I chose this document written by Nathaniel Smith, a general in the U.S. military, in 1838. This is a notice to the Cherokee’s stating that they are to be relocated. If they were to refuse, they would be forcibly removed from their homes. The original date of the notice is January 20th, 1838.
There were numerous treaties and discussions for many years leading up to the evacuation of the Cherokees, when finally President Andrew Jackson approved the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The Cherokee’s were the last of five tribes to be removed from their homeland of the southeastern part of the United States. Their evacuation followed the Choctaw, Seminole, Creek and the Chickasaw.
Nathaniel Smith had a firsthand account of the removal of the Cherokee’s; he was there when it happened and submitted the notice to them to evacuate. Smith’s only visible motive was to inform of an evacuation and had no personal opinion on the matter stated in this document.
The Indian Removal Act of 1830 later became known as the Trail of Tears, taken from a quote in the Arkansas Gazette, that the evacuation was a “trail of tears and death.” No one knows for sure who made this comment, but it has stuck and has inspired many pieces of artwork including the well-known sculpture “End of the Trail” by James Earl Fraser.
This removal of Native peoples from their homeland was justified by explaining that it would be in their best interest, in order to live happily away from the persecution of whites, “The Superintendent takes this occasion to repeat that he has been instructed by their great Father the President to treat the Cherokees with kindness and friendship, and to assure them that to linger in the midst of a white population, suffering oppression and encroachment, ruin and extermination must inevitably fall on them” Smith.
Works Cited:
Smith, Nathaniel, d. 1843. Cherokee Indians Relocation Notice. 1838.
http://metis.galib.uga.edu/ssp/cgi-bin/tei-natamer-idx.pl?sessionid=38ce1790-4505871549-0591&type=doc&tei2id=CH082
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