The story of Indian removal was first told for the most part by non-Indian historians during a period when it was popular to believe that Indians were disappearing from the American landscape.  Their renderings have been perpetuated and, until recently, have generally remained unchallenged and thus have come down to the present generation.  Even some descendants of the Indians who were removed have unfortunately accepted the romantic interpretation.  Thus when people think of the Trail of Tears, the image that comes to mind will likely be stereotyped and highly romanticized.  Usually, it is an artist’s rendering that shows people—usually Cherokees—trudging through snow, perhaps with mounted soldiers riding herd.  Some are staggering, some are falling, some are dying, and all are forlorn.  Evidence indicates that such renderings are fraught with misconceptions about the Trail and that, in fact, for the most part, conditions of travel were not like that at all, certainly for those groups who traveled through central Arkansas and the North Little Rock site.

            Fortunately, such romantic interpretations are now being challenged.  Interestingly, it is Indian historians who are doing some of the best revision of the history.  A good example is a recent article by Cherokee scholar Lathel Duffield,¹  who analyzes romanticized Cherokee removal history, which began in the late nineteenth century with James Mooney, whose content and tone were perpetuated by Grant Foreman and later historians.  Duffield shows how these writers have taken individual, isolated outrages and generalized them to apply to most Cherokee families, and he calls for starting over, going back to the original documents in search of a more balanced picture of removal.  The balance that Duffield calls for does not mitigate the suffering of the people, nor does it diminish the significance of the questions Why were these people on the trail in the first place? and Why did they have to suffer at all?

            Evidence related to Indian removal through the North Little Rock site quickly makes inroads into the stereotypical image of the Trail of Tears.  One useful strategy in interpreting the conditions of travel, however, might be to indicate in what ways the realities and the popular images differ.  Analyses of the following will offer some specifics of the conditions of travel related to the North Little Rock site to help in that process:  removal season and weather, subsistence, overland travel, steamboat travel, and health conditions.

Removal Season and Weather

            It is commonly believed that the tribes were forced to remove in cold weather.  However, removal literature is rife with references to the “removal season,” an expression that referred to the period roughly between the first of October and the end of March.  It was the preferred season because it was healthier.  Hot weather was the fever season as well as the season of insects in the South.  In the summer, temperatures in Arkansas were high, the lowlands were filled with mosquitoes, and the uplands by biting green flies.  There was also a practical reason for removing during the fall and winter:  the Indians could reach the West in time to plant crops in the spring.

            Weather could vary greatly during the removal season, and weather conditions, perhaps more than any other factor, determined in good measure the conditions of travel.  How realistic, then, is the popular image of Cherokees trudging through snow under the watchful eyes of soldiers?  Without question, the Cherokees did suffer in the winter of 1838-39, as any people would who were traveling overland more than 800 miles in those days.  But they rarely experienced snow.²  In fact, few of the removal parties on any of the tribes experienced snow, particularly those who went through central Arkansas, for that region was apparently no more likely to have snow in the 1830s than it was until the age of global warming.  Those who did experience snow found it to have short duration.

Cold weather, however, was another matter.  The winters of the early 1830s were unusually cold, causing much suffering of the people who removed during those seasons. The following examples will illustrate.  In December 1831, the Choctaws in camp at Arkansas Post suffered terribly from the cold.  Because they brought with them only a limited amount of personal effects, they were ill prepared for such weather, On December 10 the temperature went down to zero degrees F, and during the next week, as the Choctaws made their way to the North Little Rock site, the daily average temperature  was twelve degrees.  The White River froze over at its mouth, and ice was floating in the Mississippi forty to fifty miles below Helena.  In November 1832, Choctaws encamped at the North Little Rock site were beset by not only cold but rain and wind that delayed their river crossing.³  Captain Jacob Brown, disbursing agent for removal at Little Rock, understated the conditions of the 1831-32 removal season this way:  “The past season was truly unpropitious.  There appeared to be a combination of difficulties, which nothing but the zeal and devotedness of the superintendents and agents could have surmounted.”⁴ Brown gave no credit to the staying power of the Choctaws.

