The Choctaw Removal: A Trail of Tears
and Death
By: Len Green/Bishinik, November, 1978
After signing the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit
Creek, the U.S. government determined that the best
method of handling the Choctaw removal was to
move the tribe in three separate groups. The first
removal of about one-third of the Choctaw nation
began on November 1,1831.
The Choctaws were allowed the first two
weeks of October to gather their crops, assemble
their personal property and sell their houses and
chattels, so that they would be ready to move by
November 1.
Because of the urging of the State of
Mississippi, the Choctaws were ordered to leave all
of their livestock in Mississippi and promised that
they would be furnished new livestock when they
reached the “Choctaw Nation in the West.”
In the meantime, the newly created Bureau
of Indian Affairs (BIA), not to be left out of the act,
came up with a new wrinkle. The BIA said that it
would offer special incentives to any Choctaw
willing to walk to the new land.
Approximately 300 of the Choctaws decided
that the BIA plan was the way to go. There was
“one fly in the ointment”, though. The “guide”
whose name is (probably fortunately) lost to history,
was not the expert on the west he represented
himself to be.
Beginning in mid-October, the U.S.
government began sending army wagons to gather
up the Indian families who would travel west in the
first year of the migration.
Thus, during the final week of October,
encampments of Choctaws began to spring up all
around the outskirts of Memphis and Vicksburg,
with the population of the camps growing daily.
And, along with the Choctaws came
something else…rain! These heavy rains came and
stayed, flooding the Mississippi, Arkansas and
Ouachita Rivers, turning the river valleys into
swamps.
A quick conference between the removal
agents revealed that the floods would make the
roads impassable so that there was no way the
Choctaws could be taken west from the Mississippi
by wagon as originally planned.
This left only one alternative –to make the
removal by steamboats. With the government
having already cancelled its order for such boats,
the Choctaws had to wait while new boats were
rounded up.
While the boats were gathered, the
Choctaws had to wait in camps outside Memphis
and Vicksburg. They soon consumed all of the
available rations and since their departure was
delayed they soon began to run out of food.
There were approximately 2000 Choctaws at
Memphis. Sometime in mid-November they were
crammed aboard two steamboats and dispatched up
to the Arkansas River and toward their new
homeland.
But, at the Arkansas Post, the U.S. army
halted the steamboats and unloaded all the
Choctaws. The boats were needed to transport a
new detachment of soldiers to Fort Smith,
Arkansas. The Choctaws would have to wait.
Following the floods, a blizzard was setting
in with strong, cold, northerly winds, snow and sleet
dancing across the landscape. Most of the
Choctaws were scantily clad, with some of the
children naked. All the U.S. government provided
were 60 small army tents to shelter the more than
2000 Choctaws from the freezing storm.
By the time help arrived, both the Choctaw
and soldiers were receiving a ration of one handful
of boiled corn, one turnip, and two cups of heated
water per day.
To make matters worse, the temperature
remained below the freezing mark for six days.
After eight days, 40 government wagons were sent
to Arkansas Post from Little Rock to begin relaying
the Choctaws on to Fort Smith, but many had
already frozen to death or died of pneumonia.
In summary, the U.S. government hired lazy
and corrupt removal agents who made very few
preparations to care for the Choctaws. They did not
purchase enough rations, and there were only a
limited number of wagons available to carry the
Choctaws to their new territory. This meant that
only the tiniest children and the most elderly, ill or
physically disabled could ride in the wagons. Any
Choctaw who was able to stand and place one foot
in front of the other was forced to walk.
To make matters even worse, the white
man’s diseases, particularly dysentery and typhoid
raged among the Choctaws as they dragged
themselves slowly westward toward their promised
land.
Progress was extremely slow as halts to bury
their dead or tend their illness came often. The
leaders of the escort party did not know the routes
they were to follow and constantly held up the party
as they studied maps or consulted residents of the
area.
As a result of the sickness, deaths and
pauses caused by the escort, it took almost three
months for the Choctaws to drag themselves the 150
miles.
Thus, by April 1, 1832, all of the Choctaws
who had remained alive through the first removal
were located in their new homeland .Of the 6,000
who began this march, only about 4,000 survived
the journey. 2,000 Choctaws had died on the way.
And this was only the first of three stages of the
Choctaw removal. There were two more years of
removal to go…
When the first wagons reached Little Rock,
a famous term that would eventually burn itself into
history was born. In an interview with a Kansas
Gazette reporter, one of the Choctaw Chiefs was
quoted as saying that the removal to that point had
been a “trail of tears and death”.
Question for Cosideration
1. What is the name of the treaty that removed
the Choctaws?
5. Describe some of the conditions that the
Choctaw faced in the holding camps and forts:
6. How long did it take the first group of Choctaws
to move to Indian Territory?
7. MATH QUESTION!
What percentage of Choctaws died in the first
passage?
8. What did you read that indicates that more
Choctaws will probably die after this group?
2. Why might the government offer special
bonuses to those who were willing to walk?
3. What was wrong with the guide hired by the
government?
9. “…the policy of the government toward the red
man is not only liberal, but generous. He is
unwilling to submit to the laws of the States and
mingle with their population. To save him from this
alternative, or perhaps utter annihilation, the
government kindly offers him a new home, and
proposes to pay the whole expense of his removal
and settlement.”-President Andrew Jackson.
Did the U.S. government live up to this promise
by the President? Why or why not? What
examples can you give from this reading?
4. Why did most Choctaws end up walking
anyway?