When I was eleven, my grandmother Krebs asked me who my favorite President was.  Since I had recently heard Johnny Horton's song about the Battle of New Orleans, I answered Andrew Jackson.  To my grandmother, who had loved and married a quarter-blood Choctaw Indian, this was absolutely the wrong answer.  This paper will attempt to present the facts of the Indian removals of the southeastern tribes to present-day Oklahoma and conclude with information about the lives of my mixed-blood ancestors.


     The southeastern tribes, consisting principally of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, and Seminole, were agrarian societies relying for sustenance on the "three sisters"—squash, beans, and corn—augmented by hunting and animal husbandry.  In many ways their lifestyle did not differ much from that of the colonizers who sought to displace them.  One should not infer from this that these were docile agriculturalists.  Young males were not considered to be men until they had distinguished themselves in battle.

     During the 1700s, the southeastern tribes interacted frequently with Europeans and Americans.  Traders travelled to Indian villages, often living with Indians for considerable lengths of time, some even finding that they preferred the native American lifestyle.  One example was Sam Houston, who fled a failed marriage in Tennessee to live with the Cherokee in Arkansas.  Intermarriage led to mixed-race progeny. As settlers began to move farther west, though, conflict arose. There were instances of Indian attacks and even outright warfare with colonial militias. In the 1700's, the tribes were able to play one colonial power against the other, and their support was key to the territorial ambitions of the European powers. 

     The situation changed dramatically with the emergence of the United States as the dominant power in North America. Soon after its formation, the federal government made a series of treaties with the southern tribes, requiring concession of large tracts of land for white settlement but providing for areas of tribal sovereignty under federal protection.  Within the reserve areas, advances were being made in education, commerce, and agriculture, often with the help of Christian missionaries.  Some Indians became quite wealthy as planters; others operated small farms like those of the American pioneers.  Other southern Indians lived communally in small villages.

     Having seen the disastrous effects of the alliance that the Shawnee and their famous leader Tecumseh had made with the British in the War of 1812, the southeastern tribes were desirous of friendship with the United States. When Tecumseh organized a pan-Native alliance to resist the westward expansion of the United States, the Choctaw, Cherokee, and Chickasaws refused to join and fought alongside American troops against the British and the Red Stick Creeks.

       The people of the southern states, however, greatly resented the autonomous Indian regions existing within their borders.  The invention of the cotton gin greatly increased the value of land suitable for growing cotton.  Fortunes could be made in cotton production, and similarly large fortunes could be acquired by appropriating Indian land and selling to the highest bidder.  Andrew Jackson had personally profited from such enterprises in northern Alabama and looked forward to the enormous profits to come from a general removal policy (Wallace 8-10).  Another motivation for a removal was the discovery of gold in Cherokee territory in western Georgia.


     Shortly after taking office in 1829, Jackson introduced a bill before Congress that proposed removing tribes living east of the Mississippi River to a region west of the river.  The act did not authorize forced removal, but did give Jackson authority to negotiate exchange of land west of the Mississippi River for tribal lands in the Southern states and issue appeals for voluntary migration. 

    Men in the southeastern tribes who had accumulated significant wealth as planters and businessmen often had leadership responsibilities within the tribes.  One example was John Ross, a mixed blood Cherokee.  During the War of 1812, Ross was adjutant of a Cherokee regiment serving under Andrew Jackson.  In 1824 Ross led a delegation that petitioned Congress to defend Cherokee land from intrusions by Georgians.  The 1791 Treaty of Holston had established boundaries of the Cherokee Nation and acknowledged Cherokee sovereignty over those lands under the protection of the federal government, but, in truth, the federal government viewed this and similar treaties as expedients to buy time for building up pioneering populations.  The Cherokee petition was ignored. 

     Following the election of Jackson in 1828, Georgia enacted a series of state laws stripping the Cherokee of their rights.   The Cherokee challenged the legality of Georgia's action in a case before the US Supreme Court in 1830.  The Supreme Court initially ruled that the Cherokee Tribe did not have standing to bring suit against the State of Georgia.  Later, however, after Georgia arrested and imprisoned Christian missionaries serving among the Cherokee, the court ruled that Georgia had no right to enforce state laws within Cherokee territory (Worcester v. Georgia).  This ruling effectively made the Indian Removal Act of 1830 unconstitutional, but Jackson was determined to go ahead with removals in defiance of the Supreme Court decision.  According to a conservative estimate, more than 10,000 Indians perished in the forced migrations of the 1830s. 


