The 1838 Removal of the Cherokee Indians from the Smoky Mountains
John G. Burnett's Story of the Removal of the Cherokee Indians.
CHILDREN
This is my birthday, December 11, 1890, I am eighty years old today.
I was born at Kings Iron Works in Sullivan County, Tennessee, December the
11th, 1810. I grew into manhood fishing in Beaver Creek and roaming through
the forest hunting the deer and the wild boar and the timber wolf. Often spending weeks at a time in the solitary
wilderness with no companions but my rifle, hunting knife, and a small
hatchet that I carried in my belt in all of my wilderness wanderings...
On these long hunting trips I met and became acquainted with many of the
Cherokee Indians, hunting with them by day and sleeping around their camp
fires by night. I learned to speak their language, and they taught me the
arts of trailing and building traps and snares. On one of my long hunts in the fall of 1829,
I found a young Cherokee who had been shot by a roving band of hunters and
who had eluded his pursuers and concealed himself under a shelving rock.
Weak from loss of blood, the poor creature was unable to walk and almost famished
for water. I carried him to a spring, bathed and bandaged the bullet wound,
and built a shelter out of bark peeled from a dad chestnut tree. I nursed
and protected him feeding him on chestnuts and toasted deer meat. When he was
able to travel I accompanied him to the home of his people and remained so
long that I was given up for lost. By this time I had become an expert riflemen
and fairly good archer and a good trapper and spent most of my time in the forest in quest of game.
The removal of Cherokee Indians from their life long homes in the year
of 1838 found me a young man in the prime of life and a Private soldier
in the American Army. Being acquainted with many of the Indians and able to fluently speak their
language, I was sent as interpreter into the Smoky Mountain Country in May,
1838, and witnessed the execution of the most brutal order in the History
of American Warfare. I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their homes, and
and driven at the bayonet point into the stockades. And in the chill of a drizzling
rain on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle into six
hundred and forty-five wagons and started toward the west.
One can never forget the sadness and solemnity of that morning.
Chief John Ross led in prayer and when the bugle sounded and the
wagons started rolling many of the children rose to their feet and waved
their little hands good-bye to their mountain homes, knowing they were
leaving them forever. Many of these helpless people did not have blankets and many of them
had been driven from home barefooted.
On the morning of November the 17th we encountered a terrific
sleet and snow storm with freezing temperatures and from that day until we reached
the end of the fateful journey on March the 26th, 1839, the sufferings of the Cherokees were awful .
The Trail of the exiles was a Trail of Death. They had to sleep in the wagons and on the ground without fire.
And I have known as many as twenty-two of them to die in one night of pneumonia
due to ill treatment, cold, and exposure. Among this number was the beautiful
Christian wife of Chief John Ross. This noble hearted woman died a martyr to
childhood, giving her only blanket for the protection of a sick child.
She rode thinly clad through a blinding sleet and snow storm, developed
pneumonia and died in the still hours of a bleak winter night, with her head resting
on Lieutenant Greggs saddle blanket.
I made the long journey to the west with the Cherokees and did all that a
Private soldier could do to alleviate their sufferings. When on guard duty at
night I have many times walked my beat in my blouse in order that some sick
child might have the warmth of my overcoat. I was on guard duty the night
Mrs. Ross died. When relieved at midnight I did not retire, but remained around
the wagon our of sympathy for Chief Ross, and at daylight was detailed
by Captain McClellan to assist in the burial in a shallow grave by the raodside
far from her native home, and the sorrowing Cavalcade moved on.
Being a young man, I mingled freely with the young women and girls.
I have spent many pleasant hours with them when I was supposed to be under
my blanket, and they have many times sung their mountain songs for me, this being all that
they could do to repay my kindness. And with all my association with indian
girls for October 1829 to March 1839, I did not meet one who was a moral prostitute.
They are kind and tender hearted and many of them are beautiful.
The only trouble that I had with anybody on the entire journey to the west was a brutal teamster
by the name of Ben McDonal, who was using his whip on an old feeble
Cherokee to hasten him into the wagon. The sight of that old and nearly
blind creature quivering under the lashes of a bull whip was too much for me.
I attempted to stop McDonal and it ended in a personal encounter. He lashed
me across the face, the wire tip on his whip cutting a bad gash in my cheek.
The little hatchet that I had carried in my hunting days was in my belt and
McDonal was carried unconscious from the scene.
I was placed under guard but Ensign Henry Bullock and Private
Elkanah Millard had both witnessed the encounter. They gave
Captain McClellan the facts and I was never brought to trial. Years
later I met 2nd Lieutenant Riley and Ensign Bullock
at Bristol at the John Roberson's Show , and Bullock jokingly
reminded me that there was a case still pending against me before a court
martial and wanted to know how much longer I was going to have the trial
put off?(McDonal finally recovered, and in the year 1852, was
running a boat our of MEMPHIS, Tennessee).
The long painful journey to the west ended on the 26th March 1839, with
four-thousand silent graves reaching from the foothills of the Smoky Mountains
to what is known as Indian territory in the West. And covetousness on the
white race was the cause of all that the Cherokees had to suffer. Ever
since Ferdinand DeSoto made his journey through the Indian country
in the year 1540, there had been a tradition of a rich gold mine somewhere
in the Smoky Mountain Country, and I think the tradition was true. At a
festival at Echota on Christmas night 1829, I danced and played with Indian
girls who were wearing ornaments around their neck that looked like gold.
In the year 1828, a little Indian boy living on Ward creek had sold
a gold nugget to a white trader, and that nugget sealed the doom of the
Cherokees. In a short time the country was overrun with armed brigands
claiming to be government agents, who paid no attention to the rights of
the Indians who were the legal possessors of the country. Crimes were
committed that were a disgrace to civilization. Men were shot in cold blood,
lands were confiscated. Homes were burned and the inhabitants driven out
by the gold-hungry brigands.
