American Experience (1988–…): Season 21, Episode 7 - We Shall Remain: Part III - Trail of Tears - full transcript

Someone needs to stop Clearway Law.
Public shouldn't leave reviews for lawyers.

Well, gentlemen,

I'm quite concerned.

NARRATOR:
He was called
Kah-nung-d-cla-geh,

"the one who goes
on the mountaintop,"

or simply, "The Ridge."

In the long struggle between
Indians and Americans,

few Native leaders clung
to the hope

of peaceful coexistence longer.

Few others invested more
in the professed protections

of the American legal system.



Few set more stock

in the promises of the American
government and its Constitution.

We have accounts
of education,

religion
and the arts.

NARRATOR:
By 1830, the Ridge had
already struck a series

of hard bargains
with the United States.

In return for the safety and
security of the Cherokee people,

and the right to remain on
the land of their forefathers,

the Ridge had taken pains
to shed the life

he had been raised to.

MAJOR RIDGE (in Cherokee):

NARRATOR:
He had been born in 1771,

into a Cherokee Nation
that stretched

through the southern
Appalachians



and had come of age
in the landscape

on which the Cherokee story
had been written.

The wings of the Great Buzzard
had carved the mountains

and the valleys;

Uktena, the horned serpent,

had made his frightful marks
on the tall rocks;

the Creator had set
the first man and woman
in this very place.

THEDA PERDUE:
Christians had been cast out
of their own Garden of Eden,

but the Cherokees
lived in their Eden.

It's the land

that they believed their
ancestors had always inhabited.

MAJOR RIDGE (in Cherokee):

NARRATOR:
In the Ridge's youth,

the Cherokee Nation had been
under constant threat.

As a young warrior, it was his
duty to keep a wary eye

on any encroachment by
their near neighbors--

the Shawnees, the Creeks,
Choctaws and Chickasaws,

and then a new force in
the Southeastern mountains:

the Americans.

The Cherokees picked the wrong
side in the American Revolution

and paid dearly.

The Ridge watched American
riflemen burn out his own town,

one of 50 they destroyed
in Cherokee territory.

He lashed out, took his first
American scalp at age 17

and fought the United States
past the point of hope.

RUSSELL TOWNSEND:
For a generation of Cherokees,

that destruction was all
they knew.

They had seen their world kind
of evaporate around them.

NARRATOR:
The Cherokee Nation was still
on its knees in 1805.

Its population had dwindled
to 12,000,

and it had lost more than half
its land.

(horse whinnies)

Even after the Cherokees
and other tribes

had signed peace treaties
with the United States,

the Ridge knew the safety of his
people was not a given thing.

He understood that the central
conflict still pertained--

the United States meant to have
what was left

of the Cherokee homeland.

Ridge meant to save it.

But he knew that this battle
with the United States required

a nimble and artful
new approach.

Preserving the Cherokee Nation
meant walking for a time

down the new path
America was offering.

Please accept this, Brother
Ridge, as a small gift.

MAJOR RIDGE (in Cherokee):

PERDUE:
The United States at the end
of the American Revolution

developed a policy called
"civilization."

It helped fund missionary
organizations

to go into the Indian nations,
particularly in the South,

and teach Indians how to be
Anglo Americans--

how to grow wheat
instead of corn;

how to eat meals
at regular times

instead of when
they were hungry;

how to dress
in European clothing;

how to speak the English
language;

how to pray in church
at designated times;

how to live the kind of life

that Anglo Americans believed
was a civilized life.

GAYLE ROSS:
The promises of the United
States government

were that if the Cherokees,
the Creeks, the Choctaws,

the Seminoles,

the Chickasaws could somehow
assimilate ways of living

that were more like
their white neighbors

that they could be the political
and social equal

of their white neighbors.

Literally Thomas Jefferson once
assured the Indian leaders

in a speech that he believed

they could become the equal
of white people.

NARRATOR:
"You will unite yourselves
with us,"

President Jefferson said,

"join our great councils and
form one people with us.

"And we shall all be Americans.

"You will mix with us
by marriage.

"Your blood will run
within our veins

and will spread with us over
this great continent."

(speaking Cherokee)

DANIEL ROSS:
John, Flintlock.

NARRATOR:
John Ross, the future
Cherokee chief,

grew up at the crossroads
of an emerging world

where white settlers and Indians
were just beginning

a strange new dance
of accommodation.

(speaking Cherokee)

John's mother Mollie,
a member of the Bird clan,

had married a Scotsman,
Daniel Ross.

Ross was among the growing
number of white men

who took Cherokee wives, and
gained access to land and trade

in the bargain.

John?

GAYLE ROSS:
There would have been many
different classes of Cherokee

making their way in and out
of the store,

from full-blood
traditional people

to the wealthier
mixed-blood families

that were just beginning
to establish themselves.

