1966
I DON'T WANT TO GO * LITTLE MR. LEE AND THE CHEROKEES * VOCALION 9268 * UK
"No eastern tribe had struggled harder or more successfully
to make white civilization their own. For generations the Cherokee had lived
side by side with whites in Georgia. They had devised a written language,
published their own newspaper, adopted a constitution, and a Christian faith.
But after gold was discovered on their land, even they were told they would have
to start over again in the West."
The West, a documentary by Ken Burns and Stephen Ives.
"...Inclination to remove from this land has no abiding
place in our hearts, and when we move we shall move by the course of nature to
sleep under this ground which the Great Spirit gave to our ancestors and which
now covers them in their undisturbed peace."
Cherokee Legislative Council
New Echota July 1830
"I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from
their homes, and driven at the bayonet point into the stockades. And in the
chill of a drizzling rain on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle or
sheep into six hundred and forty-five wagons and started toward the west....On
the morning of November the 17th we encountered a terrific sleet and snow storm
with freezing temperatures and from that day until we reached the end of the
fateful journey on March the 26th 1839, the sufferings of the Cherokees were
awful. The trail of the exiles was a trail of death. They had to sleep in the
wagons and on the ground without fire. And I have known as many as twenty-two of
them to die in one night of pneumonia due to ill treatment, cold and
exposure..."
Private John G. Burnett
Captain Abraham McClellan's Company,
2nd Regiment, 2nd Brigade, Mounted Infantry
Cherokee Indian Removal 1838-39