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978-0-89587-271-5
0-89587-271-4
$11.95 paperback
5 x 7 1/2
176 pages
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Although British and
American governmental policy had been pushing Native Americans westward
for much of the 18th and early 19th centuries,
passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 brought this policy to a head.
This act, which provided for the exchange of American Indian lands in
the East for lands west of the Mississippi River and for the removal of
the Indians to those lands, resulted in the relocation of an estimated
100,000 Native Americans.
Although
many tribes were involved in this process, the most publicized removal
was that of the Cherokees. In Voices from the Trail of Tears, Vicki
Rozema draws from letters, military records, physicians’ records, and
journal excerpts to provide insight into what actually happened during
this period. Through these primary sources, which are presented in
chronological order, we follow the feuding within the Cherokee ranks
about whether to accept the white man’s ultimatum, and if so, how it
should be implemented. We have firsthand accounts of how the Indians
from Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee were rounded up to
prepare for their removal. We hear the sympathetic white missionaries
pleading for the Cherokees to be allowed to stay in their homeland, and
we see how some of these same missionaries dealt with the testing of
their faith as they accompanied the Indians on their westward journey.
We read official reports and private musings from the soldiers who were
ordered to carry out the removal, many of whom ended up sympathizing
with their wards. We see the conditions that the people endured as they
traveled on what they called “the Trail Where They Cried.” We even
follow the confusion that resulted when the new arrivals in the West
faced assimilation into a culture already established by those who had
emigrated 20 to 30 years earlier.
In Voices
from the Trail of Tears, the actual participants give us a
perspective on what happened during this infamous chapter in American
history.
about the author
Vicki
Rozema is the author of Footsteps
of the Cherokees: A Guide to the Eastern Homelands of the Cherokee
Nation and editor of Cherokee
Voices: Early Accounts of Cherokee Life in the East. She lives
in Harrison, Tennessee.
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