            The first major Muscogee removal party to move through Arkansas suffered perhaps like no other from the weather.  They had with much difficulty reached the North Little Rock site on February 23, 1835.  At Memphis, Captain John Page split his party, sending William J. Beatty and 72 Muscogees through the Mississippi Swamp with the party’s horses, while he took the remainder aboard the steamboat Harry Hill, bound for Little Rock.  In some places in the swamp, Beatty had to cut a path through the ice wide enough to drive the horses through, and in others they had to tie the horses’ legs together and pull them across the ice.  Page and his party aboard the Harry Hill fared little better.  When they got to the Arkansas River they found it frozen over from its mouth to about five miles upstream.  Page had trees felled into the river to break through the ice and then had the captain run the boat into it to break off a cake of ice at a time until they broke through to open water two and a half days later.  It took the Harry Hill thirteen days to reach the North Little Rock site, the time it would take to make a round trip from Little Rock to New Orleans under normal circumstances.  When he returned to Rock Roe to get Beatty and his party, he found the White River frozen and had to break the ice there as well.  Despite the experience, Page later wrote, “There was not an Indian frozen to death but a considerable number chill blane and I had to have them carried the whole distance after it occurred.”⁵ 

            The overland trek from the North Little Rock site to Fort Gibson was perhaps worse.  Page wrote, “We were up every morning by 4 Ock, let the weather be what it would, preparing for a start and worked hard and suffered much from day light until sun down to get six and sometimes ten miles.  It rained, snowed, or hailed almost every day and freezing at the same time.  We were compelled to thaw the tents & blankets before we could roll them up to put them in the wagons in the morning.  The Indian children and sick Indians had to go in the wagons on top of their baggage and to prevent them from freezing we were compelled to have fires along the road and take them out and warm them, dry their blankets that were wrapped round them and replace them again in the wagons.  Strict attention had to be paid to this or some must inevitably have perished and there was a continual crying from morning until night with the children.  I used to encourage them by saying that the weather would moderate in a few days and it would be warm but it never happened during the whole trip.  On the 9^th March when we were about one hundred & fifty miles from Fort Gibson we had a very severe snow storm.”⁶  

            Page’s story tells of the most extreme weather-related difficulties suffered by any group of any tribe that removed through Arkansas.  Arkansans told Page that they had never experienced a winter like that one before.⁷  For his part, Page said in retrospect about the trek west, “I never did witness or experience anything to equal the scenes of the trip in my life and hope it will never be my lot to do it again.”⁸

            Like Page’s contingent, in 1838 the Bell Contingent of Cherokees experienced severely cold weather after they left the North Little Rock site and were on the road to the Cherokee Nation.  The weather turned cold enough to put a thin coat of floating ice on the river and require “great coats” and “large fires,” said one observer.⁹ 

            These examples represent a striking contrast to the experience of the Choctaws in late October 1833.  From Memphis, Joseph A. Phillips, disbursing agent for the group, said that since they had left the Choctaw Agency in Mississippi, they had had “one continued succession of fair weather; and while crossing the river here we have had what is usually termed the Indian summer.”¹⁰ 

            Although numerous examples of coldness and resulting suffering appear in removal literature, the adverse weather phenomenon most remarked, by far, was rain. A good example is recorded in the journal of S. T. Cross, who conducted a group of Choctaws through the Grand Prairie to the North Little Rock site in November 1832: Novr. 16^th—Left Au Grue and traveled 14 miles and encamped in the large Prairie—Issued rations and forage for two days, by noon—left camp traveled 18 miles, that night rained very hard, all night, one death reported.  Novr. 17^th—Left camp traveled 18 miles, that night rained very hard, all night, one death reported.  Novr. 18^th—Raining very hard left camp and traveled 15 miles arrived at the Arkansas River, the weather cold and wet—two deaths reported.  Novr. 19^th—issued rations and forage and commenced crossing the Arkansas River.¹¹ 

Subsistence

            One condition of travel that appears in the popular images of removal is starvation.  No evidence has come to light in relation to the North Little Rock site to indicate that starvation was widespread, but, rather, isolated instances in which stragglers or small parties became separated from the main body of the removal contingent.  Although one tends to distrust contemporary newspaper reports that the Indians on the Trail appeared well-fed and satisfied, there can be little doubt that, for the most part, the people were fed.  Rations for people and forage for animals were either taken with the parties or placed at supply stations at strategic places along the routes (See Part IV, above, for numerous examples).  The North Little Rock site served as one of the distribution points, especially in Choctaw and Chickasaw removals.  Though the system failed occasionally, as with some of the early Muscogee removals, for the most part it worked.  Muscogee removal was managed by private contractors, first the J. W. A. Sanford Emigrating Company and then the Alabama Emigrating Company, whose agents were at times lax in performing their duties and consistently exhibited an insensitivity to the needs of the Muscogee people (See Part IV).