Chief Junaluska was personally acquainted with President Andrew
Jackson. Junaluska had taken 500 of the flower of he Cherokee scouts
and helped Jackson to win the battle of the Horse Shoe, leaving 33 of them
dead on the field. And in that battle Junaluska had drove his tomahawk
through the skull of a Creek Warrior, when the Creek had Jackson at his
mercy.
Chief John Ross sent Junaluska as an envoy to plead with President Jackson
for protection for his people, but Jackson's manner was cold and indifferent
toward the rugged son of the forest who had SAVED his life. He met
Junaluska, heard his plead but Curtly said,"Sir, your audience is
ended. There is nothing I can do for you." The doom of the Cherokee was
sealed. Washington, D.C., had decreed that they must be driven West and their
land given to the white man, and in May 1838, an army of 4000
regulars, and 3000 volunteer soldiers under command of General
Winfield Scott, marched into the Indian Country and wrote the
blackest chapter on the pages of American History.
Men working in the fields were arrested and driven to the stockades.
Woman were dragged from their homes by soldiers whose language they could
not understand. Children were often separated from their parents and driven
into the stockades. With the sky for a blanket and the earth for a pillow.
And often the old and infirm were prodded with bayonets to hasten them
to the stockades.
In one home death had come during the night. A little sad-faced
child had died and was lying on a bear skin couch and some women were
preparing the little body for burial. All were arrested and driven out
leaving the child in the cabin. I don't know who buried the body.
In another home was a frail mother, apparently a widow and three small
children, one just a baby. When told that she must go, the mother gathered
the children at her feet, prayed a humble prayer in her native tongue,
patted the old family dog on the head, told the faithful creature good-bye,
with a baby strapped on her back and leading a child with each hand started
on her exile. But the task was too great for that frail mother. A stroke
of heart failure relieved her sufferings. She sunk and died with her
baby on her back, and her other two children clinging to her hands.
Chief Junaluska who had saved President Jackson's life at the battle
of Horse Shoe witnessed this scene, the tears gushing down his cheeks and
lifting his cap he turned his face toward the heavens and said,"Oh my GOD
, if I had known at the battle of the Horse Shoe what I know now, American
History would have been differently written."
At this time, 1890, we are too near the removal of the Cherokees for
our young people to fully understand the enormity of the crime
that was committed againnst a helpless race. Truth is, the facts are being
concealed from the young people of today. School children of today do not
know that we are living on lands that were taken from a helpless race at the
bayonet point to satisfy the white man's greed.
Future generations will read and condemn the act and I do hope posterity
will remember that private soldiers like myself, and like the four Cherokees
who were forced by General Scott to shoot an Indian Chief and his
children, had to execute the orders of our superiors. We had no choice in the
matter.
Twenty-five years after the removal it was my privilege to meet a large
company of the Cherokees in uniform of the Confederate Army under
the command of Colonel Thomas. They were encamped at Zollicoffer and
I went to see them. Most of them were just boys at the time of the removal
but they instantly recognized me as "the soldier that was good to us"
. Being able to talk to them in their native language I had an enjoyable day with
them. From them I learned that Chief John Ross was still ruler in the nation
in 1863. And I wonder if he is still living? He said a noble-hearted fellow
and suffered alot for his race.
At on time, he was attested and thrown into a dirty jail in an effort
to break his spirit, but he remained true to his people and led them in
prayer when they started on their exile. And his Christian wife sacrificied
her life for a little girl who had pneumonia. The Anglo-Saxon race would
builld a towering monument to perpetuate her noble act in giving her only
blanket for comfort of a sick child. Incidentally the child recovered,
but Mrs. Ross is sleeping in a unmarked grave far from her native
Smoky Mountain home.
When Scott invaded the Indian Country some of the Cherokees fled to caves
and dens in the mountains and were never captured and they are there today.
I have long intended going there and trying to find them but I have put off
going from year to year and now I am too feeble to ride that far. The fleeing
years have come and gone and old age has overtaken me. I can truthfully say
that neither my rifle nor my knife were stained with Cherokee Blood.
I can truthfully say that I did my best for them when they certainly
did need a friend. Twenty-five years after the removal I still lived in
their memory as " the soldier that was good to us."
However, murder is murder whether committed by the villian skulking in
the dark or by uniformed men stepping to the strains of martial music.
Murder is murder, and somebody must answer. Somebody must explain the
streams of blood that flowed in the Indian Country in the summer of 1838.
Somebody must explain the 4000 silent graves that mark the TRIAL
of the CHEROKEES to their EXILE. I wish I could forget it all, but the
picture of 645 wagons lumbering over the frozen ground with their
cargo of suffering humanity still lingers in my memory.
Let the historian of a future day tell the sad story with its sighs,
its tears and dying groans. Let the great JUDGE of all the earth weigh
our actions and reward us according to our work.
Children- This ends my promised birthday story. This December
the 11th 1890.
My note of John G. Burnett's Story.
Even though Indian Blood flow's through my veins from different branch's of
My Family Tree, how little or how great. I felt compelled to add this account of "The Trail of Tears"
to my web page - SO - whomever might read this man's personal account of the
Removal of the Cherokees. WILL not forget what supposed hero's of our History were
truely like. AND to never FORGET the year 1838 and the GREAT CHEROKEE PEOPLE
who were driven from their homes in the name of GREED.
"I have Indian Blood in me. I have just enough White Blood for
you to question my Honesty!"
Will Rogers aka "The Cherokee kid"
Email: tkilburn@hotmail.com
