Legislation May Bring New Attention to Trail of Tears
By Bill Poovey
Associated Press
Friday, November 24, 2006; Page A07
....A bill approved by Congress calls for a federal study to better define the routes taken when more than 15,000 members of the Cherokee, Creek and other tribes were forced from their homes in 1838 to make way for white settlement. Untold hundreds and perhaps thousands of Native Americans died during the removal to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma....
The Trail of Tears dates to 1830 -- 210 years after the first Thanksgiving -- when Congress approved a plan submitted by President Andrew Jackson to remove the tribes from the Southeast. Davy Crockett, like Jackson a Tennessean, was the only congressman from the state to oppose the plan....
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The National Park Service oversees the Trail of Tears. According to a park service handout, "families were separated -- the elderly and ill forced out at gunpoint -- people given only moments to collect cherished possessions. White looters followed, ransacking homes as Cherokees were led away."...
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The primary sponsor of the Trail of Tears expansion, Rep. Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.) of Chattanooga, said that besides the study, an education and research center and a possible movie are also in the works to educate Americans about the forced removal.
"You have to recognize and acknowledge your mistakes for the white man to make this right," said Wamp, who himself claims Cherokee ancestry. "There has to be an acknowledgment that . . . slavery was a mistake, the Trail of Tears was a mistake."...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/23/AR2006112300973.html?nav=most_emailed
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