            Rations remained fairly standard for removals overseen by federal officials throughout the removal period.  A ration typically consisted of three-quarters quart of corn meal or one pound of wheat flour or three-quarters quart of corn; one and a quarter pound of fresh beef or fresh pork or three-quarters pound of salted pork; and four quarts of salt per hundred rations.  Official orders called for rations of good quality,¹² and removal literature provides little evidence that it was not.  Forage for animals consisted of fodder or hay as well as corn that was usually reserved for pack animals.  Rations were commonly issued every other day, and appear to have been sufficient to sustain the people.  Evidence indicates that some issues were more than the people could use.  For example, Captain John Page, who assisted in removal of the Choctaws in 1832 and 1833, found that the regular issue was so excessive that the wagons became overburdened, the wagon drivers complained, and the Choctaws sold the surplus food.¹³   A similar experience was recorded by Capt. H. M. McKavett, who attended the removal of the Florida bands of Octiarche, Thlocco Tustenuggee, Pascofa, and Passachee in 1843.  He had regularly issued beef, corn, salt, pork, and flour but found that families had accumulated a surplus by the time they arrived in the West.¹⁴      

In addition to receiving rations, those who traveled overland supplemented their diets by hunting, fishing, and gathering wild fruits.  For example, in 1836 a number of Muscogees in the removal party attended by Lieutenant John T. Sprague separated from the main body of the party and remained in the Mississippi Swamps hunting bears.  That same year, Lt. Edward Deas, responding to charges that Creeks under his direction were stealing local crops, said that since his party had been at the North Little rock site, “their rations have been regularly issued, and they have, besides, killed an abundance of game, and were, therefore, by no means in want of subsistence.”¹⁵  In 1837 a Chickasaw contingent took a leisurely pace from Little Rock toward the Red River country, primarily because they were engaged in deer hunting.  On August 14, John M. Millard, conductor of the group, recorded in his journal:  “The Indians felt no desire nor could they be moved today, they gave excuse, that they could not find their horses, that most of the men were engaged in hunting them. . . . The deer moreover, abounded in great numbers at this place and the hunters were very successful in killing them, which rendered them more reluctant than otherwise to remove.”¹⁶  At times, the people overindulged in the wild fruits they found growing along the way; many became ill with stomach complaints, and some died, especially from eating green fruit. 

            There can be little doubt that the people were fed.  Whether the rations met the dietary needs of the people, however, is another question.

Conditions of Overland Travel

            A close search through removal literature will rarely produce evidence of good roads in Arkansas.  Indeed, the most common contemporary statements about the roads reflect not only the poor construction but conditions made worse by the weather.

            Precipitation in any form represented not only a health risk, but it made worse the roads of Arkansas that were difficult to travel even in the best of conditions.  In 1832, a group of about 400 Choctaws became water bound and ice bound between the St. Francis and the White River for nearly 40 days and had to subsist themselves by hunting.¹⁷  That same year, Lt. I. P. Simonton, escorting a party of Choctaws, described the road approaching the North Little Rock site:  “Nov 26^th.  Started about 8 o’clock A.M., traveled 12 miles and encamped about sunset near Grey’s farm.  Issued provisions and forage this evening.  Roads very bad this way.  Met Lt. Van Horn from Little Rock.  Nov 27^th.  Delayed until about 10 o’clock A. M. completing the issue of provisions & forage.  Traveled this day 10 miles to the lower ferry over the Arkansaw River, at Little Rock. The roads very bad for 4 miles after starting, much swamp and a new road constructing, apparently to be of little service.  The wheels of one wagon slipped through the joint of the timbers on a causeway. . . The road near the river tolerable.  The face of the country generally level, which as been the case the whole route from Rock Row.  There are some low hills about half way from Grey’s to the Arkansaw.  A great deal of sickness among the Indians; took an other wagon into service to haul the sick.  Arrived at the bank of the Arkansaw about sunset, and encamped.  Nov 28^th.  Lay encamped on the bank of the Arkansaw all day.”¹⁸

