Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Phillips speaks to Questers on Trail of Tears
BELLA VISTA — The Butterfield Trails Chapter of the Questers heard a presentation on Sept. 26 at the Bella Vista Historical Museum from member Dale Phillips, who serves as co-president of the Bella Vista Historical Society. He spoke on Cherokee history around the time of the Trail of Tears.
Phillips said the development of the Cherokee people is an ongoing process. They were a very powerful people before European contact, he said. In the 1700s, the French, English and Spanish began encroaching on their territory. The Cherokees decided to side with the British in the American Revolution because the British promised them that, once they won the war, there would be no American settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains. Tensions rose following Britain’s defeat in the war, he said.
A Cherokee named Tecumseh had a plan to unite all the tribes against U.S. aggression and succeeded in uniting many of them until he moved into the south, Phillips said.
Then, during the War of 1812, there was a massacre of native Americans and white settlers at Fort Mims near Mobile led by Creek Indians called the Red Sticks. These Native Americans had bought into Tecumseh’s idea of uniting the tribes against the U.S.
Andrew Jackson was in charge of the U.S. forces fighting the Red Sticks, and he approached the Cherokees who had not joined Tecumseh and promised them their land in exchange for fighting with him. A Cherokee named The Ridge, appointed Major Ridge, would lead 1,000 Cherokee into battle. The Red Sticks were driven into Horseshoe Bend, where men, women and children were wiped out by Jackson and his forces, Phillips said. Major Ridge and the Cherokee played an important role based on the promise that Native American rights would be respected, he said.
Following the War of 1812, white intrusion into Native American territory continued, and Jackson did nothing to stop it, Phillips said. The idea of moving Native Americans to lands west of the Mississippi River had been around for a number of years, with several presidents advocating it as far back as George Washington, he said.
Some Cherokees began to accept this as their fate and decided to move of their own accord. Phillips said Benton and Washington Counties were part of the original land grant, and Cherokees moved into this area. The local Osage were not happy to see them, and one attack was reported in a newspaper, he said. After 1817, small groups of Cherokees continued to settle in the west and build farms and plantations. In the east, the Cherokees tried to adjust to their white surroundings, learning English and becoming slave owners, Phillips said.
In 1823, Georgia ordered the Cherokees to vacate all their lands. The Cherokees resisted and set up their own capital with John Ross as principle chief of the Cherokees. Georgia passed legislation that all lands belonged to the state and the Indians were tenants. The Cherokees took Georgia to court, and the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court. They were never seen as an independent nation, he said.
In 1930, Jackson was president and he signed the Indian Removal Act, which affected 85 tribes. Cherokee leader John Ridge (not to be confused with Major Ridge) created the Treaty of New Echota, in which the U.S. government reimbursed the Native Americans and gave them present-day Oklahoma in exchange for their ancestral lands in the southeastern U.S.
The Cherokee were divided between those who supported John Ridge and the treaty and those who viewed them as traitors and supported John Ross.
In 1938, Native Americans were removed by force on what became known as the Trail of Tears, where 4,000 died.
Upon arrival in Indian Territory, John Ross and his followers demanded immediate elections to make him the leader of all the Cherokees, but others wanted to delay the elections.
In June 1939 Ross and his followers ambushed and killed as many treaty supporters as they could find, he said, including John Ridge and Major Ridge.
The Cherokee nation was plunged into a civil war. Murders and assassinations followed with no one gaining control.
During the U.S. Civil War, Native Americans fought on both sides, he said. Following the war, they returned to a no-man’s land with homes and crops burned.
There is no end to the story, as it is still an ongoing process, Phillips said. He closed by saying it is not a happy story but it is one that needs to be told.