Talk:Trail of Tears/Archive 1

Image needed
This article would benefit from having the most famous image related to the "Trail of Tears", painted by Robert Lindneux in 1942 and found all over the Internet, such as:. The artist died in 1970 ; I don't know if we can use this image, but it would be nice.--Kevin Myers 04:28, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)


 * Done. Rob (talk) 14:54, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

This famous painting has a number of inaccuracies. For instance, there were NO Army guards for the 12 thousand-person wagon trains in the fall and winter of 1838-1839. Prior to this part of the Removal, Gen. Scott ordered the disarming of the Cherokees. There were enough wagons (their canvas tops were marked "C.N." i.e. "Cherokee Nation") for transport and few folks had to walk. Chief Ross purchased several hundred wagons and teams for the trip, then later charged the Army rental fees for them, even though they were sold for profit in Arkansas in 1839. Food, forage, and cold-weather clothing were furnished by Lewis Ross (brother of Chief Ross), and there were few complaints afterwards by Cherokees (but plenty of complaints about Army rations provided in Indian Territory in 1839). The wagon trains by-passed certain ferry sites to avoid being gouged by higher tolls.(Oconostota (talk) 19:37, 24 June 2009 (UTC))

"Death March"?
read the article, the people were forced to walk the entire length, many died along the way, death march seems rather appropriate, also considering that they were under military guard the entire time. " forced relocation" removes any reference to thier suffering, which is in itself a pov. Hence, Death March is appropriate. Gabrielsimon 02:14, 29 July 2005 (UTC)


 * You ask me to read the article. Not a problem, since I wrote most of the current version. BTW, your details are somewhat wrong: most of the emigrants were not under military guard, and many did not walk the entire way. The suffering was immense to be sure, though most deaths occurred from disease before the "march" itself. Just telling the story honestly is the proper way to demonstrate how awful and unjust it was. There's no need for loaded language and facile moral posturing when the facts speak for themselves. --Kevin Myers 02:22, July 29, 2005 (UTC)


 * Although deaths and suffering did occur, death march refers to the intentional infliction of death which, to my knowledge, was not the purpose. The purpose was to relocate them to the Indian territory. That's why I think forced removal is appropriate. Derktar 02:25, July 29, 2005 (UTC).


 * I think the purpose of most death marches is a mixture of removing people and of killing them (or at least don't care if they die). The goal for example of the Bataan Death March was not to kill prisoners, but to move them to a camp. A death march is more of a march where people get not enough water or food and people are shot if they get behind. The Baatan Death March suffered, according to the article, 14% casualties (from the article 10000 of 64000), which should be much higher if the purpose of the march was the death of the prisoners. The same goes for death marches at the end of WWII. They mostly had other camps for destinations, but people were denied food and water and where also shot if they got behind. This definiton is much easier to verify than things like purpose and missing destinations. - StephanSchmidt

As far as I can tell the problem with trying to understand the Cherokee's removal is that the whole thing was done half assed so there is not usual story for all of the Cherokees removals.

BTW you don't send people on a long trip with food that will go bad unless you want them to die. Someone(s) wanted the TOT to be a death march.


 * It went bad in restrospect but did they know it would? As stated before most of the deaths were caused by disease that was uncontrollable. In fact even with the Cherokee leading some of the trips, deaths still occured that were out of the hands of the U.S. gov't. Forced removal states only the fact that the Cherokee were forced to relocate and does not have an NPOV slant. Derktar 00:10, July 30, 2005 (UTC).


 * To my understanding, the Cherokee in fact conducted the majority of their own removal. The few contingents led by conductors from the US army were often led by Edward Deas, who was actually a sympathizer for the plight of the Cherokee.  The huge death rate comes from the period after the 1838, May 23rd deadline.  This was when they were rounded into camps and pressed into oversized detachments, often over 700 in size (larger then Little Rock or Memphis at that time).  With this many people close together, communicable diseases spread quickly, killing many.  Further, these contingents were among the last to move but following the same routes the others had taken.  The areas they were going through were often depleted due to the vast numbers that had gone before them.  Lastly, these final contingents were traveling during the hottest most grueling time of the year, which killed many.  What happened to the Cherokee was definently not right, but much of the death rate actually comes from not cooperating and moving voluntarily over the course of the 2 years alloted for voluntary removal.--Winjammer 23:52, 7 February 2007 (UTC)


 * uh, isnt "death march" a star wars song...thing? that is'n appropriate Im a bell(Don't ask) 23:05, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Cherokee language, Unicode problems
I have removed the supposed Unicode version of the Cherokee language version of "Trail of Tears" in the opening paragraph. It looked like this: I tried to turn that text into actual entities in &xXXXX; format, but as far as I can tell, it is corrupted and unusable. For example, that "Ž" turns into hex 17D, which is too large to fit into the lower two nibbles of the 2-byte Unicode representation. I'm not all that well versed in Unicode, though; maybe I'm just not understanding something.

I also removed "getsikahvda anegvi", which as far as I can tell has nothing to do with anything. :) If someone here knows otherwise, please let me know or correct the article; I am curious how that got in there! &mdash; HorsePunchKid → 龜  00:15, 21 September 2005 (UTC)


 * By the way, if anyone is able to add the original Cherokee in whatever script it's actually supposed to be in, you can use this to convert it into HTML entities. That will avoid problems where the non-ASCII characters turn into garbage in some of the lamer browsers, as has clearly happend with this article. &mdash; HorsePunchKid → 龜  00:18, 21 September 2005 (UTC)


 * That old converter I linked to is dead. Try this improved version. Also, if anyone is interested, you can view the Cherokee script, along with Unicode conversions, here. I would love to see the Cherokee back in the article, but I'm not going to be of much help with that aside from these encoding issues. &mdash; HorsePunchKid → 龜  00:54, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Amazing Grace
User:Kevin Myers, not unreasonably, removed the following, requesting sources...


 * The Cherokee were not always able to give their dead a full burial. Instead, the singing of Amazing Grace had to replace any ceremony. Since then, Amazing Grace is often considered the Cherokee National Anthem.

I went looking, and found some online sources   [ , though none validate the notion that it was used in lieu of a full burial ceremony.  Since that claim is made both here and in the [[Cherokee]] article, it would seem worth getting it right.  Anyone have a source? -- Mwanner | Talk 14:43, 31 October 2005 (UTC)


 * My father always tells that story, and I think its pretty interesting. The song is for sure a Cherokee anthem, and was definitely sung during the trail.  The part about it being used instead of a full ceremony might be revisionism, I guess.  I'll see if I can find anything.Smmurphy 15:16, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
 * This article quotes another oral source with a different story about how it became an anthem.  It may be that various people have various stories about how the song was used on the trail.  I think that even if I find my father's source (if its not just a story he knows), it would be cast into doubt by other peoples stories, with no one story being diffinitive. Smmurphy 15:32, 31 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Definitely interesting. Since Christian missionaries led the fight among whites against Indian Removal, and many accompanied Cherokees during the journey, it certainly seems plausible that even those Cherokees who weren't Christians could have been familiar with the song at the time. However, none of the books listed in "references" of this article mentions "Amazing Grace" as far as I remember. Many web sites tend to freely mix myth, history, and urban legend, so hopefully someone can come up with a scholarly source which discusses the story. Of course, if it's a widely believed story but not historically verifiable, that's interesting as well, and we can still report it as such.