Captain John Page graphically described what the Military Road was like in 1834 the vicinity of present-day Morrillton:  “The roads were impassable for all carriages of every description except those employed in the emigration.  I do not recollect of meeting any thing but one or two horse carts and they gave it up when they struck the road that we came over.  There was nothing  but prying out waggons from morning until night.”¹⁹

            Road conditions were so bad that teams and wagons were at times good for only a one-way trip.  The government maintained a fleet of wagons with teams at Little Rock during Choctaw removal, and upon their arrival at Fort Coffee, the disbursing agent sold them, both teams and wagons, because they were incapable of making the return trip to Little Rock.²⁰

            An element of removal common in the popular mind is forced marches over difficult terrain such as these examples describe.  There was some of that, as with Sprague’s contingent of Muscogees in 1836, but such marches were required to reach the next ration and forage depot.  Like travelers on the Mormon Trail, who had to push on from water hole to water hole, the Indians had much at stake in traveling a particular distance, rain or shine.  For example, Capt. F. S. Belton, leading a party of Muscogees in September of 1836, pushed his group hard through the Grand Prairie despite the weather.  “During the passage of the prairie,” he wrote, “it has, with the exception of two days of scorching sun, rained almost all day and night.  The situation of the Indians is deplorable.  The sick exceed fifty of the small party and death occasionally carries off the weakest.  The wagons or carts have been over loaded & great difficulties surmounted.  To reach settlements forced marches have been necessary.”²¹

Only rarely does one find detailed descriptions of the daily marches or night encampments.  A good example is provided by Bowes Reed McIlvaine, a Louisville merchant who observed the Chickasaw removal in Arkansas in 1837.  McIlvaine left vignettes of the overland march.  “Only the poorest of the squaws,” he wrote, “carr^d  burthens—nearly all had ponies for that purpose, which they led, riding (on good side saddles) other horses….The fondness for dogs was the most prevalent & amusing.  One old woman who had lost her pony was carrying a heavy load on her back with a belt across her forehead—to balance which, she had a basket in front suspended round her neck in which were nine fine puppies; the respectable mother of which, trotted contentedly—though doggedly behind, to see that none were dropped by the way.  Some had their cats & litters of kittens—others their favorite chickens ducks & turkeys.”²²

Although McIlvaine’s sketches seem to have been drawn at the outset of their trek through Arkansas, his descriptions, despite his romanticism, perhaps give a hint of what life in the camp at the North Little Rock site was like.  “It was a striking scene at night—when the multitudes of fires kindled,” he said, “showed to advantage the whole face of the country covered with the white tents & white covered wagons, with all the interstices . . . filled with a dense mass of animal life in the shape of savages, uncouth looking white hunters, the picturesque looking Indian Negroes, with dress belonging to no country but partaking of all, & these changing & mingling with the hundreds of horses hobbled & turned out to feed & the troops of dogs chasing about in search of food--& then you would hear the whoops of Indians calling their family party together to receive their rations, from another quarter a wild song from the Negroes preparing the corn, with the strange chorus that the rest would join in--& then the fires would catch tall dead trees & rushing to the tops throw a strong glare over all this moving scene, deepening the savage traits of the men, & softening the features of the women. . . .  It was my delight to wander at will, wherever anything strange led me, going into the tents—making friends with the men by shaking hands & with the women by playing with the little fat naked wild children—dividing apples among them, to their great satisfaction.  Great pains were taken by the agents to keep liquor from the men, & few were drunk—the women neither drink nor smoke—but mostly were seated on skins sewing or doing some kind of work—singularly calm & composed—and contrasted with the incessant galloping about of the men.”²³

Conditions of Steamboat Travel

          Conditions aboard steamboats depended in large measure on water levels.  Time translated to money for boat captains, who made money only if they kept moving.  Removal history records numerous instances of stalled boats as a result of low water.  In those instances, removal parties outfitted for water travel were ill prepared to take to the land (See Part IV).  When water levels were good, boats often ran day and night, unless their contracts called for scheduled stops.  Provisions were taken aboard the steamboat or placed in flatboats or keelboats in tow. With few exceptions, parties traveling by boat reached their final destinations in healthier condition and, thus, with lower mortality rates than those that went overland. 

