Why do you call The Trail of Tears a uniquely Georgian event? I thought tribes throughout the U.S. went on the Trail of Tears.

Anne Pierce

Anne

The Trail of Tears was a specific trail along which American Indians from the Cherokee Nation traveled to Oklahoma. The exact Trail of Tears ran from Rattlesnake Spring, Tennessee (in the vicinity of the Cherokee Agency), northwest to Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and on to the mouth of the Cumberland River, where it crossed the Ohio River. From here it headed to Green's Ferry, where the Cherokee camped until they were able to cross the Mississippi into Missouri. At the time Green's Ferry was about two miles south of Cape Giradeau, Missouri. From here it headed west to Fort Smith, Arkansas, where the U. S. Army processed the Cherokee and sent them into what would eventually become Oklahoma.

Today many American Indians refer to their tribe's "Trail of Tears," but the idiom is Cherokee and technically only refers to the Cherokee Removal.

As for calling the Trail of Tears "uniquely Georgian," you must have seen one of our publisher's presentations since we don't use the phrase on the About North Georgia web site, so we asked him to explain:

I started using this term about a year and a half ago, after the Washington Post referred to the North Carolina Trail of Tears. At the time of the Trail of Tears a majority of the Cherokee lived in Georgia and most of the remaining land claimed by the Cherokee was in present-day Georgia. While some of the Cherokee who were rounded up did live in the hills of North Carolina, it was Georgia that instigated the entire matter. The state of Georgia passed the laws that made it illegal for whites to work in the Cherokee Nation without a permit from the state. It was Georgia who sent the Georgia Guard to oversee the brutalization of the Cherokee from 1830 on. And it was Georgia who ignored the Supreme Court ruling that recognized the Cherokee Nation as sovereign.

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