 * The following components of the story should be verified:
 * The song was sung on the trail
 * The song was sung in lieu of a burial ceremony
 * The song is now a sort of Cherokee anthem
 * The Trail of Tears had some role in making the song a Cherokee anthem
 * --Kevin Myers | (complaint dept.) 16:09, 31 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I talked to my father, and he does not have any sources (except oral, sorry) for the story that amazing grace was sung in lieu of a burial ceremony. However the websites Mwanner quotes, the article I quoted, as well as the books  and, found via google print, corroberate the connection between the song and the trail, and the song's status as an anthem.  I will leave it up to someone else to decide if the material should go back in or if it isn't a major enough part of the story. Smmurphy 13:02, 3 November 2005 (UTC)


 * For too long the emphasis in telling the story of the Cherokee Removal has been sufferering and death. However, this was no Donner Party, and probably less than 2000 perished from all causes. The real emphasis should be the survival and integrity of the Cherokee people under immense pressures. The other tribes had a harder time. The Choctaws ran into a cholera epidemic and the Seminoles were transported in shackles. Were you aware that there were 300 Creek (Muskogee) Indians within the Cherokee Removal? Did you know that for a brief period 200 U.S. Marines were involved?  Some Cherokees travelled part way west by railroad (the "Tuscumbia and Decatur R.R." in Alabama). The internment camps in the summer of 1838 were not "concentration camps" like Belsen or Buchenwald.  The most brutal persecuters of the Cherokees were not Scott's regular army troops, but the ruffians in the Georgia Guard.(Oconostota (talk) 19:21, 24 June 2009 (UTC))


 * Good work. I had never heard of "Google Print" before -- that looks like it could be handy for working on Wikipedia. Thanks for that.


 * Notice that neither book you found goes so far as to claim that the story is "true": they both use qualifying phrases like "it is said" and "it is believed". That may mean that the story is based on folklore or oral tradition rather than traditionally verifiable history. Which is okay, we can and should include information about notable folklore in articles, we just need to make sure to let readers know when we do so. --Kevin Myers | (complaint dept.) 15:38, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Chuck Norris fact
The Trail of Tears is the subject of a Chuck Norris fact. The fact describes the Trail of Tears as anywhere that Chuck Norris has been. Should this be mentioned? Scott Gall 01:30, 13 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Only when hell freezes over. :-) Kevin (complaints?) 15:47, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

concordance...
why is it that the article states that Nunna daul isunyi is the cherokee language term for the trail, while the cherokee language article is given an entirely different name?-Kızılderili 07:41, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Article needs refocusing
There should be five separate Wikipedia articles for each tribal Removal. I am a registered citizen of the Cherokee Nation and have ancestors that were in the Removal. One of them was Collins McDonald, Assistant Conductor of the 10th wagon train conducted by George Hicks (Oct.1838-March,1839). The Cherokees have seized "Tail of Tears" as a brand name, to the detrement of the other four tribes. The Cherokee Removal was the last, largest, most publicized, and easiest of them. The term itself is probably of Choctaw origin, overheard and reused by a Cherokee Methodist Preacher in the late 19th century (see T.L. Ballenger, "Joseph Franklin Thompson: An Early Cherokee Leader," Chronicles of Oklahoma, 1952, Vol. 30, # 3). The death toll of 4000 seems chisled in stone in all reference works including Wikipedia, but the actual number was about 1200 (my own research). I would like to modify this page by 1) reducing the 4000 figure and explaining why; 2) noting the Choctaw orgin of "TOT"; 3) noting that Chief Ross and his brother Lewis "cooked the books" by adding 1600 phantom Cherokees to get extra Army expense money (they may has skimmed as much as $500.000); 4) debunking "The Birthday Story of Pvt John G. Burnett (his pension records show he had been discharged from the Tennessee militia one year BEFORE the Removal; the story has internal contredictions and was concocted by his son to gain veteran's benefits; and perhaps other matters possibly as controversial. The Burnett Story and the 4000 fatalities are urban legends attached to the Removal, and "Trail of Tears" is not only too emotive, but anacronistic.  "Removal" was the term used by government and tribal officials alike at the time and is neutral in tone. I have researched the Cherokee Removal for several decades, which was only partly under Army coercion (in May-June, 1838) with the remainder voluntary or under Ross' direction. Observers of the Cherokee Removal include the Presbyterian missionary Daniel Butrick, the journalist/actor/composer John Howard Payne and an English-born geologist George Featherenstonhaugh (pronounced "Fanshaw") who was an Army spy. If I edit any of this material into the article, I will document and cite everything.(Oconostota (talk) 14:03, 23 June 2009 (UTC))

There is a lot of good information in this article but it is heavily unbalanced in regard to the Cherokees. The Cherokee were not the only tribe relocated over the Trail of Tears. Nor were they first. Nor was their's necessarily the harshest journey. Nor did the term come from the Cherokee language. The term, for instance, comes from an Arkansas Gazette article quoting a Choctaw chief's statement about a "trail of tears and death". The statement was repeatedly quoted by other newspapers before becoming a general term for the trials of the other southern tribes as they were removed west.

It is just as important to know the background and history of the travails of the other tribes during their removals. For this reason I'm changing the Oklahoma Project rating to Stub for now and its importance to High. OKtag 19:48, 22 January 2007 (UTC)


 * For better or worse, the phrase "Trail of Tears" has become overwhelmingly associated with the Cherokee removal. Wikipedia policy is that we must reflect common usage rather than decide what things ought to be called. There's plenty of room to write about the Choctaw removal in the article Indian Removal, which is the article you desire but have apparently overlooked. This article, by the way, is simply a "daughter article" of the main article "Indian Removal." If other removals get written about at length, they can be broken out into daughter articles of their own, entitled, for example, as Chowtaw Trail of Tears or Choctaw removal. At some point, there might be individual articles on the removal of each tribe, with summaries at the main "Indian Removal" article. Therefore, it's best to avoid the misguided and unproductive notion that this article should be refocused, and instead get to work on writing about the other removals in the "Indian Removal" article. —Kevin 13:29, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Semantics of term: Trail of Tears
I have contemporarily interviewed a Cherokee Indian who had descendents on the "Trail of Tears". He was offended by my use of the term as we were disussing Native Americans. He said that his family and Elders told him that the Indians/Cherokees did not cry in the 1830's during the Indian Removal from Georgia: the white soldiers cried when they saw the pain, suffering and death of the Cherokee Indians due to their mistreatment, and that THAT is why it is called the Trail of "TEARS":  white men's tears. Some of the older Cherokees stayed behind in Georgia to die on their land, or they married a white person to stay in Georgia. Others went on the "march" knowing they would not survive, giving their blanket to more feebler, older tribal members or babies, etc., There are many graves along the "Trail of Tears" and much lost history of these Peoples. Some of the US Calvary soldiers were kind and sympathetic but they had to follow the system, the same as concentration camp guards did in Nazi Germany. The previously honored and respected Cherokee Tribal Chiefs were given no special privileges or supplies or consideration and several of the Cherokee Chiefs died on the trip and were buried alongside the "trail". The Cherokees that did not assemble were pulled from their homes with babies and children in tow, leaving food cooking on the stove, and corralled into a fort. When some of them returned home quickly to get an item to take, white people had already moved into their home, even though a state lottery was later held to allocate the Cherokee's land to white settlers. The state of Georgia made assessments and valuations and tried to pay the individual Cherokees nominally for property, crops and businesses. I have seen hundreds of books, videos on VCR, reminiscences and other educational material on the Cherokees and this episode in history not listed or available in public libraries, that was collected by culturally aware organizations and individuals. I have traveled to the old home sites in Georgia, visited the sites of the forts and collection points, reviewed unpublished histories in local libraries, and traveled to Oklahoma several times. Further historical research can be done with tribal members' descendants living in Oklahoma, tribal histories/archives, and by attending pow-wows with a Medicine Man. Actual government documents and correspondence from the period are still available at the official Georgia State Archives - refer to 1835 to 1838, the counties involved, Indian Removal Act, Cherokee Indian census, land lottery, Department of Interior, Indian Affairs etc.68.19.50.91 04:39, 25 February 2007 (UTC)ProfEugen

The cherokee tribe was named after their first chief, Cherokee.