There were exceptions, however.   A steamboat accident, the sinking of the Monmouth, resulted in the death of more than 300 Muscogees, without question the most disastrous event in removal history.²⁴ The Cherokee contingent conducted by Lt. R. H. K. Whiteley in June 1838 also suffered high casualties, 70 of their number.  They were struck not only by illnesses related to summer travel but endured a measles epidemic as well.²⁵

            Frequently, boats stopped at night, and the Indians camped on shore.  Choctaws aboard the Reindeer in 1832, for example, camped for the night of November 19 a mile up the White River.  It rained that day but cleared during the night, and the Choctaws awoke the next morning to a frozen ground.  “The Indians were loath to leave their fires this morning,” Lt. I. P. Simonton wrote, “and we had much difficulty in getting them on board.”²⁶ Lt. Edward Deas described his practice with the Muscogees aboard the Alpha in 1835:  “The mode of traveling has been to stop before dark & allow the Party to encamp & start again the next morning after daylight.  In this way the Indians prefer this mode of conveyance to traveling by land.”  Deas intended to follow this practice until he reached Fort Gibson unless circumstances made it necessary to run at night.  He issued fresh beef and meal regularly and built temporary hearths on the decks of the two keel boats so that the Muscogees could prepare food and keep themselves warm during the day.  The boats were cleaned out every night to ensure the health of the people. ²⁷  

Health Conditions

            Travel during the removal period carried with it the risk of disease.  However, the potential for becoming ill or contracting a contagious disease was exacerbated by the rigors of marching outdoors all day, camping in the open at night, exposure to the elements, and unsanitary conditions that attended large masses of people in the nineteenth century.

            Besides the common diseases, removal parties were vulnerable to the spread of  contagious diseases that reached epidemic levels during their journey, like the measles that attacked Whiteley’s party of Cherokees in 1838.  Another good example is the cholera epidemic that reached Memphis and Vicksburg at the beginning of the Choctaw removal season of 1832-33.  Francis W. Armstrong reported from Memphis on October 31, 1832:  “The cholera is actually in our camp, and all through the country, at all the landings and towns even in the rear of this.  Therefore you see we must go ahead, for in this matter we cannot stop to look around.”  And he predicted its spread among the Choctaws and the great destruction of human life it would cause.²⁸  His prediction proved true when the disease spread rapidly among the party at Rock Roe.  The city officials of Little Rock, learning about the outbreak, sent a team of physicians to Rock Roe to assess the epidemic and help treat cases, and they established a pest hospital in Little Rock, anticipating the arrival of the disease with the Choctaws.²⁹ 

            Traveling conditions made the Indians more vulnerable to the disease. Doctors suspected the crowded conditions on the boats as a contributing factor to the spread of the disease.  Also, the diet of the Indians was a problem.  The foods that “excited” the disease included fruits, vegetables, and river water.  Doctors recommended beef, mutton, venison, veal, and poultry, good ham, eggs, Irish potatoes, tea and coffee and suggested that they protect their bodies from cold, especially their stomachs, bowels, and feet.³⁰  These recommendations were impossible to meet under the circumstances of overland travel.

            The mortality rate was high.  Two died aboard the Reindeer.  Nineteen died at Rock Roe, and nineteen more after they left Rock Roe.  Most of the victims were women and children, the women outnumbering children more than two to one.  Death by cholera was a terrible thing to witness.  One of the Little Rock doctors sent out to treat the Choctaws at Rock Roe described the death of a young Choctaw youth as follows:  “He was lying on his blanket, with his eyes looking wild and unnatural, the whites of them injected with a dark gromous blood; they were as much sunken as usually happens on the 19^th or 21^st day of fever, surrounded with a blue or lead colored circle; his mouth had the same bluish tinge; his arms were as cold as marble; the skin shriveled; the fingers showing a recession of blood, for they were shrunken, nails deep blue, wrist pulseless, one hand and arm distorted with spasm, great action of the diaphragm, and the bowels contracted and sunken until they assumed the appearance of being conjoined to the spine; legs cold and cramped, slight nausea, but no dysentery; entire suppression of urine. . . .; the voice low and whispering, but he would occasionally shriek as loud and fiercely as a maniac; the tongue perfectly white and cold; the thirst intense and ungovernable.”  Treatment was ineffective.  The doctors tried to bleed him, to make him vomit by giving him salt and water, bathed his legs and arms with hot brandy, gave him croton tiglium oil, blistered his stomach, rubbed his bowels and legs with flannel and brandy, and gave him calomel and opium.³¹