(speaking Cherokee)

NARRATOR:
The Rosses spoke English
at home;

John had English-speaking
tutors.

But John Ross was a Cherokee
because of his mother's blood,

an accepted member
of the Bird clan.

He grew up surrounded by people

whose lives ran to traditional
Cherokee rhythms.

He was proud to have a Cherokee
name, "Koo-wees-koo-wee,"

or "Mysterious Little
White Bird."

John?

GAYLE ROSS:
There's a story that's told
about the time when he was five.

And his father had bought a new
little suit for him to wear

at the time of Green Corn Dance.

And his mother dressed him up
in his white man's suit.

And the other children teased
him so unmercifully

that supposedly
he came back home

and insisted on being allowed to
change into the everyday clothes

of the other Cherokee children

before he would go back out
and join the festivities.

(sticks clacking together)

NARRATOR:
Cherokee land-- all of it--

was owned in common
by the tribe,

but any Cherokee could
work and improve

as much land as personal energy
and private resources allowed.

And the Ridge and his wife,
Susannah,

were energetic and resourceful
homesteaders;

exemplars of "civilization."

As the years went by and the
Ridge's farming wealth grew,

U.S. agents would occasionally
receive optimistic reports

from the Ridge family.

Major Ridge,
as he was now called,

knew what they wanted to hear.

"I take pleasure to state that
every head of his household

"has his house and farm.

"The poorer class very
contentedly perform

"the duties of the kitchen.

"They sew, they weave,
they spin, they cook our meals

and act well."

Major Ridge's hope
for the future

was a group of educated
young men

who could build a strong new
Cherokee Nation,

reckon U.S. laws and government

and outsmart federal negotiators
who were after their land.

His greatest hope
was his own son.

John Ridge was a frail boy,
hampered by a disease

that occasionally made it
difficult to walk,

but the Major recognized
his son's strengths.

When the U.S. War Department
offered to pay tuition

for John and his cousin,

Elias Boudinot, at a missionary
school in Connecticut,

Major Ridge grabbed the chance.

RIDGE (in Cherokee):

SUSANNAH RIDGE (in Cherokee):

ELIAS BOUDINOT:
So, I read your essay.

NARRATOR:
John Ridge grew to manhood among
white Christian educators,

absorbing the lessons
of the Bible

and the U.S. Constitution alike.

Even 900 miles away
from Cherokee Territory,

he never betrayed a hint of pain

at his separation from home
and family.

JACE WEAVER:
Even from his earliest
school days,

John Ridge is described by his
teachers as being cold,

a little bit aloof,
as being haughty.

They compare him
to his cousin, Buck,

who became Elias Boudinot,
who was much friendlier,

much more congenial,
but not as good a student.

John Ridge was brilliant.

NARRATOR:
The faculty selected John Ridge,

out of all the Indian
students at Cornwall,

to prepare an essay for
President James Monroe.

In it, he sang the praises
of his Christian benefactors

and his own parents.

"My father and mother
are both ignorant of
the English language,

"but it is astonishing to see
them exert all their power

to have their children educated,
like the whites."

For all his scholarly
achievements,

John Ridge's fragile
health failed

in the New England winters.

He spent much of his time
in his room,

attended by the school steward's
daughter, Sarah Bird Northrup,

until a doctor alerted
her mother

that the two seemed to have
fallen in love.

When Sarah confessed,
the Northrups sent her away

to live with relatives,
the entire affair kept secret.

It took nearly two years, but
John won over Sarah's parents.

He regained his health,
qualified as a lawyer,

and promised to take care
of their daughter.

MINISTER:
Do you thus solemnly and
sincerely engage and promise?

I will, with
the help of God.

MINISTER:
And you, Miss Sarah
Bird Northrup,

with your right hand,

take Mr. John Ridge
by his right hand.

In the presence of God

and these witnesses,
(clamoring outside)

do take John Ridge,
whom you now hold by the hand,

to be your
wedded husband,

to have and to hold
from this day forward.

Cherish and keep him
in sickness and in health

and forsaking all others,
keep only unto him,

conducting yourself toward
him in all respects...

(minister's voice becomes
distant, crowd clamoring louder)

This marriage is a sin
in God's eyes!

(din of protestors grows louder)

Go!

WEAVER:
The reaction of New England
whites--

enlightened, progressive
New England whites--

makes a mark on him.

He had been told,
"Get an education,

take up Western ways,
you can be part of us."

He will never believe whites
in exactly the same way again.

JOHN RIDGE (dramatized):
An Indian is almost
considered accursed.

The scum of the earth are
considered sacred in comparison.

If an Indian is educated...

yet he is an Indian,

and the most stupid and
illiterate white man

will disdain and triumph over
this worthy individual.

NARRATOR:
While John Ridge was away
in Connecticut,

John Ross was a young man
on the rise.