Trail of tears error
Moved from Help desk

I am a Choctaw Indian from Oklahoma. Your description of the trail of tears is innacurate. The Cherokee were not the first to walk the trail of tears nor were they the first to use the term "trail of tears as the site implies. The Choctaw were the first tribe to be massivley relocated during removal, a Choctaw chief said when asked about his journey "It has been a trail of tears and death" The Cherokee were relocated after the Choctaw and are often associated with the trail because that is the tribe that non native people Identify themselves with. Choctaw, Seminole, Yuchi, Natchez, Chickasaw, and Muskogee Creek tribes NOT JUST THE CHEROKEE. Ant site that states that the trail of tears is specifically Cherokees first, only or that Cherokees Coined the term is inaccurate.

here are some sites: http://www.thebicyclingguitarist.net/studies/trailoftears.htm

http://www.nationaltota.org/

http://www.cts.bia.edu/trail_of_tears/index.htm

http://www.tc.umn.edu/~mboucher/mikebouchweb/choctaw/trtears.htm — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.4.216.115 (talk) 16:40, June 21, 2007


 * This article sometimes displays incorrect information because it is frequently vandalized or naively edited. A previous version of the article mentioned that that the phrase originated with the Choctaw removal; it's fixed now, though who knows for how long. Wikipedia still needs an article specifically on Choctaw removal or the Choctaw Trail of Tears, but no one has yet been interested enough or knowledgeable enough to write it. —Kevin Myers 13:17, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Another more superficial but factual error is the identification of the first American Gold Rush as being in Georga in 1820s--the Reed gold discovery/rush in North Carolina predates it by 25 years. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.222.186.95 (talk) 00:07, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

There should be a general trail of tears article and a specific trail of tears article ... This article should be renamed to the Cherokee trail of tears since thats its main focus ... a Choctaw trail of tears can be developed along with other tribes. Rob (talk) 16:23, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I'll begin the process of intergrating information about other tribes. And creating sub-articles since there have been no reponse.Rob (talk) 18:42, 23 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Choctaw Trail of Tears article created, moved content from Trail of Tears to Cherokee trail of tears. Rob (talk) 19:30, 28 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I have completed the major section of the Trail of Tears article that accurately includes many of the tribes removed. Some section were cut and pasted and then narrowed down ... other section like the Chickasaw removal is still a work in progress. Rob (talk) 16:48, 29 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Concerning the number of Choctaw deaths. This article in the Chronicles of Oklahoma for Spring 1970 has a higer number: "The Reverend Cyrus Byington, who was a missionary among the Choctaws before removal and who traveled with them, estimated that at the time of removal there were 40,000 Choctaws, of whom 6,000 died during migration." Odestiny (talk) 15:05, 30 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Just as Byington says it is an estimation, no one is sure of the number of deaths. As I do prefer a range of values as opposed to a single value ... I'll incorporate it into the article.

Native American vs. American Indian
I have no desire to start any sort of soapbox culture war, but I have reverted this edit as overly POV. While there are exceptions, the majority of Native peoples of the Americas have no particular preference for one term over another (see here for the first ghit example). I see no compelling reason to change terminology at this point. -- MarcoTolo (talk) 23:42, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Though it's easy to miss on the web, and the article you mention makes a good argument about it in reference to tribal members in general, I believe it is clearly and quickly becoming an issue with the Cherokee. I myself (Cherokee tribal member) use either term, but more and more often am "corrected" to say American Indian. In my work I interact daily with people of Cherokee blood. Although I agree that there may not be a reason to change terminology right now, I think this edit is only the first echoe of a very hot issue about to boil. Odestiny (talk) 05:11, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I think who ever wrote this should put more into the climate and geographic history issues. Why didnt you put something like that in it. You know if you are a hot girl who is in 7th grade and has an essay to write about the climate, it is trully hard to find the info!!!!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.71.175.160 (talk) 23:15, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
 * You forgot modest & demure as well. Why did you wait until Sunday night to write a report that is due tomorrow? ⋙–Berean–Hunter—►  ((⊕)) 23:29, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

46,000 removed from their homelands
I tried to find estimates of how many from the southeast nations were relocated and survived. Since this is a locked article, here is something I would have added to the end of the introduction. '''By 1837, 46,000 Native Americans from these southeastern nations had been removed from their homelands thereby opening 25 million acres for settlement by whites and their slaves. ref>Indian removals 1814 - 1858''' 172.129.64.33 (talk) 05:19, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

editsemiprotected
"including, for example, 4,000 of the 15,000 relocated Cherokee" => "including 4,000 of the 15,000 relocated Cherokee"--200.138.131.236 (talk) 04:14, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Done Welcome and thanks for contributing. Celestra (talk) 15:11, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Photos of Cherokee women
I don't know how these two images came to be used on this article with all the great pictures available but I take issue with the one of Col George W. Pascal's daughter. First of all Pascal was not born a Cherokee, he married one and is known as a "scaliwag". Also Marcia is by his second wife who was not Cherokee. The Smithsonian may have catagorized these under Cherokee but that doesn't mean the people in the photos are. There are plenty of images by Curtis and others that would be better. And why the only two photos are not of full bloods? Odestiny (talk) 03:26, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Pending changes
This article is one of a small number (about 100) selected for the first week of the trial of the Pending Changes system on the English language Wikipedia. All the articles listed at Pending changes/Queue  are being considered for level 1 pending changes protection.

The following request appears on that page:

However with only a few hours to go, comments have only been made on two of the pages.

Please update the Queue page as appropriate.

Note that I am not involved in this project any more than any other editor, just posting these notes since it is quite a big change, potentially.

Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 20:43, 15 June 2010 (UTC).

"autonomous"
Probably a technicality: Why are the 5 nations described as "autonomous" rather than "independent"? At least the Cherokee Nation had a constitution and a government. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 21:55, 22 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I wondered this myself when I just added the new section on Legal background for the Trail of Tears, as I assumed the proper term would be not "independent" but "sovereign".
 * However, according to the legal definition of the terms listed by wikipedia under US/International Law, all Federally recognized Indian tribes are internally sovereign but not externally sovereign; they are autonomous nations (i.e. they have territorial autonomy but they were also (at the time before the establishment of the reservation system) dependencies of the United States.
 * Full sovereignty would require the US to recognize a territory with defined borders as such, which would require them to be under joint jurisdiction as a protectorate outside the territory of the contiguous United States, similar to the homeland system under Apartheid (unfortunate analogy, but the scraps and remnants of reservation territory means it fits) which was briefly recognized by mapmakers in the 1990s.
 * This means that the best Native Americans can hope for is a return to territorial status as autonomous dependent nations of the US, which would be a step above their current status as autonomous territories set aside by the US in the form of reservations.
 * The tribes themselves, however, are still considered to have limited sovereignty at least by sympathetic legal analysts, and the Seminole are the only tribe (I think) which has never ceded partial sovereignty to the US. Yclept:Berr (talk) 17:24, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

