Officials Seek to Better Trace Trail of Tears
Lawmakers cite need to increase recognition of dark part of history
By Richard Powelson
Knoxville News Sentinel
June 30, 2005

WASHINGTON - About 20 House members Wednesday proposed more than doubling the length of the 2,000-mile Trail of Tears national historic areas.

U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Chattanooga, who said he is about one-twelfth Cherokee, is among leaders of the effort to better document the American history of the U.S. government's forced movement of more than 15,000 Cherokee in 1838-1839.

They left homelands in eastern states, including Tennessee, and moved to the designated Indian territory that became Oklahoma. Thousands died along land and water routes.

Congress voted in 1987 to designate the then-known Trail of Tears as a national historic trail of the National Park Service. It extended through Tennessee and six other states.

Based on more detailed research since then, the House bill seeks to add two states, North Carolina and Georgia, and extra routes in other states to the national trail.

"The Trail of Tears is a tragic story," Wamp said, "but it is very much an integral part of American history. We need to document it better ... make it a much more significant part of American history ... and therefore allow our citizens to learn the lessons to never repeat the injustices that took place."

About 1,000 Cherokees escaped the government roundup by hiding in the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina, according to the Park Service. Their descendants own land around scenic Cherokee, N.C., a reservation where casino gambling is legal.

Chadwick Smith, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation based in Oklahoma, said government recognition of all routes of the Trail of Tears would add to its historical significance and better memorialize the thousands who died en route.

"The value of the Trail of Tears," Smith said at a public event about the new bill, "is to teach and remind us of the lessons of history ... that will prevent such travesty of justice, sham of public policy, disdain for human dignity and political integrity as was inflicted upon the Cherokee during the forced removal."

The bill, H.R. 3085, requires the Interior Department to study existing documentation about other Cherokee trail routes within one fiscal year. If the department secretary finds that the additional areas are "feasible and suitable" for addition to the national historic trail, they will be added.

Also at the event was C. Larry Blythe, vice chief of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation in North Carolina. He called the Trail of Tears march "a dark piece of our history. We celebrate our history, good and bad, as a motivation to seek a better way of life."

Smith and Blythe thanked the members of Congress backing the trail expansion. Another Tennessean among them is Democrat Lincoln Davis of Pall Mall.

Davis said the trail enters 10 counties in his district. "Expanding the trail will allow future generations to learn about our country's past," Davis said. "If we can recognize the failures of our past, we can improve the quality of our future."

Why expand the trail now?

Smith said: "The timing is critical. At this point in time (in the Congress) there's debates about sovereignty and tribal issues" and support for recognizing the full scope of the Trail of Tears.

Wamp said it has taken many years to document the various trails and holding stations that were not fully known when the Trail of Tears first was federally recognized in 1987.

Duane King, executive director of the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles, received his bachelor's degree from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and has been involved in several projects that document Cherokee history in publications and documentaries.

King said research has "a high degree of confidence" in the locations of most of the routes used to force Cherokees west to Oklahoma. The information came from military journals, diaries of eyewitnesses, payment vouchers, newspaper accounts at the time, oral history and period maps in state and national archives, he said.