A trader like his father,
Ross cashed in selling food

and provisions to the
well-funded Christian missions

sprouting around
the Cherokee Nation.

He married a Cherokee woman

and made a home
on 420 prime planting acres.

But Ross was drawn more and more

into the troubled state
of Cherokee diplomacy.

The Cherokee Nation's long
alliance with the United States

was fraying.

Washington was dragging
its feet on payments

owed under the terms
of earlier treaties

and strong-arming the Cherokees
to sell off more territory.

The Cherokee Nation had formed

a powerful new central
government to push back,

determined never again to cede
one more foot of land.

And they needed able English-
speaking men--

like John Ross--

to articulate
the Cherokee position

to the United States government.

WEAVER:
John Ross was not from
a prominent Cherokee family

the way John Ridge was.

But Ridge takes John Ross kind
of under his wing as a prot?g?.

Here in John Ross
he's got someone

who's only an eighth Cherokee,

is very familiar with white
society because of his father,

equally adept at negotiating
both of those worlds.

...much like yours.

NARRATOR:
With strong leaders like
Ross and the Ridges,

the Cherokees could hold
the United States government

to its word for a while,

but the situation on the ground
was changing nonetheless.

As dreams of cotton wealth
drove prospective planters

deep into the interior South,

other tribes were giving up huge
swaths of neighboring lands.

The 14,000 Cherokees found
themselves surrounded

on every side by
American settlers;

scores of whites began to
scrabble onto Cherokee farmland.

A small group of Cherokees had
already taken America up

on its offer of new land west
of the Mississippi,

in Arkansas Territory.

But the Cherokee National
Council, to a man,

was still confident it had the
strength to stand its ground.

Major Ridge, for one,
had much to defend:

nearly 10 million acres owned
in common by the tribe,

and his own plantation.

According to the U.S.
Superintendent of
Indian Affairs,

Ridge's farm "was in a higher
state of cultivation

"and his buildings better than
those of any other person

in that region,
the whites not excepted."

In 20 years, Ridge had cleared
nearly 300 acres for cash crops:

cotton, tobacco,
wheat and indigo.

He oversaw his own orchard,
dairy and vineyard

and as many as 30 slaves.

(speaking Cherokee)

JOHN ROSS:
John Ross owned slaves

and John Ridge,
when he got married,

Major Ridge gave him
like 20 slaves.

And so he was a slave owner
also.

WEAVER:
About eight percent of Cherokees
owned slaves.

They were mainly
the mixed-blood elite.

But more and more,

that mixed-blood elite
is adopting the lifestyle

of the Southern planter culture.

...tobacco in the past

that we're thinking
of adding to that,

or perhaps even
some cattle.

(speaking Cherokee)

(speaking Cherokee)

My father says the
rains were heavy here

and the cotton
was planted late,

but cotton prices
are rising again.

(speaking Cherokee)

(laughter)

My father apologizes
to you, ma'am.

He says the cost of your
fine dresses is going up.

(laughter)

NARRATOR:
Not all Cherokees welcomed
these new opportunities.

"Civilization" was beginning
to draw hard class distinctions

that had never existed in
traditional Cherokee society.

The lives of most full-blood
Cherokees were still marked

by loss.

What little remained of their
old hunting grounds

was played out.

They depended almost entirely
on subsistence farming.

And they worried that their
leaders were in thrall

to the ways of the whites.

But there were still elemental
ties that bound all Cherokees,

and change that benefited all,

including a signal advance
by a Cherokee named Sequoyah.

GAYLE ROSS:
Sequoyah was devoted to enabling
the Cherokee people

to have at their command
an essential power

that he saw white society have,

that being the ability to write
in the Cherokee language.

Ultimately he did something
that no one has ever done,

and that was create a system
of reading and writing

in a language when he himself
could not read or write

in any other language.

CHIEF CHAD SMITH:
There was one character
for every syllable.

So with 86 syllables a Cherokee
speaker could learn to write

in several weeks.

And it's actually much more
efficient and effective

than you could ever ask
of English.

GAYLE ROSS:
Within a matter of a few years,

the Cherokee Nation
was literate.

The Cherokee Phoenix;

the translation of the Bible
into Cherokee;

family stories were
written down;

medicine people wrote down all
of their formulas for healing.

It literally revolutionized
Cherokee society.

NARRATOR:
At the end of the 1820s,

Major Ridge saw a new
Cherokee Nation on the rise.

Cherokee population
grew every year.

Its National Council was
stronger than ever

and a new generation
had come of age.

John Ridge had taken a seat
on the Council.

And one of the most impressive
new young leaders was John Ross.

John Ross, he didn't look like
a real full-blood Cherokee,

but the full-bloods, the
Cherokee people, trusted him.

