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Photo Gallery: New Echota/Trail of Tears
This historic district also features a museum. I hope to get back to the
site and tour the buildings and museum soon. The markers and plaques located
outside the site are shown below.
New
Echota Cherokee National Capital marker text:
The sprawling town of New Town which had stood here since
1819 was designated the seat of government for the new Cherokee Nation in a
legislative act of 1825 and it was renamed New Echota for a former principal
town in Tennessee. In its short history New Echota was the site of the first
Indian language newspaper office, a court case which carried to the U.S.
Supreme Court, one of the earliest experiments in national self-government
for an Indian tribe, the signing of a treaty which relinquished Cherokee
claims to lands east of the Mississippi, and the assembly of Indians for the
removal west.
064-29 Georgia Historical Commission 1962Trail of Tears marker
text:
The New Echota Treaty of 1835 relinquished Cherokee Indian
claims to lands east of the Mississippi River. The majority of the Cherokee
people consider the treaty fraudulent and refused to leave their homelands
in Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, and Tennessee. 7,000 Federal and State
troops were ordered into the Cherokee Nation to forcibly evict the Indians.
On May 26, 1838, the roundup began. Over 15,000 Cherokees were forced from
their homes at gunpoint and imprisoned in stockades until removal to the
west could take place. 2,700 left by boat in June 1838, but, due to many
deaths and sickness, removal was suspended until cooler weather. Most of the
remaining 13,000 Cherokees left by wagon, horseback, or on foot during
October and November, 1838, on an 800 mile route through Tennessee,
Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas. They arrived in what is now
eastern Oklahoma during January, February, and March, 1839. Disease,
exposure, and starvation may have claimed as many as 4,000 Cherokee lives
during the course of capture, imprisonment, and removal. The ordeal became
known as the Trail of Tears.
064-33 Georgia Historic Marker 1989
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