I Can't Imagine the Agony of Removal

We Came West With the Indians

 

   “I Can't Imagine the Agony of Removal.” These were the words of a Chickasaw citizen in a video about the tribe’s history of removal from east of the Mississippi River. It is part of a series of videos that provides the history, apparently from the perspective of Chickasaw citizens and noted historians. 

 

   With titles like “The Last Tribe to Remove; Making Oklahoma Home,” “The Plight of Removal and Our Indomitable Spirit,” and one that presented some very interesting questions titled, “Imagining the Agony of Removal.” 

   After viewing probably about ten of the videos, I couldn’t help but notice the absence of the enslaved people who suffered from the "agony of the removal" or whose “survival” was not considered among those that possessed an “indomitable spirit,” completely omitting them from the same experience, along the same trail of many tears.

 

   As stated earlier, it was the video “Imagining the Agony of Removal”  that got my attention because the narrator made several statements that if you didn’t know it was about the Chickasaw people or any of the Five Slave Holding Tribes, the phrases could apply to those omitted people who were brought west to Indian Territory, as chattel property. Phrases like:

 

   “I can’t imagine being ripped from my home.” 

   “I can’t imagine what my ancestors had to go through, whenever the concept of removal came to them.”

   "I can’t imagine leaving the land of my ancestors because my ancestors were buried there, because burial sites are important.”

   “We didn’t know what it was going to be like in Indian Territory.”

   When you read the heart-breaking oral history provided by Choctaw Freedman Jordan D. Folsom, who spoke about his father’s mother Sylvia, the stories about the removal were shared by many of those held in bondage, they sadly are missing from the standard narrative. 

   “She was a young woman with one child living in Alabama when she, with a bunch of slaves, was put upon the auction block and sold to a slave dealer.” Jordan continued by saying, “Sylvia, with Abe Radford and his young wife, Elizabeth, were all sold to the same dealer, who was bringing slaves to the Indian Territory and selling them to wealthy Indians.” 

   When when the narrator of  “Imagining the Agony of Removal.” said it was unimaginable “to be ripped from my home,” it was the next few words that were brought back to Jordan's family. “Sylvia’s mother was there and was crying but it did no good, they were just chattels and were sold, regardless of what any of the relatives said or did.” 

   Jordan had been the keeper of his family’s oral tradition and without it, the comparisons of his ancestor’s experiences would not be available to help tell the full story of who were on the various trails of removal, leaving sacred burial sites and loved ones behind, never to see them again. 

 

   There was a reference pointed out that the historian Grant Foreman in his writings, “understood the trauma of removal.” Jordan provides some insight into the trauma that Sylvia and her family members certainly experience when he said, “Sylvia was permitted to keep her little boy, but that was the last she saw of her mother…” Sylvia’s little boy died shortly after they were sold to Dr. Henry Folsom, a Choctaw Indian. 

 

   Evidently, there is no room to consider the trauma the institution of chattel slavery among the Choctaw or Chickasaw Nations have caused. Apparently, there was and is no place in the heart of these honorable people that can empathize with the plight of those who were just chattel, and sold to the wealthy among them?

   I can't imagine how the Choctaws and Chickasaws ripped mothers from their children, forced them to leave their homes, bring them to a place like Indian Territory for a "second removal from a land of their ancestors" and are comfortable as they continue to omit them from "their" removal story. 

   I can't imagine, after being sold to Choctaw, Dr. Henry Folsom, the child Sylvia traveled west with died shortly after arrival to Indian Territory. 

 

   I can't imagine, Dr. Henry Folsom would father the only other child Sylvia would give birth to after her arrival to Indian Territory.

      Imagine you were Sylvia, her son Jordan, or her grandson, Jordan Jr., the keeper of the family story. Imagine the agony of their removal story.