New section on the legal background for Trail of Tears, i.e. the Indian nations
The page was missing an overview of the legal status of the five "Civilized Tribes" i.e. Nations at the time of the Trail of Tears, and the legal status (or lack thereof) for subsequent removal. So I added one. Most of it is sourced from Jahoda's history of the Trail of Tears, but feel free to add additional citations. Yclept:Berr (talk) 17:26, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Use of the word 'indian'
This article makes frequent use of the word 'indian' to describe the Native Americans. Perhaps the usage should be modified to a more politically correct term.  —Entropy (T/C) 08:22, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
 * While "Native Americans" might be politically correct, I don't feel that it's correct in any other sense. After all, we know Amerindians are not truly "native" to North America -- in fact they weren't even the first inhabitants. Is walking instead of sailing what makes them more "native" than everyone else? 96.44.114.222 (talk) 06:19, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
 * How about sticking to the discussions directly pertaining to the article instead of supplying unreferenced fringe theories? Regarding the initial question about terminology, please read Native American name controversy. -Uyvsdi (talk) 18:11, 26 November 2011 (UTC)Uyvsdi
 * Whether it's Native Americans or Aboriginals or First Nations, I think 'indian' is probably one of the most offensive terms (it's blatantly incorrect). I don't know how it is in the US, but in Alberta (Canada) 'indian' would likely be taken as an insult. I'd like to call on WP:THIRD here.  —Entropy (T/C) 22:24, 30 November 2011 (UTC)




 * (e.c.) (and note to previous post--this page, Trail of Tears, is not just about the Cherokee. The first paragraph mentions the Creek, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw--but the basic idea about using specific terms rather than general ones is good) Usage in the United States is mixed, with both "Indian" and "Native American" very common and widely accepted among Indians/Native Americans, historians, and people in general. Since this page is about the Trail of Tears, why not take a look at what the peoples who suffered through it call themselves today. The Cherokee Nation avoids any term other than "Cherokee", as far as I can tell. This is the best approach--use specific names, such as tribal names, wherever possible. The Eastern Band of Cherokee also tend to use just "Cherokee", but if you browse their website you'll find both "Native American" and "Indian" used. Their language page, for example, uses "Indian". However, their links page uses "Native American". One of the main "attractions" on the Eastern Cherokee's reservation is called the Oconaluftee Indian Village. Then there is The Museum of the Cherokee Indian. Their website has a FAQ which includes the question "Do the Cherokee people want to be called Indians or Native Americans?". The answer they give is Because "Native American" can refer to anyone born in America, the North American Indian Women's Association recommends using the term "American Indians." The Seminole Nation uses "Indian" and "Native American" interchangeably (though mostly "Seminole"). The Chickasaw Nation uses "Indian" (but mostly "Chickasaw"). The Choctaw Nation seem to prefer "Native American" (when not just "Choctaw"). Finally, there are a great many recently published, high quality, scholarly history and anthropology books that use "Indian". Yes, the various terms and problematic in various ways. Ideally one should avoid general terms and use specific ones instead. If a general term must be used, and the context is within the United States, "Indian" and "Native American" are the most commonly used. There are people, native and non-native, who feel strongly in favor of one and find the other offensive. Neither will satisfy everyone. In a pinch one could use "indigenous", although it is not nearly as commonly used as the other two terms and has "problems" of its own (eg, connotations of "indigent"). Another possibility is to begin with "American Indian", or even "Native American Indians", in order to make it clear you aren't talking about Asian Indians, then shorten it to "Indian". I find repeated use of the terms "Native American" and "American Indian" awkward after a few repetitions. Pfly (talk) 23:48, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
 * PS, to whoever added the "third opinion" template, 3O, you should add this page to Third opinion (there's instructions about how to on that page). If it isn't listed, there's no point in having the template header at the top of this thread. Also, "third opinion" is for when "no agreement can be reached on the talk page and only two editors are involved". I don't think either criteria holds in this case. Pfly (talk) 23:56, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
 * It was there, but it was removed as 3O was given. &mdash; Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 00:06, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Why not let the tribes in question decide? "Indian" is used term by all the tribes in question. Here's examples of the Five Tribes' websites making use of the term "Indian": Muscogee Creek Nation's website using the work "Indian.", Thlopthlocco Tribal Town, Alabama-Quassarte Tribal Town, Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, Chickasaw Nation, Cherokee Nation, and Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. The following federally recognized tribes were all relocated to Indian Territory and have "Indian" in their official name: Absentee-Shawnee Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, Delaware Tribe of Indians, Kiowa Indian Tribe of Oklahoma, Otoe-Missouria Tribe of Indians, Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, Ponca Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, Quapaw Tribe of Indians, and the Tonkawa Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma. If any of these groups found the term "Indian" to be offensive, they wouldn't use it. Regarding the notion expressed above that "Indian" is incorrect, many indigenous people feel any term in English is going to be relatively incorrect. -Uyvsdi (talk) 18:15, 5 December 2011 (UTC)Uyvsdi


 * Because - as far as Wikipedia is concerned - people don't get to decide what we call them. This is an article about an event in history.  We should use whatever terminology is found in history texts.  This isn't rocket science. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 18:38, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm agreeing with the use of "Indian" but disagreeing with your logic. Indians write the most about Indians so yes, we have a major say in how we're described. -Uyvsdi (talk) 19:18, 5 December 2011 (UTC)Uyvsdi
 * In either case the word "Indian" is widely used. It's quite commonly used by Indians themselves, and it remains very commonly used by non-Indian historians. The first two relatively recent scholarly history books that come to mind with the term in their titles are The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, and The Westo Indians. There are many many others. Pfly (talk) 16:31, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Edit request on 10 May 2012
I found the paragraph in the Cherokee section on the New Echota treaty very confusing. It seems out of order chronologically. Also, these sentences don't seem to go together in a paragraph.

Suggested revisions: (additions, [deletions], comments/questions)

When signing the Treaty of New Echota in 1835 Major Ridge [had] said "I have signed my death warrant." [Now t] The resulting political turmoil led to the killings of Major Ridge, John Ridge, and Elias Boudinot; of the leaders of the Treaty Party, only Stand Watie escaped death.[32][33][34]

(perhaps move this to the end of the section)

Removed Cherokees initially settled near Tahlequah, Oklahoma. (==> and later settled where? <===)

The population of the Cherokee Nation eventually rebounded, and today the Cherokees are the largest American Indian group in the United States.[35]

CAreader (talk) 17:10, 10 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Yellow check.svg Partly done: I couldn't quite figure out what changes you wanted made... what did you want moved where? If you'd like to clarify, feel free to do so, and then reactivate the edit request by changing "answered=yes" to "answered=no" above. ~Adjwilley (talk) 23:55, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 15 October 2012
Dear established user,

In the paragraph titled "Terminology of forced relocation" the third to last sentence on the second paragraph reads "The marchers were subject to extortion and violence along the route." This sentence could be amended to include some specifics acts of violence. I am purposing that the following lines be added after this sentence above:

The sentences above were taken from Andrea Smith's 2005 work titled: Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. South End Press

I would be glad to provide a photocopy of this page, attached to an email, verifying that these sentences were copied and cited correctly. Also, do let me know if I would need to obtain approval from the publisher or if it would be preferable for me to summarize the sentences and provide the source and page numbers.