He was what they looked
for in a leader,

and he was in for
the common people.

NARRATOR:
Among the traditional
full-blood Cherokees--

who made up the overwhelming
majority of the tribe--

John Ross gained a reputation
for integrity.

While serving under
the principal chief,

Ross had become an eager student
of the abiding Cherokee ways.

It was Ross who authored
a new constitution

that all Cherokees
could embrace.

Ross's constitution
created

a democratically
elected government

mirrored on the United States.

There was an executive,
a legislative

and a judicial branch.

A strong National Council
was vested with the power

to protect all Cherokee land.

CAREY TILLEY:
This is the culmination.

This is the culmination
of a movement

and is probably
the greatest unity

that the Cherokee people
had ever seen.

NARRATOR:
The new constitution drew bright
and indisputable borders

around Cherokee territory,

and declared the Cherokee
Nation's absolute sovereignty

within those borders.

WEAVER:
Georgia reacts to the Cherokee
passage of a constitution

in 1827 very badly.

They say, "If they set up
a constitutional government,

we'll never be able
to get rid of them."

NARRATOR:
"The absolute title to the lands
in controversy is in Georgia,"

read one resolution, "and she
may rightfully possess herself

of them when, and by what means,
she pleases."

"These misguided men,"

a state legislator said
of the Cherokees,

"should be taught that there
is no alternative

"between their removal
beyond the limits

"of the state of Georgia

and their extinction."

(rooster crows)

(man singing in Cherokee)

NARRATOR:
As the Georgia legislature
began to kick back,

other, more ominous events,
were unfolding...

The discovery of gold
in Cherokee territory,

which caused a stampede
of white prospectors,

and the first stirring of
a populist political movement

that sent tremors through Indian
lands all over the East.

This hard-edged new movement
found voice in Andrew Jackson,

whose ascent
to the presidency in 1829

owed to the newly enfranchised
Southern frontiersmen.

In his first address
to Congress,

President Jackson announced
his intention

to do as his voters pleased,

which is to say rid the East
of the Indian tribes

once and for all.

He championed new legislation

giving him power to offer
the tribes

land west of the Mississippi...
if they would go nicely.

GAYLE ROSS:
The Indian removal bill

was Jackson's first priority
once he was in office.

It became the first major focus
of his administration.

It did reflect
a fundamental shift

in the way that America was
beginning to define itself.

Not very many people in
Georgia and Tennessee,

Alabama, at that time,

were willing to even go
so far as to say

that Indian people were people.

TILLEY:
The thinking of the day
becomes more racist,

that the Cherokees are inferior
and cannot be like the whites.

It's convenient rhetoric to say
that Cherokees are inferior

and we need to get them out of
the way, out of harm's way,

as Jackson would put it.

NARRATOR:
Other tribes read
the bleak signs

and reluctantly began to prepare
for removal.

But the Cherokees reached out
for support among their friends

and benefactors along
the Eastern seaboard.

WEAVER:
The Cherokees were one
of the "civilized" tribes.

They had made such strides.

So they cut a sympathetic figure
to Northeasterners.

I ask you--

shall red men live, or shall
they be swept from the earth?

It is with you, and
this public at large,

the decision
chiefly rests.

Must they perish?

Will you push them from you
or will you save them?

NARRATOR:
The Congressional debate over
the Indian removal bill

was a sectional brawl that drew
the entire country's attention.

A campaign organized
by Benevolent Ladies

flooded Congress with pro-Indian
letters and petitions.

"Who can look an Indian in the
face," one senator thundered,

"and say to him, 'For more than
40 years we have made to you

"'the most solemn of promises;

"'we now violate and trample
upon them all,

but offer you, in their stead,
another guarantee.'"

New England senators voted 11-1
against Jackson's removal bill.

But the unanimous bloc
of Southerners

assured its passage
in the Senate.

The vote was closer
in the House-- 102 to 97.

But the legislation passed.

And President Andrew Jackson's
signature made Indian removal

the law of the land.

TILLEY:
The state of Georgia basically
said to its citizens,

"This land is yours."

They divided up
with the land lottery

and basically told their
people to have at it.

NARRATOR:
While white settlers bought up
lottery tickets

and a chance at Cherokee land,

the Georgia legislature bent
itself to obliterating the state

within its state,

passing new laws overriding
Cherokee sovereignty.

Meetings of the Cherokee
legislature

and courts were deemed illegal.

All people residing
on Cherokee land

were now subject to Georgia law.

Missionaries who had lived among
the Cherokees for years

were forced to sign oaths
of allegiance to Georgia.

Those who refused were jailed.

(gavel bangs)

JOHN ROSS:
And Jackson basically
told Cherokees

that he couldn't do anything
about it.

It was state rights.

And, you know, they couldn't
have any protection

from the federal government.

The only way they were going
to get protection

was if they moved.

