Trail of Tears”… At Ross’s Landing, a woman, in the pains of childbirth, stood and walked as long as possible, and then fell on the bank of the river. A soldier coming up, stabbed her with his bayonet, which, together with other pains, soon caused her death.”
That’s from an Aug. 20, 1838, journal entry of missionary Daniel S. Butrick, who traveled west from Chattanooga with the Cherokee on the Trail of Tears.
This fall marks the 175th anniversary of the Trail of Tears – something not to be celebrated, but certainly something to be remembered somberly and with prayers for forgiveness.
The glimmer of greed for gold pushed Americans of the time to clamor for the removal of American Indians, who at that point lived here in homes, plantations and farms just as the immigrant settlers from England and Scotland and Germany did.
Chief John Ross ran a trading post and ferry just below Cameron Hill on the Tennessee River. Major Ridge, who had fought with Andrew Jackson at Horseshoe Bend, owned a plantation replete with slaves in North Georgia. These people were not in teepees, nor did they wear war paint. They simply lived on land where our government thought gold might be.