Thank you for considering this edit and please let me know if I am writing this in the incorrect section of Wikipedia, this is my first attempt at contributing to Wikipedia.

yours,

Evan

Evans2012 (talk) 07:03, 15 October 2012 (UTC)


 * We should not be copying text verbatim from copyrighted sources. This will have to be paraphrased if we are to include it. Hut 8.5 09:34, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I've removed the copyrighted material, it's still available in the page history - I'd just rather it not appear on the page. The only reason I haven't asked for Oversight/RevDel is that the source is acknowledged. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 10:36, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Smallpox blankets
I've researched the widespread story of smallpox blankets given to the Cherokee and found no supporting documentation on it. Though thousands died during the removal west, there is no evidence of a major smallpox outbreak along the trail. In fact, the Cherokee population had been greatly reduced by several epidemics in the previous hundred years. It is possible that the Trail of Tears story of smallpox blankets was adapted from writings of Ward Churchill, an ethnic studies professor at the University of Colorado. Churchhill fabricated a story in which the commander of Fort Clark North Dakota ordered a boatload of blankets shipped from a military smallpox infirmary in St. Louis. These were supposedly distributed to the Mandan Indians causing the (very real) high plains epedimic of 1837, the year before the Cherokee removal. Odestiny (talk) 18:22, 29 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Smallpox does give a documented example of Native Americans being given blankets from a smallpox hospital to try to cause an epidemic, but it has nothing to do with the Trail of Tears and long predates it. Hut 8.5 18:46, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Freedmen
My edit note in the article was less than accurate, I meant to say the term was in little use in the plural until the Emancipation many decades later. As to the issue itself, I'm not finding a ref to support it - it appears to be political posturing intended to minimize the position of the slaves themselves or to otherwise soften our look back, especially in the formulation of "2,000 freedmen and slaves" as if there were some equality of numbers or position. The refs suggest that a Freedman's life under the Cherokee law of the time would almost be impossible. A better ref and a proper formulation are necessary. 12.144.158.7 (talk) 18:11, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Why you are singling out the Cherokee, I have no idea, since all other involved tribes also had slaves and two entire Seminole clans are made up of freedmen. Not every black person living with these tribe was a slave (hence the term freedman). The most famous example of a late 18th-early 19th century black-Cherokee family is that of Shoeboots (check out Ties That Bind). Captain Shoeboots married Doll, formerly his slave, and of their many children, some were legally free and some were legally slaves.


 * BTW your comment in the edit summaries that freedmen were later not allowed to serve in tribal political offices in simply incorrect (although the time period in which they did was not during the Trail or Tears). Emmett Starr's History of the Cherokee lists freedmen who served as elected tribal councilors: 1875 Joseph Brown, 1887 Frank Vann, 1889 Jerry Alberty, 1893 Stick Ross (for whom Stick Ross Mountain is named), 1895 Ned Irons, 1895 Samuel Stidham (Starr 277-279, 283). -Uyvsdi (talk) 19:38, 11 January 2013 (UTC)Uyvsdi


 * The issue at hand is this article, no one is singling out the Cherokee. Yes, others owned slaves - even some African-Americans of the time owned slaves. This article is just Trail of Tears. As to your long list of post civil-war Freedmen that held office in the Cherokee nation, this has no relevance to our article. Trail of Tears, 1830's. Let's stay focused.76.239.25.95 (talk) 22:03, 13 January 2013 (UTC)


 * My point is—with Shoeboot's family and free blacks among the Seminoles being documented historical examples—is the not all African people who walked the Trail of Tears were slaves; some were free people. So if you want to include one non-Indian group that traveled the Trail of Tears, then include all non-Indian groups that were on Trail of Tears. -Uyvsdi (talk) 23:31, 13 January 2013 (UTC)Uyvsdi


 * Shoeboot was a full blooded Cherokee who gave birth to children through a slave he owned, and I find no reference that he was involved with this article's subject, the "Trail of Tears". Also, the ref you introduced to support your position does not even use the word "Freemen". I don't doubt the possibility that freed slaves chose to subject themselves to the journey, I simply find no supporting ref.12.144.158.7 (talk) 00:46, 14 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Sigh, this is getting old. Doll and her daughters walked the Trail of Tears, as explained in the reference. The reference I gave used the "free blacks" - I can certainly changes the phrasing to "free blacks." -Uyvsdi (talk) 04:13, 14 January 2013 (UTC)Uyvsdi


 * Doll was a slave who was freed much later by her owner, a Mrs Ridge, after her death. Here are two refs that support that:Ties That Bind and Bone of my Bone. Neither of these reliable academic secondary sources accepts the primary source claim made by William those many years ago...12.144.158.7 (talk) 21:51, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Doll and her children. Her children were free blacks. I have no idea why you are pushing this POV. -Uyvsdi (talk)Uyvsdi
 * The reliable secondary sources I've referenced above come with a solid and neutral academic pedigree. No reference has yet been presented to support your contention. I have edited the article to conform to the refs. Note also that it was the Reliable Source's themselves which refute the claim of William, Doll's child, that the offspring were the free children of the slave known as Doll who gave birth to her "master" and owner's children. Note also that no mention of free African-Americans on the Trail is contained in this account by a Chairwoman at, and professor of History and Native American Studies, at the University of Michigan. The Author of the piece is also the author of the ref originally introduced here by user:Uyvadi and later quoted by me.12.144.158.9 (talk) 17:47, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I posted the reference that discusses—using the the exact phrase—"free blacks" walking the Trail of Tears. Also, Doll's children included free blacks. -Uyvsdi (talk) 03:43, 21 January 2013 (UTC)Uyvsdi
 * I have no reason to believe Uyvsdi is lying. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 03:49, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on 11 May 2013
The second sentence of the second paragraph begins with "Many died and lots lived. including 60,000 of the 130,000 relocated Cherokee". Every source I can find places the Cherokee death toll at around 4,000 of 16,000 relocated.

http://www.census.gov/history/www/through_the_decades/fast_facts/1830_fast_facts.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_removal#Deaths_and_numbers

http://www.nps.gov/trte/historyculture/index.htm

http://www.pbs.org/indiancountry/history/trail.html

http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/25652 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.159.70.212 (talk) 01:28, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

It's also a very awkwardly worded sentence  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.111.160.35 (talk) 23:30, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

The full sentence is very convoluted: "Many died, including 60,000 of the 130,000 relocated Cherokee, intermarried and accompanying European-Americans, and the 2,000 African-American free blacks and slaves owned by the Cherokee they took with them." 188.223.140.153 (talk) 14:42, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Really the largest?
"...and today the Cherokees are the largest American Indian group in the United States.[38]" -- According to Wikipedia there are about 140K Cherokee and over 300K Navajo. So is this figure accurate? BTW, the citation is a dead link so I couldn't verify it myself. 24.22.26.53 (talk) 17:53, 26 November 2013 (UTC) 24.22.26.53 (talk) 17:53, 26 November 2013 (UTC) 24.22.26.53 (talk) 17:53, 26 November 2013 (UTC) 24.22.26.53 (talk) 17:53, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Navajo Nation and Cherokee Nation are usually neck-in-neck but Cherokee Nation is currently largest. No, those figures you cited are completely incorrect. -Uyvsdi (talk) 18:56, 26 November 2013 (UTC)Uyvsdi

Edit request on 4 July 2013
The photograph, <Stephens.jpg>, is not verified and has no place being portrayed on this page. There is no evidence shown that the person represented has "Walked the Trail of Tears" or is even Cherokee. Please remove this photograph. Thank you.