NARRATOR:
Making a plan to battle
Andrew Jackson and Georgia

fell to the Cherokees' newly
elected principal chief.

Major Ridge had decided not
to run for the office,

asserting that the Cherokees
would be best served

by an English-speaking chief.

His own son was too young,
so the Ridge backed John Ross.

At 38, Ross himself was
barely eligible,

but he won election easily.

And one of his first acts
in office--

rewriting the blood law--
sent a clear signal:

any Cherokee who made a deal to
sell land to the United States

without the consent
of the entire tribe

faced dire and certain
consequences.

"Citizens of this nation,"
the law read,

"may kill him or them
so offending,

in any manner most convenient."

Chief Ross then set out
to shame Jackson

and the supporters
of Indian removal,

and he was going to use
the United States federal
courts to do it.

Along with America's most
esteemed advocate--

former attorney general
William Wirt--

Ross and his closest advisers
began to frame

the Cherokees' argument
for self-determination

in their own territory.

CHEROKEE LEADER (in Cherokee):

NARRATOR:
The Cherokee Nation
and their supporters

filed more than a dozen separate
suits in federal court;

two made it all the way
to the Supreme Court
of the United States.

The question in both cases was
the flash point

of American politics in 1830.

Where did federal authority end
and states' rights begin?

Did federal treaties
with the Cherokee Nation

supersede Georgia state law?

Or could Georgia do as she
pleased within her borders?

The Court dodged the question
in the first case,

but in the second, Worcester v.
Georgia, it could not.

Samuel Worcester,

a missionary who lived
in the Cherokee Nation,

had been jailed by Georgia
officials for refusing

to take an oath of allegiance.

Wirt argued that his arrest
was unconstitutional,

that Cherokee tribal laws could
not be written over

by the state of Georgia.

The opinion of the Court,

written by Chief Justice
John Marshall,

could not have been more clear.

"The Cherokee nation is
a distinct community,"

Marshall wrote,
"occupying its own territory,

"with boundaries accurately
described,

"in which the laws of Georgia
can have no force,

"and which the citizens of
Georgia have no right to enter

but with the assent of
the Cherokees themselves."

SMITH:
What else could you ask for

but a very clear and
sympathetic order

of the highest court in the land

interpreting the supreme law
of the land.

The Cherokees just
were ecstatic.

GAYLE ROSS:
They followed the law.

They followed this policy

of a government-to-government
relationship.

And the Supreme Court decision
was a complete vindication.

WEAVER:
Now, finally, this is
their victory.

Now they'll have
some protection.

NARRATOR:
John Ridge was still in
Washington when he got word

that the state of Georgia was
refusing to recognize

the Supreme Court decision

or the sovereignty
of the Cherokee Nation.

WEAVER:
He goes to the White House

and gets an audience
with President Jackson.

He asked him bluntly if he will
force Georgia to comply

with the Supreme Court's order,

and Jackson says he will not.

GAYLE ROSS:
Andrew Jackson,

the only president in the
history of the United States

to openly defy
a Supreme Court order.

He is said to have remarked

that Chief Justice Marshall
made his decision,

let him enforce it.

And to the Georgians he said,
"Light a fire under them.

They'll move."

It's over.

He wants us gone.

Even those we call friends
say we can't resist anymore.

MAJOR RIDGE (in Cherokee):

SMITH:
The political reality
is setting in.

The issues became more clear.

You could stay and fight
or stay and resist or leave.

And it was a very painful
decision.

It was an emotional decision.

It was the United States driving
us intentionally

into that choice.

(speaking Cherokee)

NARRATOR:
Once Jackson had openly sided
with Georgia,

every day brought fresh stories
of Cherokees being whipped,

run from their farms, and even
killed by white Georgians;

and the Cherokee Nation
didn't have the strength
to fight them off.

When the United States renewed
its offer of a cash settlement

for Cherokee territory
and a grant of land

west of the Mississippi,
the Ridges were ready to listen.

TILLEY:
At this point, the Ridges see
the yielding of land

as inevitable.

What it's coming down to
in their minds

is a choice between preserving
their land

or preserving their sovereignty.

So they believe
it's more important

to remain a sovereign nation

and distance themselves from
the threat that's imminent.

JOHN RIDGE:
I'm told it is
much like here.

We will come to think
of it as home.

(in Cherokee):

Well, it is far.

Too far for others,
but not for us.

They would have us
leave our land,

and take up way out
to the west, here.

(in Cherokee):

NARRATOR:
John Ross was a man
in the middle.

He knew where the people stood,

but the Ridges were
Cherokee aristocracy,

esteemed leaders in the Nation.

The family had plenty of friends
in the U.S. government.

And Ross was not happy
that John Ridge

was preparing to run against him
for principal chief

in the upcoming tribal
elections.

