|
The
Removal of the Cherokees
Private
John G. Burnett
Captain
Abraham McClellan's Company, 2nd Regiment, 2nd Brigade, Mounted
Infantry, Cherokee Indian Removal, 1838-39
Children:
This is my birthday, December 11, 1890, I am eighty years old today.
I was born at Kings Iron Works in Sulllivan County, Tennessee, December
the 11th, 1810. I grew into manhood fishing in Beaver Creek and
roaming through the forest hunting the deer and the wild boar and
the timber wolf. Often spending weeks at a time in the solitary
wilderness with no companions but my rifle, hunting knife, and a
small hatchet that I carried in my belt in all of my wilderness
wanderings.
On these
long hunting trips I met and became acquainted with many of the
Cherokee Indians, hunting with them by day and sleeping around their
camp fires by night. I learned to speak their language, and they
taught me the arts of trailing and building traps and snares. On
one of my long hunts in the fall of 1829, I found a young Cherokee
who had been shot by a roving band of hunters and who had eluded
his pursuers and concealed himself under a shelving rock. Weak from
loss of blood, the poor creature was unable to walk and almost famished
for water. I carried him to a spring, bathed and bandaged the bullet
wound, and built a shelter out of bark peeled from a dead chestnut
tree. I nursed and protected him feeding him on chestnuts and toasted
deer meat. When he was able to travel I accompanied him to the home
of his people and remained so long that I was given up for lost.
By this time I had become an expert rifleman and fairly good archer
and a good trapper and spent most of my time in the forest in quest
of game.
The removal
of Cherokee Indians from their life long homes in the year of 1838
found me a young man in the prime of life and a Private soldier
in the American Army. Being acquainted with many of the Indians
and able to fluently speak their language, I was sent as interpreter
into the Smoky Mountain Country in May, 1838, and witnessed the
execution of the most brutal order in the History of American Warfare.
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.
One can
never forget the sadness and solemnity of that morning. Chief John
Ross led in prayer and when the bugle sounded and the wagons started
rolling many of the children rose to their feet and waved their
little hands good-by to their mountain homes, knowing they were
leaving them forever. Many of these helpless people did not have
blankets and many of them had been driven from home barefooted.
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. Among this number was the beautiful Christian wife of
Chief John Ross. This noble hearted woman died a martyr to childhood,
giving her only blanket for the protection of a sick child. She
rode thinly clad through a blinding sleet and snow storm, developed
pneumonia and died in the still hours of a bleak winter night, with
her head resting on Lieutenant Greggs saddle blanket.
I made
the long journey to the west with the Cherokees and did all that
a Private soldier could do to alleviate their sufferings. When on
guard duty at night I have many times walked my beat in my blouse
in order that some sick child might have the warmth of my overcoat.
I was on guard duty the night Mrs. Ross died. When relieved at midnight
I did not retire, but remained around the wagon out of sympathy
for Chief Ross, and at daylight was detailed by Captain McClellan
to assist in the burial like the other unfortunates who died on
the way. Her unconfined body was buried in a shallow grave by the
roadside far from her native home, and the sorrowing Cavalcade moved
on.
Being
a young man, I mingled freely with the young women and girls. I
have spent many pleasant hours with them when I was supposed to
be under my blanket, and they have many times sung their mountain
songs for me, this being all that they could do to repay my kindness.
And with all my association with Indian girls from October 1829
to March 26th 1839, I did not meet one who was a moral prostitute.
They are kind and tender hearted and many of them are beautiful.
The only
trouble that I had with anybody on the entire journey to the west
was a brutal teamster by the name of Ben McDonal, who was using
his whip on an old feeble Cherokee to hasten him into the wagon.
The sight of that old and nearly blind creature quivering under
the lashes of a bull whip was too much for me. I attempted to stop
McDonal and it ended in a personal encounter. He lashed me across
the face, the wire tip on his whip cutting a bad gash in my cheek.
The little hatchet that I had carried in my hunting days was in
my belt and McDonal was carried unconscious from the scene.
I was
placed under guard but Ensign Henry Bullock and Private Elkanah
Millard had both witnessed the encounter. They gave Captain McClellan
the facts and I was never brought to trial. Years later I met 2nd
Lieutenant Riley and Ensign Bullock at Bristol at John Roberson's
show, and Bullock jokingly reminded me that there was a case still
pending against me before a court martial and wanted to know how
much longer I was going to have the trial put off?
McDonal
finally recovered, and in the year 1851, was running a boat out
of Memphis, Tennessee.
The long
painful journey to the west ended March 26th, 1839, with four-thousand
silent graves reaching from the foothills of the Smoky Mountains
to what is known as Indian territory in the West. And covetousness
on the part of the white race was the cause of all that the Cherokees
had to suffer. Ever since Ferdinand DeSoto made his journey through
the Indian country in the year 1540, there had been a tradition
of a rich gold mine somewhere in the Smoky Mountain Country, and
I think the tradition was true. At a festival at Echota on Christmas
night 1829, I danced and played with Indian girls who were wearing
ornaments around their neck that looked like gold.