Waholi Gahnage&#39; (talk) 04:00, 4 July 2013 (UTC)
 * There's a "Betsey Brown" on the registry of Cherokees on the Trail of Tears, so please furnish any documentation you may have that she isn't Cherokee or wasn't on the Trail of Tears. -Uyvsdi (talk) 05:30, 4 July 2013 (UTC)Uyvsdi

European Americans (both Christians and Jews), ... also participated in the ... forced relocations.
No source is cited for the fact about Jews participating. I found one article supporting the claim that one Jew was involved. http://forward.com/articles/159166/a-jew-on-the-trail-of-tears/?p=all. At best it should be changed to "(both Christians and a Jew). 508yoni (talk) 10:04, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Source needed for Ralph Waldo Emerson's account of Cherokee assimilation
The Rationale for relocation section included this incomplete phrase: "Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote an account of Cherokee assimilation into the American culture, declaring his support of the Worcester" (added in oldid 653658304). It was accompanied by a source for the paragraph, but Emerson was not mentioned in the source. I moved the source link to the end of the previous sentence and added a "citation needed" template to the Emerson claim. I modified the incomplete phrase slightly to complete it as: "Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote an account of Cherokee assimilation into the American culture, declaring his support of the Worcester decision." I thought that this was the intended meaning of the original phrase, but without a source, I cannot know. I did a little research in an attempt to find either Emerson's account or a secondary source covering it, but could only find Emerson's letter to President Van Buren. Is this the implied source? I could not find any explicit mention of "assimilation" in the primary source, but did not have time to closely read through it. I will leave a message on the original contributor's talk page in case they can clarify this and provide a source. Kind regards, Matt Heard (talk) 01:49, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

citizenship
If 5 civilized tribes was the citizens of USA, how they was been removed and deprived of property? It's unlawful by constitution/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.25.53.138 (talk) 13:44, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

They weren't considered US Citizens at the time. They were technically allowed to stay put and apply for citizenship, but would have to assimilate. To stay part of the tribe, they were forced to leave.

(different person) Also, if I remember right (from reading about it, I obviously wasn't there lol) communal lands were divided up into individual lots as a condition of citizenship and as part of treaties forced on Indian peoples after manufactured wars. So then the now-individualised holdings were easy for developers to buy out 31.51.47.29 (talk) 22:36, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Removal of picture
In this diff, removed a picture from the article. The caption on the photo was "Portrait of Marcia Pascal, a young Cherokee woman. (1880)", which doesn't seem to be objectionable in the least, and seems to fit well into the text of the article. I don't have a strong opinion here, I'm just hoping that some other editors can take a look. Bradv 14:26, 18 November 2016 (UTC)


 * I assume you mean this diff. According to and  the woman in the picture is the daughter of George Washington Paschal, a US Army officer who served on the Trail of Tears, and is the granddaughter of John Ridge, a Cherokee chief who was also involved. She must have been born some years after the Trail of Tears though. It doesn't sound like the most relevant picture but it's more relevant than that caption indicates.  Hut 8.5  14:54, 18 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I fixed the diff. Bradv  14:56, 18 November 2016 (UTC)


 * As I mentioned before, it's very easy to find websites, some otherwise authoritative, that claim Miss Paschal is Geo. Washington Paschal's daughter, but a litte digging will show she George Walter Paschal's. (Just to confuse things, George Walter was also known as Geo. W. Paschal, jr, even though his father had a different middle name.) One descendant of Major Ridge keeps a [| website] which makes a good starting point, although the usual problems with websites make it bad to use directly as a cite.


 * The Paschal/Ridge family have a lot of interesting tie-ins to a great deal of American history. Major Ridge was one of the leaders of the movement to take the buyout and move to Oklahoma, and was killed for it. George Washington Paschal not only was part of the escort, but represented a good many Indian claims as a lawyer. George Walter Paschal was a Texas Unionist. But Marcia was a generation removed from this, and appears to be placed either in error, or simply because she was photogenic.  Anmccaff (talk) 16:33, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Native American genocide
I see my addition of "Native American Holocaust" has been contested and removed by for WP:NPOV issues, despite no commentary being made on the legitimacy of genocide claims. Surely the Wikipedia page discussing the genocide of Native Americans should be linked? The Trail of Tears is a pretty big part of that historiography, regardless of the legitimacy of genocide claims. Although, on second thoughts I would agree that "Native American genocide" would be a better term to add to the "See also" section – or even the more general Genocide of indigenous peoples page, the page to which all terms relating to this controversy redirect. HelgaStick (talk) 21:32, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
 * On a related note: The American Indian Holocaust redirect was originally to this page before I changed it to the aforementioned section alongside the Indian Holocaust redirect. HelgaStick (talk) 22:28, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 7 external links on Trail of Tears. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060527025102/http://anpa.ualr.edu/trailOfTears/letters/1831DecemberGeorgeWHarkinstotheAmericanPeople.htm to http://anpa.ualr.edu/trailOfTears/letters/1831DecemberGeorgeWHarkinstotheAmericanPeople.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090206201426/http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/chdebate.htm to http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/chdebate.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20081006002910/http://www.cherokee.org/Culture/CulInfo/TOT/125/Default.aspx to http://www.cherokee.org/Culture/CulInfo/TOT/125/Default.aspx
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/scottord.htm
 * Added tag to http://169.203.4.233/trail_of_tears/index.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080603000054/http://www.anpa.ualr.edu/trail_of_tears/indian_removal_project/site_reports/north_little_rock/chickasaw.htm to http://www.anpa.ualr.edu/trail_of_tears/indian_removal_project/site_reports/north_little_rock/chickasaw.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080907225258/http://www.cherokee.org/Culture/History/TOT/Default.aspx to http://www.cherokee.org/Culture/History/TOT/Default.aspx
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090915182030/http://kingwoodkowboy.com/trailoftears.html to http://kingwoodkowboy.com/trailoftears.html

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German Version
Hi there,

how can it be that the german aticle is much more detailed? Just take a look at the sources. Is the entlish one a victim of edit wars?

Request Semi-Protected Status on Article
Multiple edits with the intention of vandalism is occurring on the page. Mr Xaero (talk) 15:55, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * It looks like all of today’s disruption is coming from one IP address, so it’s usually better to just issue warnings and report the user after they edit disruptively despite a level 4 warning. EricEnfermero (Talk) 16:01, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Can we get this switched to "Pending Changes" until this IP user gives up or is blocked? Mr Xaero (talk) 16:14, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * A request has been added to the Requests for Page Protection noticeboard, which is generally the quickest way to obtain protection for a page such as this.  Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 17:04, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * , the request for page protection has been answered by who blocked the IP users responsible for disruption.  You can update that request if you see further vandalism. Thank you. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 19:51, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Death toll 447-840 not 4,000
The claimed death toll of 4,000 is directly contradicted by this article which claims that the actual records indicate a true death toll of between 447 and 840.

https://newsok.com/article/2217279/trail-of-tears-death-toll-myths-dispelled

The author also identifies the unreliable source of the 4,000 figure commonly quoted.