This infighting, Ross believed,
invited peril.

He'd seen federal negotiators
divide and conquer

the leadership of every
other nearby tribe.

Unity, he knew, had been
the Cherokees' salvation;

the tribe had to speak to the
United States with one voice.

TOWNSEND:
I think he heard
the traditional voice

and felt compelled by it,
felt a sense of duty to it.

Certainly he had 16,000 people
telling him to stay.

I think he wanted to do

what those voices were
telling him to do.

TILLEY:
The Ridges kept saying publicly,

"If we could just talk
to the Cherokee people,

then we could convince them
that this is our only option."

And they felt like John Ross
was being heavy handed

in keeping them from speaking
as openly as they'd like to.

NARRATOR:
"The duty of the minority
to yield and unite

is sanctioned by patriotism
and virtue," Ross proclaimed.

Then, citing a national
emergency,

he suspended the upcoming
tribal elections.

WEAVER:
When John Ross cancels
elections,

now there's a real block
to John Ridge

ever assuming what he knows
to be his rightful position.

He sees John Ross as a dictator

and he grows to hate the man
in a very visceral way.

NARRATOR:
The United States and Georgia
got the scent of blood

and dug deep at the rift
that had opened

between Chief Ross
and the Ridges.

Federal agents kept close
contact with members

of the Ridge faction and let it
be known among all Cherokees.

Ross's allies fanned rumors

that the Ridges were illegally
negotiating away Cherokee land

and reminded the Ridge Party

that the penalty
for selling land

without the consent
of the tribe

was death.

By the time the tribal
leaders gathered

for an emergency session at
the Red Clay Council Grounds

in the summer of 1834,

John Ross had taken aim at his
old friend, Major Ridge.

(gavel bangs)

My fellow countrymen,

the matter before
us is most urgent.

If the United States
shall withdraw

their solemn pledges
of protection,

deprive us of the right
of self-government

and wrest from us our land,

then, in deep anguish
of our misfortune,

we may justly say there
is no place for us.

(audience clamors)

No confidence left that the
United States shall be more

just and faithful towards us

in the barren prairies
of the west

than when we
occupied the soil

inherited from the Great
Author of our existence.

(audience clamors)

MAJOR RIDGE (in Cherokee):

(all talking at once)

My father has,
with distinguished
zeal and ability,

served his country.

(audience shouting in Cherokee)

Is a man to be denounced
for his opinion?

(audience shouting)

If a man saw a cloud charged
with rain and thunder

and urged the people
to take care,

is that man
to be hated

or respected?

(audience shouting)

WEAVER:
There's a lengthy discussion

and it's decided to impeach
John Ridge, Major Ridge,

from the National Council.

Amidst all of this, a member
of the Ridge faction,

John Walker Jr., leaves early.

(owl hoots)

And he is bushwhacked.

His body is left out on the road
as a signal.

TILLEY:
It's not just rhetoric anymore.

People have to fear
for their lives.

NARRATOR:
There was no reconciling
after Red Clay.

John Ross insisted that
if the Cherokees held tight,

they could outlast the Jackson
administration.

A new president would
surely honor

the Supreme Court decision.

The Ridges believed that what
was left of American tolerance

for Indian people was
evaporating fast.

It was time for the Cherokee
leaders to take

the best cash offer
from Washington

and get their people to safety
west of the Mississippi.

In the last days of 1835,

in defiance of Chief Ross
and the National Council,

a self-appointed group
of Cherokee leaders met

at the home of Elias Boudinot.

In front of them was the newly
negotiated Treaty of New Echota.

In return for ceding all the
tribal lands in the Southeast,

the Cherokee Nation would be
paid five million dollars,

providing funds to relocate west
of the Mississippi

and to build schools, churches
and homes in their new land.

The treaty party did not stand
to benefit financially,

but they knew that would be
little comfort

to their fellow citizens.

WEAVER:
None of them were under
any illusions

as to what they were doing.

They knew it was contrary
to the wishes

of the majority of Cherokees.

They knew that they had no
authority to sign that treaty.

They all knew that.

GAYLE ROSS:
To a large extent

they had come to believe what
they had been telling themselves

from the time of the Worcester
decision.

"We see.

"We're the ones who know.

"We're the ones who
have to take action

to protect these people
who don't understand."

It must have been a very
heavy load

knowing that the vast majority
of Cherokee people

would see them as traitors and
worthy of the death penalty.

(sobbing)

MAJOR RIDGE (in Cherokee):

NARRATOR:
Soon after the Treaty
of New Echota was ratified

in the United States Senate--
by a margin of just one vote--

Major Ridge and his son,
John, left their homes

and moved to the land west
of the Mississippi

to establish a new
Cherokee Nation.

The Ridges were going the way
of other tribes around them--

the Creeks, the Choctaws
and the Chickasaws.