Deaths from cholera occurred among this group even after they reached the North Little Rock site (See the account in Part IV above).  From Little Rock, on December 2, Armstrong wrote, “No man but one who was present can form any idea of the difficulties that we have encountered owing to the cholera, and the influence occasioned by its dreadful effects.  It is true we have been obliged to keep every thing to ourselves, and to browbeat the idea of the disease, although death was hourly among us, and the road lined with the sick.  The extra wagons hired to haul the sick are about five to the 1,000; fortunately they are a people that will walk to the last, or I do not know how we would get on.”³² 

When Captain John Page arrived in Arkansas with his party of Muscogees in 1834, he faced not only extreme weather but an influenza epidemic as well.  “The influenza was prevailing in Arkansas Ty,” he wrote, “and as many as six or seven in a family died; it soon got amongst the Indians but we lost but three or four of that complaint and in fact the whole party was remarkably healthy considering our situation.  I am well convinced if we had attempted to have laid by in consequence of the severity of the weather that one half would have died of that complaint, it proved so fatal with the inhabitants.  I called at a house and found almost every member of the family down with this disease.  I was convinced nothing kept it from us but being constantly on the move and exposed to the severity of the winter.”³³  Later, he wrote,  “Many persons pronounced it murder in the highest degree for me to move Indians or compel them to march in such severe weather when they were dying every day with the influenza, but I am well convinced it was the only thing that kept them alive, notwithstanding their exposure.”³⁴

During their removal the Chickasaws faced the prospect of the great smallpox epidemic that swept through the American West in 1837 and 1838.  In June 1838, reports came to Pontotoc, Mississippi, that the disease was raging between Fort Coffee and the Blue and Boggy rivers in the Choctaw Nation, where a party of Chickasaws were preparing to go.   A. M. M. Upshaw, the Chickasaw removal agent, contemplated rerouting the group to Fort Towson.  “Should I take that route,” he said, “it will be on account of good roads, provisions, and it being free from the small pox.”³⁵ At Memphis, the prospects looked worse.  Travelers from the west during the past three months had carried stories of smallpox and various other diseases.  Colonel John Moore, who had just returned from Indian Territory convinced Upshaw that he would lose half of his contingent to the disease.  These stories alarmed the Chickasaws, some of whom refused to go on.³⁶   They convinced Upshaw that he should send the party by way of Fort Towson.  By the time they reached the North Little Rock site, the group had been stricken, not with smallpox but with fever.  They crossed the river and remained in camp near Little Rock for two weeks because of illness.  Of the 130 in the group 70 were down at one time with the fever.  Among them was the wife of Ishtehotopa, the Chickasaw Mingo or the spiritual leader of the people, referred to by Upshaw as the King of the Chickasaws.    “By strict attention,” Upshaw wrote, “we only lost two; one of the two was the King’s wife, who was Queen of the Chickasaw Nation.”³⁷ A month later, smallpox hit not only the Chickasaws but the Choctaws in Indian Territory.³⁸  By the early 1840s, removal officials had begun to take preventative measures to protect the Florida Indians from smallpox by having them vaccinated when they arrived at New Orleans.³⁹ 

Notes

1.  Lathel Duffield, “Cherokee Emigration:  Reconstructing Reality,” Chronicles of Oklahoma 80 (Fall 2002):  314-347.

2. See, for example, the diary of Daniel S. Buttrick, whose daily log gives good evidence of weather conditions during the mass removal of Cherokees in the winter of 1838-1839.  See The Journal of Rev. Daniel S. Buttrick, May 19, 1838-April 1, 1839: Cherokee Removal (Park Hill, OK: The Trail of Tears Association, Oklahoma Chapter, 1998). 

3. Foreman, Indian Removal:  The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians (Norman:  University of Oklahoma Press, 1972), 52-53, 78-82; Arthur H. DeRosier, Jr.,  “The Choctaw Removal of 1831:  A Civilian Effort,” Journal of the West 6 (1962), 237-242, 244; Arkansas Gazette, December  21 and 28, 1831, and January 4, 1832; 23^rd Congress, 1^st Session,  Senate Executive Document 512 (5 vols.), I: 632, 788-789, 826-827 (hereafter cited as Document 512) A good brief history of the removal season of 1831-1832 is Muriel Wright, “Removal of the Choctaws to Indian Territory, 1830-1833,” Chronicles of Oklahoma, 6 (June 1928), 113-119.