Cassandra. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.108.167.232 (talk) 16:47, 12 November 2018 (UTC)


 * The source of the claims is apparently a William R. Higginbotham. What, if any, are his academic credentials?  What has he published? Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 17:51, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Been unable to discover anything about WR Higginbotham. Nevertheless his assertions are very specific: namely that the tribal and Federal records indicate a total death toll of no more than 840; whilst the claim of 4,000 was simply a guess made by one particular person. The claims are therefore capable of being checked and verified even if the author cannot. Cassandra. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.74.38.101 (talk) 13:58, 9 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Well, this is quite interesting because I was just reading some material by Edgar G Merganpfeister that the true number of deaths exceeded 30,000. 172.58.92.157 (talk) 22:53, 14 December 2018 (UTC)


 * If there is a genuine debate amongst historians about the figure then it should be no problem to find a better source than something written by William R. Higginbotham, a "Texas-based writer", for an Oklahoma City newspaper more than thirty years ago.  Hut 8.5  23:58, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Genocide
The Trails of Tears seems like a genocide according to scholars, and there is a link to a genocide article in "see also" but no direct reference is in this article. Why isn't genocide mentioned in the body?

Here are more references:
 * Stanley Hoig, Night of the Cruel Moon: Cherokee Removal and the Trail of Tears (New York: Facts On File, inc., 1996.)


 * Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green, The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History with Documents Second Edition (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005).


 * John Ehle, Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation (New York: Anchor Books, 1989).


 * Steve Inskeep, Jacksonland: President Andrew Jackson, Cherokee Chief John Ross, and a Great American Land Grab (New York: Penguin Books, 2016).


 * Dee Brown, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An American History of the American West (New York: Owl Books, 2007).


 * Stan Hoig, The Sand Creek Massacre (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961).


 * Alfred A. Cave, The Pequot War (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996).


 * Gary Clayton Anderson, The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005).


 * Brendan C. Lindsay, Murder State: California's Native American Genocide, 1846-1873 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012).


 * Mary Stockwell, The Other Trail of Tears: The Removal of the Ohio Indians (Yardley: Westholme, 2016).

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Frmorrison (talk • contribs)
 * Paul Andrew Hutton, The Apache Wars: The Hunt for Geronimo, The Apache Kid, and the Captive Boy who Started the Longest War in American History (New York: Crown, 2016).

The Trail of tears might seem 'like genocide' to some over-enthusiastic romantic writers but not to serious historians. Food, transport and medical services were provided by the US Government during the relocation- hardly suggestive of 'genocide'. Deaths, however tragic, were the clearly result of unanticipated bad weather, disease, and to some extent incompetence, not of malicious intent. Cassandra — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.108.116.194 (talk) 12:17, 5 July 2019 (UTC)


 * The Trail of Tears, while bad, is not universally considered an act of genocide. Some have suggested that it inadvertently saved the Indians from annihilation by assimilation. Others note it just doesn't meet the definition of genocide. Jackson scholar Daniel Feller gave a talk on the actual event and dispelled some of the myths. Given all the provisions set aside and the actual intents and outcomes, not the imagined ones, it seems more likely that some historians want it to be a genocide as part of a romantic historical narrative.EconomicHisorianinTraining (talk) 17:02, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I would like to know the definition of serious historians in this case? Are most white USA citizen able to view this part of the USA history unbiased? What do foreign historians say? If you ask Turkish historians, then there was no Armenian genocide, that does not make it less of a genocide. To look at a USA historian calling the indian removals a genocide, we could look to David Edward Stannard and his book American Holocaust.
 * The whole history of the treatment of the native americans in the USA is an ongoing genocide. The argument that there was no intention to kill off all those Native Americans is a red herring, always presented when the action of the british and USA are concerned. Expecting criminals to write down their confessions is a bit much to expect. The proof is in the results. If you move a whole population, including the elderly, woman and children, during the wintertime, you have to expect to kill off a good part of them.Jochum (talk) 01:00, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * New work does indeed argue the numerous trails of tears should be considered genocidal in nature (there were multiple trails of tears--Northeastern tribes were displaced as well). Also, in the realm of Indigenous studies and Indigenous history, Feller is widely considered a Jackson apologist at this point after his plenary talk at the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. Might want to update the section in light of recent work. --Hobomok (talk) 19:50, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

I spot checked a respected American History textbook used in U.S. high schools. America's History by Henretta et. al. Indian Removal and the Trail of Tears gets about 3 pages of coverage. The word genocide is not used at all. I would weakly support the removal of the words "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" from the infobox, and also weakly support the removal of the category "Native American genocide". I do not think this event meets the standard definition of a genocide, which google tells me is "the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group". Or, if there are reliable sources that call this a genocide, then we should consider adding a paragraph to the "Terminology" section. – Novem Linguae (talk) 21:49, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree with you, as the modern applications of such concepts totally fly in the face of what the reality was then, and is a quite significant indicator of the cancel culture creep into Wikipedia. These should be removed. Not weakly, strongly.   GenQuest  "scribble" 00:37, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Its actually same thing with Armenian Trail of 1915
If 1915 events was a genocide, there is nothing different in this event. Face with your own history first. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.190.0.219 (talk) 14:35, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

untrue statement
This statement cannot be true:

After two wars, many Seminoles were removed in 1832.

This cannot be true because the Second Seminole war did not start until 1835 and so there cannot have been two Seminole wars by 1832.

--Tupelo the typo fixer (talk) 23:05, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Ethnic cleansing
I wouldn't call this genocide - but when you are forcibly removing one culture from an area, that you are populating with your own people - that is without doubt classic *Ethnic cleansing*. I don't know how you can justify it in any other way. In this case, they were removed in circumstances where many of them died along the way. Deathlibrarian (talk) 12:35, 18 October 2021 (UTC) Wikipedia's own definition - "Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area, often with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous" pretty much directly applies to this situation, yet the phrase was apparently removed from the article.Deathlibrarian (talk) 12:36, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Should the term "ethnic cleansing" be included in the article?
Should the term "ethnic cleansing" be included in the inbfobox and the lede of the article? While I agree, the term genocide isn't appropriate, but according to Wikipedia - "Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area, often with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous". Pretty much, this is exactly what was happenning with the trail of tears. In this case, the native americans were forcibly removed the area, and replaced with a difference culture. That is without doubt classic *Ethnic cleansing*. I don't know how you can justify it in any other way. In this case, they were removed in circumstances where many of them died along the way. HI all, I've raised this for discussion twice, and given two weeks for anyone to raise objections but there are none so far, so I'll go ahead and make the changes. Deathlibrarian (talk) 23:51, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Support - Deathlibrarian (talk) 06:47, 6 November 2021 (UTC)


 * @Deathlibrarian Do you have any sources that support that wording? Its a very strong claim to make. I've undone it for now. If you can find some sources I'd be more than happy to make an RfC statement, or simply oblige. CaptainEek  Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 08:18, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi CaptainEek  Please note I raised this discussion some two weeks ago, with no dissent raised over that time, so made the change. Given that the wikipedia definition, "Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area" appears to exactly match what was done with the Indian removals on the trail of tears, I wouldn't regard it as an unusual claim at all - it seems to me exactly what happened. But happy to provide some supporting referenced quotes for you, all good - references are in APA style, I hope these are ok. There's 20 here, should be enough for wikipedia:


