Five things
5 things the textbook version left out.
The short version is easy to remember. The documented one is easier to defend. Here are five pieces of it, each with its source.
By the Americanista team · every source is linked at the end
The removal was sold as a fair exchange.
In 1830 the removal of the Cherokee and other nations was presented as a trade: new land in the West, promised to them “forever.” The textbook paragraph usually keeps the promise and drops what followed.
The treaty was signed by people who didn’t speak for the nation.
In 1835 a treaty was signed by a small group the Cherokee Nation had not authorized. In 1838 soldiers enforced it anyway.
Land Cessions of the Cherokees, after C. C. Royce, Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology; redrawn by J. P. Brown, 1938 — public domain. Nobody counted who died.
About 16,000 Cherokee were removed. A missionary who walked with them estimated about 4,000 deaths in 1839. The National Park Service says there is no official number — the government that moved them never counted.
16,000Cherokee removed on the Trail of TearsNational Park Service4,000estimated dead on the TrailElizur Butler’s estimate, 1839The photographs were advertising.
In 1882 a government school photographed Tom Torlino, a young Diné man, on arrival and again a few years later in uniform. The pair was sent around the country to sell the school. His student file tells the rest: he left in 1886, and by 1910 was living in Tohatchi, New Mexico.
Tom Torlino, Diné (Navajo), on arrival at Carlisle Indian School in 1882 and a few years later. J. N. Choate, photographer. Public domain — Beinecke Library, Yale. Source The standards stop at 1900.
In 87% of state history standards, nothing after 1900 is mentioned — right as the boarding-school era was in full swing. The Department of the Interior has since documented 417 schools in 37 states and at least 973 children who died while attending.
87%of state history standards mention nothing after 1900National Congress of American Indians973documented deaths of Native children in federal boarding schools — at leastU.S. Dept. of the Interior, 2024
Five facts, all public record. None of them is hidden. They are just not in the paragraph.
That’s the idea behind the shirt below: three pairs of eyes, and a line that says what the paragraph won’t.
The design that says it.
We put this on a shirt because some stories are easier to carry than to argue. Three pairs of eyes, looking straight out. One line across the chest: EYES NEVER LIE. AMERICA DID.
You don’t have to explain it to anyone. Someone will ask. That’s the whole idea.
Imala — Eyes Never Lie. America Did.
From $32.95 · any 2 ship free
- Garment-dyed heavyweight cotton — softens with every wash
- Printed on the front or the back — your choice
- Unisex cut, S through 4XL
- Printed and shipped in the USA
- Free size exchange · 7-day replacement
The artwork on the shirt is an illustration. The historical photographs and maps on this page are original archival material.