Programs

[Wellington, Kansas] – Sumner County Historical & Genealogical Society in Wellington, Kansas will host “Trail of Tears: The Indian Removal Act of 1830” a presentation by Jason Felihkatubbe, Choctaw, of Wichita, on Monday, May 20th at 6:30 p.m.  at Cowley College, Room 113 in the Short General Education Center, 2208 Davis-White Loop, Wellington, Kansas.

This program is free and open to the public.

For more info visit www.ksschgs.com or contact the SCHGS at 620-440-4245 on Tuesdays from 10 – 4. After hours: Jane at 620-447-3266; Sherry at 316-833-6161.

Jason Felihkatubbe is an educator and an adjunct teacher with WSU Tech. He serves as the Chair of the Education Committee and the editor of the Ark Valley Crossroads newsletter for the Wichita Genealogical Society, and hosts the monthly Native American Special Interest Group, and he is one of the original writers for My Heritage’s Wiki Pages for Native American research.

Felihkatubbe will talk about the history of the Trail of Tears, why the Indians were moved off of their land, what it was like for them, and what led up to the Trail of Tears, and he will share some firsthand accounts from those who survived the migration.

In 1820, more than eighty thousand Native Americans lived in the southeast. Most lived in permanent villages where their ancestors had lived for thousands of years, and where they hunted, gathered food, farmed, and traded with others. Some of these tribes had plantations, and owned slaves. These tribes had their own religious rituals and enjoyed playing games and sports.

These tribes, often called the “Five Civilized Tribes,” were the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Cherokee, and the Seminole.

The Choctaw lived in central and southern Mississippi and western Alabama.  The Chickasaw lived in northern Mississippi and parts of Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky.  The Creek occupied eastern Alabama.  The Cherokee had settlements in northeast Alabama, northwest Georgia, southwest North Carolina, and southeast Tennessee. And the Seminole, who lived primarily in the Florida panhandle.

According to Felihkatubbe, there began to be skirmishes between the settlers and the Indians, and tensions were high.

“The settlers knew that as soon as they got rid of these people, they could expand,” Felihkatubbe said.

In 1828, Andrew Jackson was elected President.  Jackson had long been in favor of resettling all Native-Americans in the West, and so in May of 1830, the Indian Removal Act was passed in Congress, and signed by Jackson.

This effort was opposed by some, including U.S. Congressman Davy Crockett of Tennessee.

Felihkatubbe’s tribe, the Choctaw, was the first nation to begin the forced migration after the signing of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in September of 1830.  Beginning in 1831, group by group, 14,000 Choctaws left Mississippi. All were expected and forced to leave, including the sick and wounded, those too old to travel, and those who were too young to walk the distance.

They began when snow was on the ground, and ice was on the river. There was not enough food, tents, or wagons, and many walked the entire trail.

Felihkatubbe said that there was not just one trail, there were several routes, many of which covered 1,000 miles or so, and went through parts of Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri and Arkansas. Some routes were over water along the Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi, and Arkansas rivers until they reached Indian Territory (now Oklahoma.)

“The relocation was different for each tribe,” Felihkatubbe said, “but it was miserable for everybody.  They were being moved from a place that they had lived forever, to a place in the middle of nowhere in Oklahoma.”

“They were being dropped off where there is no town, no buildings, nothing,” Felihkatubbe said, “and being told ‘there you are, you’re home.’ ”

“They had to start over completely, and sometimes the family was separated or split up,” Felihkatubbe said.

Even though the Cherokee had made efforts to become part of the American culture, and had adopted the clothing, taken up agriculture, learned to read and write, created their own alphabet and adopted a formal government and written constitution, the settlers that came wanted the land for themselves, and once gold was discovered in Georgia, the Cherokee land was annexed, and redistributed.

“The settlers wanted that land, and they wanted it now,” Felihkatubbe said.

The tribes, along with their slaves, marched alongside the wagons. They were poorly equipped for the long trip, they were short on food, and some traveled through extreme heat and dealt with spoiled food, and others traveled through blizzards and terribly cold weather.

Due to exposure to the elements, the heat, the freezing cold, malnutrition, and diseases, (including smallpox) and exhaustion, the trail was marked by burial after burial.  For some of the tribes, it is estimated that nearly a fourth of their people were lost. Oftentimes it was the very young or the old who were left in graves along the trail.

Felihkatubbe stated that it is impossible to know exactly how many were forcibly relocated, and how many died along the trail, but one online estimate states that 60,000 Indians were relocated to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), and as many as 13,000 to 16,700 died along the trail.

“Some were buried, and some were left on the side of the road,” Felihkatubbe said, “The trails were littered with people being forced to relocate.”

In 1987, The Trail of Tears was designated a National Historic Trail through an act of Congress.

The removal of the Indians from the lands of their ancestors opened up 25 million acres for white settlement.

Trail of Tears National Park Service Map

Trail of Tears – Britannica map

Trail of Tears map – National Park Service, Arkansas