But less than 2,000 of
the 18,000 Cherokee citizens

joined the Ridges
in their journey west.

TILLEY:
The people are told
they have two years

to remove themselves peacefully

with support from
the federal government--

supply them and make sure
that they get their payments.

And only a handful
of people leave.

They continue planting
their fields

and making improvements
on their farms.

That was their land;
they weren't going to leave.

(woman speaking Cherokee)

SMITH:
For the vast majority
of the Cherokee people,

removal was not an option.

It just was not.

They couldn't comprehend
removal.

They couldn't comprehend
that a handful of people

signing a piece of paper would
be enough to remove them

from their homelands.

WEAVER:
John Ross is trying to hold
the Nation together,

to keep it in place.

He's desperately seeking a way,
any possible way,

that the Cherokees can remain
in the East.

I need your help.

A paper will
come soon.

Please sign it.

You can trust me to fight this.

NARRATOR:
The Cherokee chief knew he was
working against time.

Deadline for removal
was May 1838,

and 7,000 federal troops had
ringed Cherokee territory.

White settlers began to close
the circle, "Like vultures,"

said one federal officer,
"ready to strip the Cherokees

of everything they have."

Still John Ross had faith

in the common decency
of white Americans.

He thought the Ridges'
narrowly ratified treaty

could be overturned,
and he took one last shot,

authoring a bold statement
from the Cherokee Nation--

in the form of a written
petition--

to be laid before
the United States Senate.

"We acknowledge our
own feebleness,"

the Cherokees said.

"Our only fortress is
the justice of our cause.

Our only appeal on earth
is to your tribunal."

The petition arrived at Ross's
hotel in Washington

just weeks before the removal
deadline;

it had been signed
by 15,665 people--

virtually every Cherokee
in the East.

SMITH:
There were some sheets
that were blue;

some were white; some were
almost orange; some were long;

some were wide.

And they sewed those all
together in a scroll.

And if you laid those out they'd
be over 160 feet long.

And John Ross had prepared for
one of the Cherokees' friends

in the Senate to place that upon
the table in the Senate--

that protest--

so they would reconsider
the execution of that treaty.

And before that senator
could present it,

a congressman from Kentucky
and one from Maine had a duel.

Then one killed the other.

And Congress adjourned.

NARRATOR:
While a frustrated
John Ross waited out

the Congressional recess
that followed the killing,

he wrote home to his
sister-in-law,

"As soon as they bury
their illustrious brother,

"Congress can get back
to the business of dealing

with us savages."

Congress, however,
did not circle back

to Chief Ross's petition;
it was simply pushed aside.

The Cherokee people's
near-unanimous plea

never received the consideration
of the United States Senate.

On the morning of May 26, 1838--

three days after
the removal deadline--

federal troops and
state militia began

what they called the assembly
of the Cherokee people.

Everyone has to leave.

Everyone has to go right now.

TOM BELT:
Everything that wasn't
actually on the person

now belonged to the state.

And they were forced out
into yards and onto the roads

with whatever they had
on their back.

MILITIAMAN:
Come on Reverend, get 'em loose.

GAYLE ROSS:
There were staging areas around
the Cherokee Nation

with wooden stockades,

and the people were herded into
what were literally cattle pens.

Come on, keep moving.

NARRATOR:
A few weeks after
the roundup began,

the first detachments of
Cherokees were shipped west

under military guard.

Word quickly got back
to the stockades:

drought and summer disease had
made the trip a march of death.

Chief Ross was frantic to avoid
further loss.

He convinced U.S. military
officials

to let him take over
the organization

and supply of removal,

and to let his people sit tight
until fall,

after the season of disease
had passed.

A few hundred Cherokees

who agreed to renounce
tribal citizenship

were allowed to remain on
their farms in North Carolina.

The rest, more than 12,000
captive Cherokees,

waited in the fetid stockades.

"Prisoners,"
one missionary remembered,

"were obliged to lie at night
on the naked ground,

"in the open air, exposed to
wind and rain, and in this way,

"many are hastening
to a premature grave.

"Half the infants and all
the aged have died directly,

and one fourth
of the remainder."

Through June, July, August
and September they waited

until, at the beginning
of October,

the Cherokee Nation was
finally pushed west.

It was early December

before the final group
began the 850-mile trip.

By then, the long line of
Cherokee travelers stretched

from Illinois into Kentucky,

unbroken in places
for three miles.

John Ross had seen that the
detachments were well supplied

for the three-
to four-month trek,

but winter storms made
the Mississippi and Ohio
Rivers impassable,

stranding thousands
for a full month.

GAYLE ROSS:
No one could have predicted that
one of the hardest winters

in memory would strike
that year.

When they reached
the Mississippi River,

the river was frozen.