In the
year 1828, a little Indian boy living on Ward creek had sold a gold
nugget to a white trader, and that nugget sealed the doom of the
Cherokees. In a short time the country was overrun with armed brigands
claiming to be government agents, who paid no attention to the rights
of the Indians who were the legal possessors of the country. Crimes
were committed that were a disgrace to civilization. Men were shot
in cold blood, lands were confiscated. Homes were burned and the
inhabitants driven out by the gold-hungry brigands.
Chief
Junaluska was personally acquainted with President Andrew Jackson.
Junaluska had taken 500 of the flower of his Cherokee scouts and
helped Jackson to win the battle of the Horse Shoe, leaving 33 of
them dead on the field. And in that battle Junaluska had drove his
tomahawk through the skull of a Creek warrior, when the Creek had
Jackson at his mercy.
Chief
John Ross sent Junaluska as an envoy to plead with President Jackson
for protection for his people, but Jackson's manner was cold and
indifferent toward the rugged son of the forest who had saved his
life. He met Junaluska, heard his plea but curtly said, "Sir,
your audience is ended. There is nothing I can do for you."
The doom of the Cherokee was sealed. Washington, D.C., had decreed
that they must be driven West and their lands given to the white
man, and in May 1838, an army of 4000 regulars, and 3000 volunteer
soldiers under command of General Winfield Scott, marched into the
Indian country and wrote the blackest chapter on the pages of American
history.
Men working
in the fields were arrested and driven to the stockades. Women were
dragged from their homes by soldiers whose language they could not
understand. Children were often separated from their parents and
driven into the stockades with the sky for a blanket and the earth
for a pillow. And often the old and infirm were prodded with bayonets
to hasten them to the stockades.
In one
home death had come during the night. A little sad-faced child had
died and was lying on a bear skin couch and some women were preparing
the little body for burial. All were arrested and driven out leaving
the child in the cabin. I don't know who buried the body.
In another
home was a frail mother, apparently a widow and three small children,
one just a baby. When told that she must go, the mother gathered
the children at her feet, prayed a humble prayer in her native tongue,
patted the old family dog on the head, told the faithful creature
good-by, with a baby strapped on her back and leading a child with
each hand started on her exile. But the task was too great for that
frail mother. A stroke of heart failure relieved her sufferings.
She sunk and died with her baby on her back, and her other two children
clinging to her hands.
Chief
Junaluska who had saved President Jackson's life at the battle of
Horse Shoe witnessed this scene, the tears gushing down his cheeks
and lifting his cap he turned his face toward the heavens and said,
"Oh my God, if I had known at the battle of the Horse Shoe
what I know now, American history would have been differently written."
At this
time, 1890, we are too near the removal of the Cherokees for our
young people to fully understand the enormity of the crime that
was committed against a helpless race. Truth is, the facts are being
concealed from the young people of today. School children of today
do not know that we are living on lands that were taken from a helpless
race at the bayonet point to satisfy the white man's greed.
Future
generations will read and condemn the act and I do hope posterity
will remember that private soldiers like myself, and like the four
Cherokees who were forced by General Scott to shoot an Indian Chief
and his children, had to execute the orders of our superiors. We
had no choice in the matter.
Twenty-five
years after the removal it was my privilege to meet a large company
of the Cherokees in uniform of the Confederate Army under command
of Colonel Thomas. They were encamped at Zollicoffer and I went
to see them. Most of them were just boys at the time of the removal
but they instantly recognized me as "the soldier that was good
to us". Being able to talk to them in their native language
I had an enjoyable day with them. From them I learned that Chief
John Ross was still ruler in the nation in 1863. And I wonder if
he is still living? He was a noble-hearted fellow and suffered a
lot for his race.
At one
time, he was arrested and thrown into a dirty jail in an effort
to break his spirit, but he remained true to his people and led
them in prayer when they started on their exile. And his Christian
wife sacrificed her life for a little girl who had pneumonia. The
Anglo-Saxon race would build a towering monument to perpetuate her
noble act in giving her only blanket for comfort of a sick child.
Incidentally the child recovered, but Mrs. Ross is sleeping in a
unmarked grave far from her native Smoky Mountain home.
When
Scott invaded the Indian country some of the Cherokees fled to caves
and dens in the mountains and were never captured and they are there
today. I have long intended going there and trying to find them
but I have put off going from year to year and now I am too feeble
to ride that far. The fleeing years have come and gone and old age
has overtaken me. I can truthfully say that neither my rifle nor
my knife were stained with Cherokee blood.
I can
truthfully say that I did my best for them when they certainly did
need a friend. Twenty-five years after the removal I still lived
in their memory as "the soldier that was good to us".
However,
murder is murder whether committed by the villain skulking in the
dark or by uniformed men stepping to the strains of martial music.
Murder is murder, and somebody must answer. Somebody must explain
the streams of blood that flowed in the Indian country in the summer
of 1838. Somebody must explain the 4000 silent graves that mark
the trail of the Cherokees to their exile. I wish I could forget
it all, but the picture of 645 wagons lumbering over the frozen
ground with their cargo of suffering humanity still lingers in my
memory.
Let the
historian of a future day tell the sad story with its sighs, its
tears and dying groans. Let the great Judge of all the earth weigh
our actions and reward us according to our work.
Children
- Thus ends my promised birthday story. This December the 11th 1890.
|
![[Robinson Cousin Homestead logo]](../images/Robinson_barn_small_washout_text_6.jpg)