the removal.” (Mooney, James. Myths of the Cherokee. Nashville, TN: Charles and Randy Elder, 1900, republished 1982; Quoted in Thornton, pp. 73-74.)

Thornton: “Deaths were frequent during the journeys, from starvation, cold, hardship, deliberate killings, and accidents. According to Grant Foreman, many Cherokees also died from measles, cholera, dysentery, and whooping cough; other diseases included colds, influenza, diarrhea, fevers, and gonorrhea. Young children and the aged suffered particularly (Foreman 1932:262-63, 283)[14]: ‘A very small percentage of the old and infirm, and the very young survived the hardships of that ghastly undertaking.’ (Foreman 1934:282).[15]

“Deaths did not cease when the Cherokees arrived at new lands in Indian Territory; to the contrary, they likely intensified. Apparently most migrants did reach their new homelands, but a series of epidemic diseases struck and a great number died, since they had no doctors or medicine (Doran 1975-76:497;[16] see also Young 1979:135-37, no. 13).[17] Seemingly one of the diseases was smallpox: on December 14, 1838, T. Hartley Crawford, head of the Office of Indian Affairs, wrote to J. R. Poinsett, the secretary of war, about an epidemic of smallpox among the Cherokees and other Indians in Indian Territory:

A recently received letter states that the small-pox still prevails among the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Cherokees, Creeks, and Seminoles, and that its ravages, at the latest dates, were not arrested on the upper Missouri. The measures taken heretofore have, no doubt, saved many lives, and been useful in limiting the spread of this dreadful disease…. (New American State Papers [1789-1860] 1972, 3:126-27).”

Sources

Cherokee Nation Cultural Resource Center. “Brief History of the Trail of Tears.” Accessed 8-13-2015 at: http://www.cherokee.org/AboutTheNation/History/TrailofTears/ABriefHistoryoftheTrailofTears.aspx

Coggins, Allen R. Tennessee Tragedies: Natural, Technological, and Societal Disasters in the Volunteer State. Knoxville, University of Tennessee Press, 2011. Google preview accessed 8-13-2015 at: https://books.google.com/books?id=SfK6aBuqohQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=true

Hayn, Judith A. and Cheryl R. Grable (Eds.), Jean M. Kiekel, Ast. Ed., M. Merritt, Tech. Ed. Trail of Tears Curriculum Guide. Little Rock, AR: Sequoya National Research Center, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, 5-18-2010 modification, 160 pages. Accessed 8-23-2015 at: http://ualr.edu/sequoyah/uploads/2010/05/Trail_of_Tears.pdf

Heslep, Jodie (LISA Academy, Little Rock), and Sherrie Shaw (Graduate Student, University of Arkansas at Little Rock). “Environment: The Trail of Tears and its Effect on Organisms,” p. 37 in Hayn and Grable (Eds.). Trail of Tears Curriculum Guide. Little Rock: 2010.

McClary, Ben Harris. “Trail of Tears, or Nunna-da-ul-tsun-yi.” Published 12-25-2009 and updated 2-28-2011 in Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture, Version 2.0. Nashville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, online Edition © 2002 ~2015. Accessed 8-13-2015 at: http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=1394

Thornton, Russell. The Cherokees: A Population History. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. Google preview accessed 8-23-2015 at: https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=1GX1A5Gx_IcC&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&dq=cherokee+removal+fatalities&ots=nSXNbinSr-&sig=oj77XavEvGmAgcGMa-1nNrykzXk#v=onepage&q&f=false

[1] Also referred to as Cherokee Trail of Tears as well as a “forced-march” relocation. Geographic area of coverage comes from sources in Narrative document and map in Thornton (1990) from Morris, Goins and McReynolds ([1965] 1986:20), entitled “The Trail of Tears.” Shows two Cherokee relocation routes from area encompassing north/northwest GA, southwest NC, southeast TN and northeast AL. One route is northwest through TN into KY, westward to southern IL, then down into southeastern MO, into northern Ark. and then westward into OK. Second route was westward through TN and AR to OK.

[2] Cited in Thornton (1990, p. 74), quoting Foreman to effect that “all told, 4,000 died during the course of capture and detention in temporary stockades and the removal itself…”

[3] R. Palmer Howard and Virginia E. Allen article published in Chronicles of Oklahoma 53, 1975, pp. 65-77. Cited by Thornton (1990, p. 74).

[4] Article by Oliver Knight in Chronicles of Oklahoma, 1954-55, 32:414-418. Cited by Thornton (1990, 74) quoting Knight: “By the time the transplantation was completed in 1839, approximately four thousand Cherokees had died.”

[5] “The figure of 4,000 deaths directly related to removal is generally accepted by more recent scholars.” Thornton, after several pages of examination of sources and their sources and his own analytical attempt to derive losses based on population estimates, concludes “…mortality from the Trail of Tears, including the first year in Indian Territory particularly, seems even more severe than heretofore realized.” (page 76)

[6] Cited in Thornton, p. 74.

[7] Cited in Thornton, p. 73. Thornton writes that in the words of Thomas “At the time the emigration closed, in 1838, it was ascertained that at the places the Cherokee were collected for emigration, and when on their journey to the west, about 2,000 died, and thereby diminishing the number, embraced in the census, from 16,737 to 14,737” (New American State Papers [1789-1860] 1972, 11:778). Thornton writes: “This, of course, takes no account of those who died after the removal, say, during the initial year of their relocation in Indian Territory.

[8] This figure is given in a footnote after Heslep and Shaw write of 4,000 deaths. The editors write, without citing sources, that “Recent research indicates that 1,200 people died on the Trail of Tears.”

[9] Cites: Ben Harris McClary. “Trail of Tears, or nunna-da-ul-tsun-yi,” in Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture (Carroll Van West, ed.). Nashville: Tennessee Historical Society and Rutledge Hill Press, 1998.

[10] Worcester v. Georgia, U.S. Supreme Court, John Marshall Chief Justice.

[11] Cites Holt, pp. 246-248. (The bibliography, however, does not have a listing under the name Holt.)

[12] “Editor’s note: Recent research indicates that 1,200 people died on the Trail of Tears, a lower number than older sources suggest. Unfortunately, most sources of information have not been updated.”

[13] Under Suggested Reading: John Ehle, Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation (1988); Louis Filler and Allen Guttmann, eds., The Removal of the Cherokee Nation (1977).

[14] Grant Foreman. Indian Removal. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1932.

[15] Grant Foreman. The Five Civilized Tribes. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1934.

[16] Michael F. Doran. “Population statistics of nineteenth century Indian Territory.” Chronicles of Oklahoma, Vol. 53, 1975-76, pp. 492-515.

[17] The only Young in References section is: Mary Young. “Indian removal and the attack on tribal autonomy: The Cherokee case.” In Indians of the lower South: Past and Present, John K. Mahon (ed.), 125-142. Pensacola, FL: Gulf Coast History and Humanities Conference, 1975.

1838 — May-March 1839, Cherokee Relocation, NE AL/NW GA/SE TN/NW NC to OK ~4,000