Saturday, December 2, 2006
Daily Oklahoman
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. - President Bush has signed into law the Trail of Tears Study Act, directing the National Park Service to finish research on routes used when American Indians were forced from their ancestral homelands.
The measure's sponsor, U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., said Friday that accurately identifying all routes used "is necessary because the human side" of the removal must be told.
"Today, the president has shown his commitment to the completeness, objectiveness and accuracy of our nation's rich history," Wamp said in a statement after the bill was signed.
"This development coupled with others, such as Moccasin Bend being added to the National Park Service and even a movie about the Trail of Tears coming out of Hollywood, will show the character and the courage of the Cherokee," he said.
When the original trail was designated in 1987, two main arteries - the Benge and Bell routes - were missing, as well as other water routes and emigration depots.
The additional components will allow Americans to see where the original Cherokee villages were located and aid public understanding of the history.
The proposed expansion areas have been documented by National Park Service historians, military journals and newspaper accounts, Wamp said.
Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chad Smith, who testified to Congress for the passage months ago, said he was pleased with the act.
"It's one of those stories that should never go ignored," Smith said of the trail. "It was really the result of very short-sighted and often greedy and racist policies."
About 18,000 Cherokees were on the trail, and about 4,000 died, S mith said. The study will allow future generations to know about the horror and completeness of the trail, he said.
"Those are lessons that we should all learn and never repeat," Smith said.
Thousands of members of the Cherokee, Creek and other tribes were forced from their homes in 1838 to make way for white settlements. Untold hundreds and perhaps thousands of American Indians died during the removal to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma.
The Trail of Tears dates to 1830, when then-President Andrew Jackson submitted a plan to Congress to remove the tribes from the Southeast.
The National Park Service oversees the trail.
Currently, it does not recognize routes in North Carolina or Georgia, even though up to three-quarters of the Cherokees probably started from those states. The official trail markers also leave out two major arteries in Arkansas and water routes in eastern Tennessee.
An education and research center is to be built on a bluff at the junction of the Tennessee and Hiwassee rivers in East Tennessee, where the Blythe Ferry once operated and thousands of Cherokees and Creeks were taken by force to begin the journey.