There were three different
detachments trapped

between the Mississippi
and another river
frozen behind them.

And there they sat

for weeks in deep, deep
snow and ice.

As long as they were moving
maybe it wasn't so bad.

But when you actually had
to wait for the ice

and sit there and maybe
you're sleeping on snow

but you're probably sleeping
on melted mud

and you're sick,
your baby's sick,

your grandmother's sick

and there's nothing
you can do about it.

(coughing)

NARRATOR:
The harsh weather
so slowed progress

that supplies of dried corn and
salt pork began to run short;

when white settlers
along the road

recognized the Cherokees' need,
a few offered help.

Others took the opportunity
to cash in on the woe,

charging wildly inflated prices
for grain.

Cherokee men were soon too
depleted to hunt wild game.

A New Englander passing through
western Kentucky

noted the sad procession.

"Two thousand people sick and
feeble, many near death.

"One woman was carrying
her youngest child,

"who was dying in her arms.

"Multitudes go on foot.

"Even aged females were
traveling with heavy burdens

"attached to their back,
on sometimes frozen ground

"with no covering for the feet

"except what nature
had given them.

The Indians buried 14 or 15
at every stopping place."

WEAVER:
Because of the civilization
project,

a great many of those coming
on the trail were Christians.

And a lot of times on the trail
they would sing Christian hymns.

Here these thousands of people
making this forced march,

one quarter of them
dying en route,

and they're singing,
"Guide me oh thou great Jehovah,

"guide me, God, pilgrim
that I am in this barren land.

"I am weak and you are mighty.

Guide us."

TOWNSEND:
The United States gained
a lot of land

and farms and taverns and
ferries and things like that.

But a loss for the American
government is the blemish,

the stain it places
upon our national honor.

What we did in the 1830s
to the Southeastern Indians,

it's ethnic cleansing.

THOMAS BELT:
The removal had caused
the deaths of some 4,000 people.

Someone had to answer for that,

someone had to answer
for those lives.

A life taken in that way
must be balanced out.

(screaming)

WEAVER:
They stabbed him repeatedly.

They beat him.

Took turns kicking the body
and jumping up and down,

caving in his chest.

JOHN ROSS:
The same morning, four men came
to Elias Boudinot

and asked for medicine.

And as he turned to greet
the people, he was stabbed.

And another used a hatchet
to the head.

(gunshots)

Major Ridge was shot five times
and he was killed.

Three murders in the same day.

Three outstanding people.

The Cherokee people, we lost
them, brilliant minds, that day.

And I think it was a loss
for the whole Nation.

NARRATOR:
There was no easy balm for
the wounds caused by removal;

angry talk, bitter accusation
and violent reprisal flared

among the Cherokees
for the next 30 years.

It fell to John Ross,

who retained the office
of principal chief,

to heal his Nation,

to realize the dream he and
the Ridges had always shared:

the continuation of a strong
and sovereign Cherokee Nation.

By 1860, after a quarter
century at remove

from the United States,

Ross had managed to restore
the heart of his Nation.

Its government had been
reconstituted;

its businesses flourished;
it had the finest system

of public education in all
America, for men and women.

Cherokee population had nearly
doubled to 21,000.

Ancient tribal traditions like
the Green Corn Dance

and the clan system
were still honored.

John Ross was in his 70s, had
been chief nearly 40 years,

when, after the Civil War,

the United States began to force
its way, once again,

into Cherokee territory,

demanding the tribe cede part
of its western lands.

In the summer of 1866,

while he was in Washington
negotiating anew with the U.S.,

John Ross fell ill.

As he neared death,
Ross knew the Cherokee Nation

faced big challenges
in the coming years--

and new kinds of encroachments.

But the chief took comfort
in the fact

that the Cherokees had
re-established themselves

as a strong
and sovereign nation,

deeply connected to the land
on which they lived

and prepared to fight for it.

WEAVER:
In this one respect
they're lucky...

in that where they came to looks
kind of like where they left.

They look at the hills here
and they say,

"Those look like the hills
in old Cherokee country.

"They must have been carved out

by the same buzzard that carved
out the Smokies."

And they look at the scratches
in the rock

and they say, "Those look just
like the scratches in the rock

"made by the Uktena back
in Georgia.

They must have been made
by the Uktena here, too."

Part-Cherokee writer
Scott Momaday talks about

stories in the blood,
or memory in the blood.

Stories are told generation
after generation

so that in many ways they are
carried in our blood.

And although I don't know what
it was like to make that march,

my ancestors did
come on the trail.

I've heard the stories.

GAYLE ROSS:
In listening to the stories
of your ancestors,

you're taught who you are

and what your ancestors
sacrificed

so that you could be Cherokee.

CC ripped by Tantico (Croatia) 2011

Someone needs to stop Clearway Law.
Public shouldn't leave reviews for lawyers.