     The Choctaw had been on good terms with the United States since the American Revolution.  Choctaw warriors had thwarted a probe of the swampy area on Jackson's left flank at the Battle of New Orleans.  Their principal chief was a mixed blood named Greenwood LeFlore, who had unified the three Divisions of the Choctaw tribe through forceful arguments, threats, and a certain amount of violence (Foreman, Indian Removal, 22-26). (1) LeFlore and fifty other chiefs negotiated the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, which called for a voluntary migration of Choctaws at government expense and government help in establishing the tribe in its new home.  The chiefs received bribes in the form of large tracts of land in Mississippi and scholarships to eastern schools for their children.  One article of the treaty stated that Choctaws remaining in Mississippi would be given US citizenship and title to 640 acres of land, but that article was later subverted by the Indian agent in Mississippi, William Ward, who refused to enroll all but a few Choctaws. 

     Word got out of the bribes obtained by the chiefs and there were unsuccessful moves to abrogate the treaty.   Some historians see LeFlore and the other chiefs as sell-outs; Jackson himself was surprised by the level of compliance of the Choctaw leadership.  Other historians believe that they simply got the best deal that they could; and that by removing peacefully and promptly the Choctaw avoided much of the violence and injury seen in the Creek, Seminole, and Cherokee removals.  It is doubtful that they would have signed knowing the disasters that would later befall the tribe during and after migration.

     For an agrarian people closely tied to the land, migration presented numerous problems.  Besides the people themselves, there were livestock, horses, household possessions, and farm implements to be moved, not to mention care for the sick, elderly, and very young.  Roads were poor and rivers were often too shallow for navigation.  Winter travel would allow harvest of crops in Mississippi and spring planting in their new territory, but the Choctaw were not well prepared for travel in a freezing cold Arkansas winter.

     The first group to leave was an under-provisioned group of about 1000 Christianized Indians from LeFlore's district.  They set out without government escort during the winter of 1830-31, which turned out to be one of the coldest on record.  Of that group, only 88 reached their destination at Fort Towson (near the confluence of the Kiamichi and Red Rivers) that winter.  Four hundred stragglers would later arrive in the spring of 1831.  The survivors struggled to avoid starvation.  Two missionaries bought food in Arkansas out of their own pockets to sustain the party but were later denied reimbursement by the government. 

     The next wave of Choctaw emigration was supervised by the US Army.  The Choctaws were given the first two weeks of October 1831 to gather their crops, assemble their personal property, and sell their livestock and houses. In mid-October, the Army began sending wagons throughout the territory, gathering families in Vicksburg and Memphis for transport.  The original plan was to travel overland using wagons, but heavy rains flooded creeks and made that impossible, so riverboats were contracted to provide transport.  2,000 Choctaws were loaded onto two riverboats in Memphis, but after going only 60 miles downriver on the Mississippi to the mouth of the Arkansas, the boats were needed for transport of troops farther west.  The Choctaws were off-loaded with a small detachment of soldiers.  Six days of below-freezing temperatures followed, and some perished from exposure and pneumonia.   Ice in the river prevented the river boats from re-joining the party.  Eventually relief arrived in the form of 40 wagons from Little Rock carrying food and blankets, and those wagons then were used to relay the Indians to Fort Smith.  In an interview with a reporter from the Arkansas Gazette, one chief was heard to describe the journey as a "trail of tears and death," a phrase so apt for this and later removals that it became famous (Greenwood 4). 

     In addition to the army-supervised removals, the newly-formed Bureau of Indian Affairs offered a payment of ten dollars in gold, a rifle, and three months' supply of powder to Choctaws willing to journey to Indian Territory using their own resources.  Guides would be provided for passage through the unfamiliar territory.  About 300 elected to undertake this journey.  The guides led the group into an impassible swamp.  When a relief party was sent to the beleaguered and starving Indians, they found dead horses and oxen standing upright, their legs trapped in the frozen swamp.

     One might think that the horrific results of the Choctaw removals in 1831 would have resulted in better planning and execution in 1832.  The 1832 removals occurred in summer.  In Vicksburg, an outbreak of cholera—unknown in North America before the 1830s—killed many.   A steamboat overloaded with 2000 Indians offloaded its human cargo at a site located 70 miles east of Little Rock.  Because wagon masters in Little Rock feared contracting cholera, the Indians had to walk to Little Rock, sometimes through chest high water.  Choctaws call this journey the "big wade".

     About 7,000 Choctaws remained in Mississippi after the removals of the 1830's.  White harassment of Choctaws and mixed bloods continued, with barns burned, fences torn down, cattle driven into fields, and other indignities.  For this reason, small groups of Choctaws emigrated to Indian Territory during the 1840s and 1850s.


     The migrations of the next tribe to be removed, the Chickasaws, were better planned, with roads cleared and provisions cached along the path.  Transport of livestock was allowed, providing fresh meat along the route.  Those migrations proceeded smoothly with relatively few deaths.  Only a few Chickasaws opted to remain in Mississippi. 

