TRAILS OF TEARS
#490 Column Written 1/15/2001 All Rights Reserved
An anthropologist
comes up to an Indian, and asks him what did the Indians call America before
the whites came, and the Indian replies, "Ours." - Vine Deloria, Native Activist
When the phrase "Trail of Tears" is used, many people think of the horrendous
death march of the Cherokee peoples, from what is now called Georgia, to
reservations in the Western territories. Thousands died during the forced
march, from cold, from
sickness, from heartbreak at the idea of leaving their ancestral lands, to
satisfy the land greed of the white settlers.
There were however, many such trails of tears that have occurred across the
land we now call America, most of which are ignored, and forgotten in the
national amnesia that we call history.
Of course, even in that infamous Trail of Tears of the Cherokee dispossessed,
there was a trail within a trail, as the Cherokee, one of the so-called Five
Civilized Tribes, imitated white people in some ways, including the possession
of black slaves. On that trail, along with Cherokee, were hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of blacks held in captivity. There is uncertainty over how many
because few people felt it important enough to keep count.
From the tropical swamps and lowlands of what is now called Florida another
indigenous people, the Seminoles, were forced along a deadly trail. Florida
was the setting of at least three spheres of global conflict: the interests
of Spain, the British, and the Americans (the French were involved relatively
briefly). Caught in the middle, were Indian and African peoples.
For Seminoles (who broke away from their Creek kin) Florida was home, as
it was the home of the Timuquan, Muskhogean, and Apalachee people before
them. It was here, in the early 1500s, that the Spanish sought the hidden
Fountain of Youth. It was here that perhaps the oldest European city was
begun, St. Augustine, around 1565. And it was here, that land greed spelled
the beginning of the end for free Seminole life on their ancestral lands.
For whether it was the Spanish, the French, the English, or the Americans,
the expansion of white settlement means the contraction of red lands, and
in several hundred years, their removal.
When Spanish authorities were in possession of the territory, their relative
weakness in terms of population, army, and immigration, forced them to make
the territory attractive to those who would defend her imperial interests.
The Spanish Crown therefore ordered that any black person who escaped from
slavery in the Anglo "north" (of Georgia or the Carolinas) would be free
in Florida, if they swore to bear arms and defend it. Thousands did. The
famous Stono Rebellion, where hundreds of black captives, armed with makeshift
weapons, drumming, marched towards St. Augustine, gives some idea of Florida's
appeal. It also gives some idea of why Georgia and the Carolinas (and the
United States) wanted to take Florida from Spain: to extend slavery. This
factor also gives some idea of why the Seminoles were always the object of
U.S. derision and hostility. The Seminoles, themselves a breakaway branch
of the Creek Confederacy (the name is said to mean runaway or break away),
treated their African runaways as friends, and fought hard to resist American
attempts to recapture and to reenslave blacks who became members of the Nation.
Americans were critical of what U.S. General Thomas S. Jesup called "the
influence of the Negroes" upon the Seminole council.
After at least three devastating wars, trickery, deceit, and cheating, the
Seminoles were marched off to Oklahoma. There, they were given inferior lands,
none of the promised equipment, clothing, blankets, or food was provided.
They were overcharged, and left on land that was promised to the Creeks.
While some army records suggests over 4,000 Seminoles died during the deadly
trek west, no figure accurately recorded those who died after arrival in
Oklahoma. What mattered to the Americans was that they were gone.
They were further devastated by the Civil War, as they were once again, put
in between the fights of others, and punished after the war, by still more
land theft.
The history of the relationship between the settlers and the native peoples
of the Americas is one of naked injustice, greed, violence and death.
It is but one feature of a rarely told, and little known, facet of American
history.