American history · Sourced
Six things about the Trail of Tears that most Americans were never taught
Every figure below is sourced to the National Park Service. We checked each one, because the single most-quoted eyewitness account of the removal turns out to be a fabrication.
Most people leave school with one sentence about the Trail of Tears. A president signed a law, and the Cherokee walked west.
That sentence is not wrong. It is just very small. What it leaves out is the scale, the arithmetic, and the fact that the road is still there, under asphalt, running through nine states that millions of people drive across without knowing what they are driving on.
Here is what the record actually says.
One
It was more than 16,000 people, and nobody knows how many died
The National Park Service puts the number of Cherokee forced from their homeland at "more than 16,000." The death toll is where it gets uncomfortable, because there is no count. There was never a count.
"More than a thousand Cherokee — particularly the old, the young, and the infirm — died during their trip west, hundreds more deserted... an unknown number — perhaps several thousand — perished."National Park Service, Trail of Tears National Historic Trail
The figure of 4,000 that appears in most textbooks is an estimate built from muster rolls and missionary letters, not a tally of graves. It may be low. The higher numbers you see shared online, including a widely circulated figure of 125,000, do not trace back to any source we could find.
Two
It was not one trail. It was 5,043 miles across nine states
People picture a single line on a map. The reality is a network of water routes and overland roads, some of which are now interstate highways.
"Trail sites are located across 5,043 miles and 9 states."National Park Service, Trail of Tears National Historic Trail
If you live in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas or Oklahoma, part of it runs near you. There is a reasonable chance you have crossed it this year without knowing.
Three
The most-quoted eyewitness account of the removal is a hoax
If you have read anything about the Trail of Tears online, you have probably read the Private John G. Burnett letter. It is dated 1890, written as a soldier's deathbed birthday confession, and it is quoted in classrooms, museums and documentaries.
Researchers have taken it apart. Burnett's company was disbanded in 1837, before the removal began. The document was not written in his hand. The consensus among the historians who have examined it is that it is a fabrication, most likely produced by a descendant decades later. World History Encyclopedia now republishes it under the heading "A Primary Source Hoax."
This is the reason every number on this page carries a source. The history is grim enough without invented details, and the invented details give people an excuse to dismiss the whole record.
Four
Five nations were removed, not one
The Cherokee removal is the one that got the name. The Park Service lists four more nations forced out under the same policy: the Choctaw, the Muscogee Creek, the Chickasaw and the Seminole.
Removals ran from 1831 through 1838 across the southeast. Taken together, the number of people moved runs to about 100,000. The Choctaw went first. The Seminole resisted longest, at the cost of a war.
Five
The Cherokee removal took ten months
Not years. Ten months.
"In May 1838, the Cherokee removal process began... completed by the end of March 1839."National Park Service, Trail of Tears National Historic Trail
A homeland held for centuries was emptied between one spring and the next. The Treaty of New Echota, the document used to justify it, was signed in late 1835 by a faction of roughly a hundred men who had no authority from the Cherokee government to sign anything. The Cherokee National Council rejected it. More than fifteen thousand Cherokee signed a petition against it. It was ratified by the United States Senate anyway, by a single vote.
Six
It did not end them
This is the part that gets left out of the sad version of the story.
The people who arrived in Indian Territory rebuilt. They wrote a constitution, built schools, and printed the newspaper at the top of this page in a writing system that a silversmith named Sequoyah had invented about fifteen years earlier. All five nations exist today, with governments, citizens and courts.
The Trail of Tears is not a story about a people who disappeared. It is a story about a country that tried and failed to make them disappear.
Why we put it on a shirt
Five thousand miles of trail. The number of places along it where you can actually stop and read something is short enough to finish in a weekend. Most of the route has a gas station on it.
So we made a marker that moves. The back of the tee is a black-and-white collage of the removal, drawn across Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw and Seminole ground: the walk, the homeland, the objects, the people who came out the other side.
- Printed on a Comfort Colors garment-dyed heavyweight tee
- White, Ivory, Pepper or Crimson · sizes S through 4XL
- $32.95
- Back print, so the story reads to the person behind you
Or browse the rest of the heritage collection
Do I have to be Native to wear this?
No. Nobody is asking you to claim a lineage you do not have. This is a witness position, not a heritage claim. You read the record, you decided it should not go unmarked, and you carry the marker. That is the whole idea.
What exactly is printed on it?
A back-print collage of scenes from the removal, with the years 1831 to 1838 and the five nations named underneath. No slogans across the chest. Nothing that speaks for anyone.
How does it fit?
Comfort Colors runs relaxed and true to size, with the soft, slightly washed feel these blanks are known for. If you are between sizes and want it roomier, size up.