     In 1832 the Creeks sent a delegation to Washington to negotiate a removal treaty.  Families were given the option to remain in Alabama and receive individual land allotments.  Initially, most Creeks elected that option, but fell prey to a variety of scams designed to separate them from their allotted land.  Squatters appeared in Creek territory, threatening violence and counting on state officials to protect them.  Conflict arose between the Federal government, which sought to enforce treaty rules, and the State of Alabama, which supported the white squatters.  In 1836 the situation became dire, and some Creeks attacked isolated farms and destroyed the village of Roanoke, Georgia.  A number of battles between hostile Creeks and state militias followed, known as the Second Creek War.  Violence committed by settlers and Creeks alike forced the Federal government to resort to involuntary removals.  The Creeks were ill prepared for forced migration and suffered greatly along the route.  A faction of the Creek tribe from the more northern "Upper Towns" refused removal and retreated to Florida to join the Seminole tribe.

     If incompetence, poor planning, and bad luck marked the removal of the Chickasaw, and confusion, avarice, and federal negligence that of the Creek, the removal of the Cherokee in 1838-39 was characterized by neglect and malice. Any pretense that the removals were voluntary was discarded.  Wealthy Cherokee like John Ross were evicted from their plantations.  Troops began showing up unannounced at Cherokee villages, turning out the inhabitants and herding them into prison camps.  

     The brutal treatment of the Cherokee might have been motivated in part by fear.  The army was engaged in a frustrating guerilla war with the Seminole in Florida, and a similar turn of events with the Cherokee would have been disastrous.  The fears had little basis. The Cherokee had already given up most of their firearms by 1837, and their relations with the United States had been friendly since 1795.  The arrival of 500 Cherokee warriors at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814 had facilitated Jackson's victory over the Red Stick Creeks. None of this evidence of trustworthiness did them any good.

     In the spring of 1837, small parties of Cherokee migrated in keel boats via a southern water route: down the Tennessee River to the Ohio River, followed by a train ride to the Mississippi River, then down the Mississippi to the Arkansas River and up the Arkansas River to Ft. Smith. Though far from comfortable, the trip generally took less than a month, and mortalities were low.  A more northern land route was also explored but found to require at least three months march, with much greater risk of death. 

     By October 1838, time had run out for the 13,000 Cherokee still living in concentration camps, as state officials were demanding immediate removal and disease was spreading through the camps.  A "lucky" few were taken via water on the southern route and arrived relatively intact.  The only way to quickly evacuate the remaining 12,000 Cherokee was the 800-mile march along the Northern route through Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, and Missouri.
 
     Some whites along the route were appalled by the plight of the evacuees and offered aid in the form of food and warm clothing, but abuse prevailed.  Waiting to be ferried across the Ohio River, a large group was made to wait under a bluff on the Kentucky side, where some died of exposure and others were murdered by local thugs. The last groups of Cherokees did not arrive until March 1839.  Estimates of death among the 15,000 removed Cherokee range from 2,000 to 4,000. 

    The government effort to remove the Seminole from Florida began in 1832.  Although some Seminole submitted to migration, the bulk of the tribe refused.  Led initially by the remarkable war chief, Osceola, the Seminole waged long guerilla war to hold onto their lands in central Florida.  One issue that frustrated attempts at a negotiated settlement was the fate of the so-called "Black Seminoles."  For many decades, the Seminole had given sanctuary to escaped slaves.  Their status within the tribe varied from individual to individual, but all enjoyed much more freedom than their brethren on Southern plantations.  Many believe that one or both of Osceola's two wives were of mixed Indian and African descent.  Southern congressmen were adamant that the Black Seminoles not be allowed to migrate to Indian Territory unless they could prove that they were not escaped slaves.  The Army suffered several serious defeats at the hands of the Seminole, but by 1842 succeeded in reducing the number of Seminole remaining in Florida to less than a thousand.  The cost of the war has been estimated to be between thirty and forty million (1840) dollars, more than twice the cost of the Louisiana purchase.

     After the removals the tribes struggled.  Floods, draughts, famine, alcoholism, and disease took their toll.  The government provided aid in the form of steel farm implements, rifles, ammunition, spinning wheels, blacksmiths, millwrights, and educational assistance.  Unfortunately, much aid arrived too late for use the first few years, and unscrupulous contractors often cheated on their disbursements or delivered poor quality goods (Foreman, Five Civilized Tribes, 147). Whiskey peddlers were numerous. 

