Park ranger Christopher Young leads a tour after a ceremony held by Friends of Moccasin Bend and the National Park Service to open the public trail for the Old Federal Road across Moccasin Bend for the 175th anniversary of the Trail of Tears and the 150th anniversary of the Civil War on Saturday in Chattanooga, Tenn.Bill John Baker, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, tucked a dip of tobacco behind his lip and offered the can to Alva Crowe of the Eastern Band of Cherokee as the two stood near the banks of the Tennessee River.
“It’s like I said earlier,” Baker said. “We’re not here as victims.”
Baker drove 900 miles from Tahlequah, Okla., to be in Chattanooga on Saturday when the Brown’s Ferry Federal Road Trail at Moccasin Bend National Archaeological District opened at 10 a.m.
It’s the road that thousands of Cherokee walked before U.S. soldiers loaded them onto barges and sent them away to Indian Territory in the forced removal known as the Trail of Tears.
The Cherokee lived at Moccasin Bend for thousands of years before the Indian Removal Act of 1830.