4. Document 512, I: 69. 

5. John Page to George Gibson, April 25, 1835, Creek Emigration 93, National Archives Record Group 75, Records Relating to Indian Removal, Records of the Commissary General of Subsistence, Box 8, Letters Received, Creek-1835.  This collection is hereafter cited as RG75, Commissary General, followed by the box and file designations.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Page to Gibson, May 1, 1835, Creek Emigration 100, RG75, Commissary General, Box 8, Letters Received, Creek-1835.

9. Wayne Gibson, “Cherokee Treaty Party Moves West:  The Bell-Deas Overland Journey, 1838-1839,” Chronicles of Oklahoma 79 (Fall 2001), 328-329.

10. Document 512, I; 812.

11. Journal of S. T. Cross, National Archives Microfilm Publication M234, Roll 185, National Archives Record Group 75, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Letters Received, Choctaw Emigration 1833.  This publication is hereafter cited as M234, followed by the roll number.

12. Document 512, I: 133-134.

13. Ibid., I: 795-96.

14. Henry McKavett to T. Hartley Crawford, July 12, 1843, Florida Emigration M1772-43, M234-R291. 

15. Arkansas Gazette, December 13, 1836.  

16.  Journal of Occurrences, J. M. Millard to Harris, September 23, 1837, NARG 75, BIA, Letters Received, Chickasaw Emigration M220-1837, M234-R143.

17. Document 512, I: 401, 449.  

18. I. P. Simonton to George Gibson, April 8, 1833, Choctaw Emigration 56, RG75, Commissary General, Box 8, Letters Received, Choctaw-1833.

19. Page to Gibson, April 25, 1835, Creek Emigration 93, RG75, Commissary General, Box 8, Letters Received, Creek-1835. 

20. Document 512, I: 532.

21. F. S. Belton’s Journal of Occurrences, 1836, Creek Emigration B121-36, M234-R237.

22. John E. Parsons, ed., “Letters on the Chickasaw Removal of 1837,” New York Historical Society Quarterly, 37 (1953), 281.

23. Ibid., 280-281.

24. See Foreman, Indian Removal, 181-188; Arkansas Gazette, November 21 and 28, 1837.

25. Journal of Lt. R. H. K. Whiteley, copy retrieved from the following web site: www.mindspring.com/~Wayne.Gibson.

26. Journal of I. P. Simonton in Simonton to George Gibson, April 8, 1833, Choctaw Emigration 56-33, RG75, Commissary General, Box 8, Letters Received, Choctaw-1833.

27.    Edward Deas to Gibson, December 28, 1835, Creek Emigration 56, RG75, Commissary General, Box 8, Letters Received, Creek-1835.

28.  Document 512, I: 395, 786.

29. Arkansas Gazette, November 7, 14, and 21, 1832.

30.  Arkansas Gazette, November 14, 1832.

31. Arkansas Gazette, November 21 and 28, 1832; F. W. Armstrong to Lewis Cass, March 20, 1833, Choctaw Emigration, 1833, M235-R187; Foreman, Indian Removal, 87-93; Document 512, I: 401-402, 771-772. 

32. Document 512, I:  401.

33. Page to Gibson, April 25, 1835, Creek Emigration 93, Commissary General, Box 8, Letters Received, Creek-1835.

34. Page to Gibson, May 1, 1835, Creek Emigration 100, RG75, Commissary General, Box 8, Letters Received, Creek-1835.

35. A. M. M. Upshaw to C. A. Harris, June 7, 1838, Chickasaw Emigration U50-38, M234-R144. 

36. Upshaw to Harris, June 24, 1838, Chickasaw Emigration U51-38, M234-R144.

37. Upshaw to Harris, August 13, 1838, Chickasaw Emigration U53-38, M234-R144.

38. Arkansas Gazette, September 12, 1830.

39. See, e. g., LeGrand Capers to T. Hartley Crawford, May 7 and 18, 1841, Florida Emigration C1404-41 and C1415-41, M234-R291.