Photo: Michael Noble Jr./Tulsa World via AP
Below is an excerpt from Rebecca Nagle’s book, “By the Fire We Carry,” published by HarperCollins on September 10, 2024. Continuing to explore a history she revealed in the podcast “This Land,” Nagle writes on the U.S. government’s forcible removal of 80,000 Indigenous peoples living east of the Mississippi and a landmark Supreme Court case nearly 200 years later that upheld the sovereignty of tribal lands.
When I finally reached the cornfield, the sky was a bluish haze. The field had already been harvested. In swarms, blackbirds ate the broken pieces left on the ground. A spring-fed creek carved out the lowest place. From there, the ground rose east to a grassy knoll and then again east to a distant ridge lined with trees. There was little color in the hard Tennessee dirt and faded stalks before my feet. It looked mournful, as if the earth knew what history it held. When Cherokees were rounded up and forced into concentration camps, this was the largest one. They stayed close to the spring for water. There is no marker.
Whether or not the United States committed genocide against Indigenous peoples is still debated among historians. In 1948, the crime was defined by the United Nations as the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” by one or more acts of physical violence. The Cherokee word for our removal is ᏗᎨᏥᎢᎢᎸᏍᏔᏅᎢ. It literally means “when they drove us.” It’s the same word we use to talk about herding animals.
To prepare, the army split logs, drove them into the ground lengthwise, and built 25 open-air stockades. On May 23, 1838, 7,000 U.S. soldiers and militiamen went out into the hills and valleys of Cherokee Nation and rounded the people up. At gunpoint, the militia drove a woman in labor from a remote valley town to the main concentration camp. Even after she gave birth, they would not let her rest. Finally, on a riverbank near the stockade, she lay down and died. Over 15,000 people were herded into the camps. In the squalor, violent conditions, they died in droves. When Cherokees marched west that winter, death followed. People walked over 1,000 miles; their footsteps left a trench in the earth. Although the exact number is unknown, one missionary estimated 4,000 people died between the camps and removal — a quarter of the total population.
Courtesy: HarperCollins
In the 1830s, the United States decided all Indigenous nations living within its borders needed to leave. Those that refused were forced. Choctaws were herded through waist-deep swamps; parents held their children over their heads so the kids wouldn’t drown. Seminoles who tried to hide were hunted to the ends of the earth. The U.S. army charged Chickasaw Nation the cost of daily rations for deportees who had already died. Muscogee citizens walked through eight inches of snow (many without shoes because the company in charge of their exile lost their winter clothing). Because there was no time for proper burials, the dead were hastily covered in brush and later eaten by animals. Loss of life at this scale is compounded by the children who were never born. After removal, the population of Muscogee Nation steadily declined for two decades.
On my reporting trip to the South, I also visited the public parks and monuments that were clearly labeled and dedicated to this history of our removal. They were no less jarring than the cornfield. The visitors seemed most interested in the architecture of the early-1800s buildings. They walked their dogs. It is a heavy history to truly hold — a weight our public and our government has never lifted.
In 2005, a man on Oklahoma’s death row appealed his conviction arguing the state didn’t have jurisdiction to execute him because he was Native and the murder happened on the Muscogee reservation. Oklahoma argued that reservation no longer existed.
When the U.S. The Muscogee people were forcibly removed from their land and sent into exile by the military, under the promise from Andrew Jackson that their new home would be secure. However, this promise was not kept, and Oklahoma was created on top of Muscogee land, denying them their reservation for over a century. The Supreme Court’s decision in McGirt v Oklahoma restored the reservation status of the Muscogee Nation and eight other reservations in Oklahoma, including the Cherokee Nation. This decision resulted in the largest restoration of Indigenous land in US history.
Despite the historic ruling, the US government has a history of disregarding tribal sovereignty in favor of greed. Indigenous nations have been governing themselves since before the founding of the country, shaping American law in the process. The lesson of McGirt is not only that justice for Indigenous nations is rare, but that it is possible in a democracy.
The US government has a history of committing atrocities and using legal doctrines created to take Indigenous land to govern marginalized populations. Native history and the legal terrain it created are foundational to American law. The US government has maintained both democratic principles and imperial control, impacting groups like Indigenous nations, Puerto Rico, and migrants at the border.
Our American Democracy
As American citizens, our inheritance is a democracy that can be contradictory at times – a government that operates through both consent and conquest.
Leaving the cornfield behind, I headed north and noticed signs along the road marking it as part of the Trail of Tears. A few miles away, I reached a small town that served as the army’s base during a dark period. Walking through the residential blocks, I saw streets named after key figures involved in the deportation process. The weight of history hit me as I watched a family preparing for Christmas, feeling a sense of isolation in that moment.
Excerpt from “By the Fire We Carry” by Rebecca Nagle. Published by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