     Each tribe adopted a written constitution with a polity and laws similar to those of the United States.  By 1842 the settlements on the Red River were producing over 1,000 bales of cotton annually, salt was being exported to Texas, flour mills were in operation, and women were engaged in spinning and weaving.  Surpluses of corn and oats were sold to the Army.  In general, however, the tribes did not thrive in their new homeland.  At the time of Oklahoma statehood in 1907, the number of members of the five tribes living in Indian Territory was nearly equal to the number removed in the 1830's. 

     Despite their poor treatment, the tribes maintained their equanimity.  When word reached the Choctaws of the potato famine in Ireland in 1847, the tribe collected $170, equivalent to about $5,000 today, and sent it to an agency for famine relief in Ireland.  The fact that the wealthy families among the tribes held approximately 5,000 African-Americans in slavery should not be ignored.  Despite being the victims of racial hatred themselves, some wealthy Indians embraced black slavery both before and after removal.


    One might wonder how my Germanic name became associated with the Choctaw tribe.  My four-times great grandfather, Hugo Ernestus Krebs, was born in Neumagen, Germany in 1714 and migrated to Pascagola, Mississippi on Mobile Bay sometime around 1730.  Hugo Ernestus was a surgeon, inventor, and planter.  He is known to have invented and operated a roller-type cotton gin at least two decades before Eli Whitney.
 
     One of Hugo's sons, Daniel Krebs, married Louisa LeFlore, an aunt of Greenwood LeFlore, the principal chief of the Choctaws at the time of removal.  Their son, Placide Krebs, married Rebecca Folsom, a mixed blood Choctaw woman.  Family history has Placide emigrating in one of the first groups (Long, 1937, 1), but an 1840 census shows him still living in Mississippi.  Both things might be true, as there was some travel back and forth in the post-removal period.  Placide's eventual home was in Skullyville, the first capital of the Choctaw Nation in Indian Territory. 

      One of Placide's sons, my great-great grandfather, Edmond Folsom Krebs, married Amelia Walker, the sister of Tandy Walker, Principal Chief in the Civil War period.  Tandy married Edmond's sister, so the offspring of the two marriages were "double cousins".  Edmond served under his brother-in-law during the Civil War on the Confederate side.  Edmond's brother, Nathaniel Krebs, served on the Union side.  After the war Edmond became a judge in Coal County, Indian Territory, and also served as a Choctaw interpreter at the court of Judge Isaac Parker.  The town of Krebs, Oklahoma is named after Judge Edmond Folsom Krebs.


    The removal policy was part of a program expand the white-dominated economic and social order in the southern states. It was nonetheless an inhumane policy that resulted in the unnecessary deaths of between 8,000 and 18,000 native Americans and suffering for tens of thousands more.  Even at the time, the removal policy was seen by many as a stain on our national honor.  Some historians believe that the successes of Indian and mixed-blood planters caused resentments among their European/American competitors, and that those resentments led to the removals.  In this view, the problem was not that the tribes were refusing to adapt to the white man's ways (including the horrendous practice of black slavery), but that they were adapting too well.

 
Foreman, Grant. The Five Civilized Tribes. Norman, OK: U of Oklahoma P, 1934.

---. Indian Removal: The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes. Norman, OK: U of Oklahoma P, 1932.

Hatch, Thom. Osceola and the Great Seminole War. St. Martin's Press, 2012.

Greenwood, Len. Trail of Tears Walked by Our Ancestors. Biskinik (a monthly publication of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma), March 1995, 4.

Long, Letitia, WPA Interview No. 12304, by Theodore R. Hamilton, April 13,1938, accessed at
https://digital.libraries.ou.edu/whc/pioneer/

Long, Letitia, WPA Interview No. 13594 by Charline M. Culberson, November 17, 1937, accessed at
 https://digital.libraries.ou.edu/whc/pioneer/

O'Brien, Greg. Pre-removal Choctaw History: Exploring New Paths. Norman, OK: U of Oklahoma P, 2008.

Romans, Bernard. A Concise Natural History of East and West Florida. New Orleans: Pelican, 1961.

Wallace, Anthony F.C. The Long Bitter Trail: Andrew Jackson and the Indians. Hill and Wang, 1992.

 Danny Krebs is retired from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, where he was a lead engineer for space flight laser and detector systems.  He has a B.S. in Engineering Physics from the Colorado School of Mines, M.S. degrees in Engineering Management and Physics, and a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Missouri-Rolla (now Missouri University of Science and Technology).
 
     His father, grandfather, and uncle all attended Jones Academy in Hartshorne, Oklahoma, a resident school for American Indian children.  His thrice great grandfather, Placide Krebs, migrated to Oklahoma with the Choctaw tribe.  His paper, Personal Transportation in the 21st Century and Beyond, won the Paxton award in 2011.

    “The Trail of Tears” was presented to the Saginaw Valley Torch Club on March 6, 2018.

     He can be reached at dckrebs@aol.com.