To Be Born Without Recognition

We Came West With the Indians

To Be Born Without Recognition

 

   Many people today have some knowledge of the Trail of Tears story, particularly the story of Cherokee Indians being forced to leave their ancestral homelands and marched hundreds of miles to a new home west of the Mississippi River. The struggles, death and loss of land receives a great deal of attention and the outpouring of empathy for the plight of the Indigenous community can arguably be represented by this story of pain and suffering.

 

   Reading the letters and reports generated during the time of the removal exposes the pain and suffering that occurred on these treks overland, through swamps and mud with the loss of people and livestock that was taken with them for a new beginning, demonstrates, what a tragic episode in the lives and history of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek/Muscogee, and Seminole people, rightfully so.

   In the Cherokee nation, leaders were killed for agreeing to sell their lands in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee for land in the west. No one wanted to leave their birthplace but the incursion of whites on their land, and the unwillingness of the United States government to protect them from the intrusions of the whites, forced the people of the five tribes to abandon their homes with hopes of securing a home west as long as the grass grows and water flows. 

 

   Some of the wealthy class within the Cherokee, Chickasaw and Choctaw nations decided to sell off their land and property early on, and “self-emigrate” west in the 1820’s, almost a decade before the major body of the tribes would be “assisted” by the United States to travel to the land west of Arkansas known as Indian Territory. These self-emigrating, landowners, in many cases brought something west with them that rarely receives attention, empathy or recognition when the stories about the “Trail of Tears” is told or commemorated; they brought with them enslaved people of African and African-Native descent.

 

   It has been practically two-hundred years since this upheaval and movement of people. In all that time, the enslaved people who lived among, toiled for, and in some cases bore children of the men in these nations continue to be ignored and omitted from a story that each year, garners the attention of people across the country. Sadly, there is no recognition of the people that came with them and left many tears along the same trail.

 

   In 1829, a report of the valuations and improvements that were abandoned by a group of Cherokees because of a Treaty in 1828. In that report was a list of people who “emigrated” west, with categories titled; whites, Indians and mixed blooded, “slaves” and horses. There were ninety-one slaves listed on the muster roll, with notable people like Joseph Vann and Moses Alberty among the approximately thirty-six slave owners. 

M-234 Cherokee Emigration 05 May 1828 Roll#113 Frame#55

   The thirty-six owners were from Georgia and Alabama, and they probably had a great deal of input on what was written on that document that accounted for their loss of property and the provisions it took to move themselves, ninety-one slaves and livestock that included over four-hundred head of horses. 

 

   Just like the horses, mules and probably oxen that shoulder the burden of getting the thirty-six men and their families to Indian Territory, those unnamed slaves that were part of the party going west had no identity other than property owned by men like Moses Alberty and Rich Joe Vann, Cherokee Indians.

 

   After two-hundred years, it is past time to recognize those men, women and children that walked the same trail that Joe Vann, Captain White, The Mountain, Andrew M. Vann, Moses Alberty, and their families. It is time that the descendants of the enslaved that came west with the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek/Muscogee, and Seminole nations begin to recognize the ancestors that made were on the same trail. Many of their names may never be known, but there are many that can be identified and that is the purpose of this story.

   It is possible to determine many of the people who came west to Indian Territory with the use of many records that exist today. We can reconstruct a list of these individuals, who they were and, in some cases, who they made the journey with. The numerous muster rolls of “emigrating” Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole is one resource but there are others. The greatest source of information is the Dawes Land Allotment cards that were created between 1898-1914. 

 

  Recognition of these men, women and children is important for the full story of loss and the “Trail of Tears” to be appreciated. We know that Moses Alberty ate from the provisions brought along the trail, there is a possibility that one of his twenty-five slaves, had a small portion of it to sustain herself along the trail with her child in tow? We know, that when Sarah Ramsey arrived in Indian Territory with her ten horses, her seven slaves helped get them there. What we also need to know who those seven slaves were, that assisted Sarah. We need to know the nine slaves that Joe Vann brought with him to the territory, because they contributed to the wealth, he was famous for accumulating. 

 

   So rather than trying to tell the story of these men, women, and children and what happened to them along the trail of many tears, it may be more convenient and rewarding to present what we know about them after the trail and the legacy they left for their descendants? But, at the heart of this “conversation” we want to recognize them as survivors that came to Indian Territory, and left their mark on the history, culture, and development of these nations after their arrival west of the Mississippi.

 

   Today, we are beginning to see more acknowledgements about the enslaved people that came west with the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek/Muscogee and Seminole “Nations.” They may be in the form of children’s books, scholarly articles and perhaps a video or two. With this newfound interest it is important to present the voices of these men, women and even some infants that reached adulthood, and survived to tell their stories. 

 

   That is the importance of this work; the voices of those that survived slavery, the trail of many tears, the War of the Rebellion, Reconstruction, the Dawes Commission and its policies on race and lineal descent; all the way to Oklahoma statehood. The Indian Territory freedmen were some resilient people and demand recognition.