 * "The Indian Removal Act stated that the president could force tribes to relocate in exchange for a “grant” of western territory where white settlers did not yet live. (No matter that the western land might already be occupied by other tribes.) This became carte blanche for the U.S. government to commit ethnic cleansing"
 * "The ethnic cleansing of the Cherokee nation by the U.S. Army, 1838."
 * "But the economic returns on this massive project of ethnic cleansing and displacement were also considerable. In the 1830s-the decade of removal-the federal government made nearly $80 million selling Native American lands to private individuals"
 * "To call their expulsion a removal is to sanitise, to banalise it, to avoid confronting it. For what the citizens of Georgia, Alabama and Missisipi in fact undertook, was nothing less than the complete dismemberment, the ethnic cleansing of the society they inhabited"
 * "Andrew Jackson was a slaver, ethnic cleanser, and tyrant. He deserves no place on our money." "Leaving aside whether Jackson's acts of ethnic cleansing against Native Americans technically count as war crimes or just ordinary crimes against humanity, his career as a general included numerous actions which would absolutely warrant criminal action today"
 * "At What Cost? The Cherokee Trail of Tears: America's Ethnic Cleansing"
 * "In modern popular culture, the best-known episode of Native ethnic cleansing is the Cherokee nation's brutal experience, dubbed The Trail of Tears."
 * " In fact, it has become such a powerful symbol for the devastating US program of ethnic cleansing known as Indian removal that it is often forgotten how much more extensive..."
 * "Andrew Jackson’s administration (1828–36) implemented a policy of ethnic cleansing with a vengeance and the Cherokee Trail of Tears exemplifies the horrors and atrocities of this"
 * "...estimates that because of this forced ethnic cleansing, about 20 percent of the 16,000 expelled Cherokees died of hunger, privation, and disease on the “Trail of Tears,"
 * " Especially traumatic were the forced removal (ethnic cleansing) of southeastern US Indians over the Trail of Tears to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) in the 1830s" Deathlibrarian (talk) 09:12, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * " Jackson advocated “removal” or ethnic cleansing, so he sided with Georgia’s settler administration against the Cherokee and the Marshall court." Penikett, T. (2012). A ‘literacy test’for Indigenous government?. Northern Public Affairs, 1, 32-37.
 * "Both played central roles in horrible acts of ethnic cleansing, Jackson in the Trail of Tears and Jabotinsky in the 1948 nakba"
 * "Members of the nations certainly remembered their forced removal at the hands of the federal government, an American ethnic cleansing of the southeastern states implemented just a generation before— and feared the Lincoln adminis- tration would now seek to open Indian Territory to white settlement"
 * "The United States may not have written the book on ethnic cleansing, but it certainly provided several of its most stunning chapters -- particularly in its treatment of the American Indian in the transcontinental drive for territory justified under the quasi-religious notion of "manifest destiny.""
 * "Ethnic Cleansing and the Trail of Tears: Cherokee Pasts, Places, and Identities"
 * "Today is the 160th anniversary of the beginning of the Trail of Tears, an American form of ethnic cleansing that my great-great-grandparents fell victim to"
 * "Now a lightning rod for condemnation of the expropriation of Indian property, Jackson was an agent of demographic pressures and a lust for the resources found on tribal lands. The result of this land grab and ethnic cleansing was the Trail of Tears, a highway of the dispossessed, enroute from their homelands to less favorable situations away from the population centers of the European-Americans
 * "For the World Viewed as an event on the stage of world history, the Trail of Tears supplies one example of the international , ongoing phenomenon of ethnic cleansing "
 * "Others prefer the term genocide, or ethnic cleansing. The terms genocide, death march, and ethnic cleansing all imply that the US government expected many Native Americans to die along the way—even before the journey began." Deathlibrarian (talk) 12:02, 22 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Support - Based on the extraordinary research done by, a special thank you to them, I think ethnic cleansing is a term that is appropriate to be included. One could add forced assimilation, or even cultural genocide too. Who were the ones that were most likely to die on the forced march west? The old and the very young. The story tellers/keepers of history and the future of the tribe. -- A Rose Wolf  14:55, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * @Deathlibrarian Ah, you should have linked a few of those sources in the first place :) Always make sure to add citations for controversial edits like that. 20 sources aren't necessary, just two or three are fine. I chose two that seemed good and cited them and restored the ethnic cleansing wording. CaptainEek  Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 20:26, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that - CaptainEEk - Considering the topic, I expected this to be a bigger conversation than it looks like it may be (and thought it may go to RFC) so got a large body of support for it. Thanks for updating the page, that's great, and glad we did it without a huge fuss! Deathlibrarian (talk) 23:11, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * @CaptainEEk is an amazing editor. I have a lot of confidence in their thoughts and opinions. Wikipedia should be an exchange rather than a battleground and I love it when that is the way it works out. A lot of it has to do with the one presenting the case. @Deathlibrarian, you did wonderful by gathering the sources and presenting them as you did. That made a huge difference. Beautiful discussion all around. -- A Rose Wolf  13:53, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Completely agree about the exchange of ideas, personally I've been put off by a lot of conflict on wikipedia - this was a good example of how to do it simply and with civility. Deathlibrarian (talk) 22:45, 24 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Support the wording. Good job.   GenQuest  "scribble" 11:30, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 August 2020 and 15 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Aneysajoleen.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 11:36, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 January 2022
Gsajjwellman (talk) 15:28, 25 January 2022 (UTC)



"Members of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes—the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations (including thousands of their black slaves[5]) were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States to areas to the west of the Mississippi River that had been designated Indian Territory."

In your article " trail of tears" the five civilized tribes of the southeast the Cherokee, Muskogee(creek), Choctaw, Chickasaw and the Seminole, your article States that the tribes left with their slaves, that isn't an accurate statement the slaves did not belong to the tribes the slaves were in hiding from the white southerners with the civilized tribes. The tribes welcomed them into their tribes and made them part of their tribes they did not use them as slaves and the way you have it written in your article you make it sound as if they were the slaves of the tribes that needs to be corrected. Thank you, James Wellman Gsajjwellman (talk) 15:29, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Hello James . On Wikipedia the information within an article is cited to reliable independent sources. What you have offered, in its current form, is called original research and may include information you "know" about a subject. However, Wikipedia does not want to know what you or I "know" about something only what those reliable sources WP:RS say about the subject. If you have a source for the information you wish to add then please provide it so the community can evaluate and verify WP:V the contents. Once that is accomplished and if the community forms a consensus that is in your favor the information can be written in a neutral tone WP:NPOV. I hope this helps. -- A Rose Wolf  15:40, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 15:42, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Slavery
In the trails of tears the Indian walked with the thousands of slaves of their own. Yes. Indians has black slaves too 2601:1C0:4401:6890:70BF:83F2:538A:FDA8 (talk) 18:08, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 June 2022
In the infobox, set the empty date field to "1830 to 1850". 31.44.229.17 (talk) 12:22, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

✅ uncontrovertial request complies with article content, dates in lead. Netherzone (talk) 20:01, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Cherokee
I read somewhere that Waterloo ,AL was the Last place the Cherokee walked freely.is this true? 2601:CE:8202:4D30:40D5:CA31:A89:314 (talk) 17:39, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
 * IP, while the Trail of Tears did go through the Waterloo area, shown by the map in the article, there were later parties that left from Cherokee Nation territory to Indian Territory(Oklahoma). The Waterloo area is not native lands of the Cherokee so I don't know if you would classify them as "free" at the time they arrived as the majority left from Ross' Landing in Tennessee, however, if you can remember where you read this we may be able to take a look and see if it is supported by a reliable source. -- A Rose Wolf  18:35, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Technical glitch cluttering article history
I apologise for cluttering the article history, I'm having a technical glitch where the page says my edit didn't publish, so I try again. Then I find that the edit actually did publish along with my re-attempted edits published as dummy edits. I've had this problem a couple times on this article, don't know why. But I'll be sure to check the article history if my edits fail to ensure that I don't continue to clutter the history in this way. Thanks Larataguera (talk) 14:33, 8 December 2022 (UTC)