Cyclists Ride Trail Of Tears
1,000-MILE BIKE TRIP CONCLUDES TODAY IN TAHLEQUAH, OKLA.
Posted: June 22, 2012 at 5:34 a.m.
Chi Shipman, left, and Melissa Horn, second from right, listen to another rider in their group after stopping Thursday at Prairie Grove Battlefield Park. The group of Cherokees from seven states are biking the Remember the Removal ride, which started in Georgia on June 4 and retraces the Trail of Tears. The 1,000-mile ride ends in Tahlequah, Okla., the capital of the Cherokee Nation.
A unexpected downpour Thursday morning slowed, but didn’t stop, progress of 22 Cherokee cyclists retracing the path of their ancestors along the Trail of Tears.
At A Glance
The Trail of Tears
The U.S. government signed a treaty with a minority faction of the Cherokee Nation willing to cede the remaining portion of Cherokee homeland in 1835. Despite protests of most Cherokee people, the fraudulent Treaty of New Echota was ratified by the U.S. Senate by a single vote on May 23, 1836. The Cherokees were given two years to move to the Indian Territory. Nearly all 17,000 Cherokees were forced to move. Under orders from President Andrew Jackson, the U.S. Army began enforcement of the Removal Act, rounding up Cherokees in the summer of 1838. An estimated 4,000 died from hunger, exposure and disease. The journey became a cultural memory as the “trail where they cried” for the Cherokees and other removed tribes.
Source: Cherokee National website, www.cherokee.org/.
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