Question answered by Paige Leitnaker, Director of the School & Classroom Program at PTPI.
8. What other marches/relocations come to mind in history? Why have we not learned from our past?
The relocation that first comes to mind is the Holocaust. From my readings and studies, I know that thousands of Jews were marched to concentration camps and to their deaths; however, as I grow older I have become more aware that most of the world’s conflicts come from one group of people wanting to conquer another, taking their land, and marching those who survive out. This maneuver has been successful and prevalent since the beginning of man’s history on this Earth.
I wish I knew why we cannot learn from our past. Conflicts continue, ethnic cleansings continue, relocations continue. If we do not pay more attention to the lessons of our past, we are doomed to continue repeating our mistakes. I cannot speak for the road that leads to peace – especially since most conflicts stem from religion and land. It is my hope, however, that we can hand a peaceful future to our descendents that they may be proud of.
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Tags: Cherokee Nation, Global Book Club, John Ehle, Trail of Tears
Sherry, your “what if” questions are very intriguing. If we had not lead these innocent people out of their home land on a “death march,” what would the world be like today? Our world would be changed completely by this one event not occuring. This is because the Trail of Tears was such a large and dark event in our history, that it affected our nation enormously.
A clarification to my previous post: I meant to say that the percentage of deaths as a proportion of the total number of Trail of Tears victims was approximately twice as high as the percentage for Bataan. In any case, both events were unspeakably horrific tragedies.
After reading Dr. Phelp’s previous post, I agree with him in the sense that the Trail of Tears was essentially a “death march”. The fact that over 4,000 people died is a staggering number. The Trail of Tears represents a very dark time in American history and should never be forgotten. I think some Americans can’t even fathom that we let this happen, much less that we orchestrated it. It seems to me that the name, Trail of Tears, doesn’t even accurately define such an atrocity. Leading this many people away from their home and allowing at least a quarter of them die due to exposure and starvation along the way deserves a much more sinister name. Why was this done? Was it to open up land in the Southeast for settlement? People in that time period should have opened their eyes and realized who the true “savages” were.
So, it has taken me some time to figure this out, and I still can not register, so I am a little late on the draw on this book, but over the years I have heard many times about the Trail of Tears. Its unreal to me that our kind made these people who are the natives of this country suffer the way they did. This land belonged to them and it seems unreal to me that we were so cruel to push them off their land and send them on their way to reservations. I can’thelp but think what it would actually be like though if this point in history never took place and the Native Americans still had control over this land. Would we exist? Would all of who our ancestors came from other countries live in those countries instead of America? WHat would America be like if the Native Americans were the only ones who lived here? I have so many questions and they will never be answered because they are what if questions. Trail of Tears is a label that fits the trail they traveled, they lost everything and tears was what they left behind as they went to the reservations.
After reading Trail of Tears, images of the Holocaust come to mind. A few years ago I traveled to Germany and visited Dachau, which is just outside of Munich. This was the first concentration camp constructed by the Nazis, and was a prototype for what was soon to follow. It was shocking to see the close proximity of the camp to the rest of the town. The camp was almost directly in the middle of the town, and once the Americans liberated the town they were told by the German citizens that they didn’t know what was going on behind the walls of the camp. This was interesting to me that the Germans would be able to ignore the horrible crimes that were taking place within their city and denying they had any idea. I think that, in regards to Trail of Tears, Americans were almost turning a blind eye to the death march that the Native Americans were enduring. I believe that people deny and reject the idea that their country or government would be so cruel and evil to a group of people. The U.S. troops who liberated the camp actually walked some of the town’s people through the camp to actually show them what was taking place. The town’s people had said they had no knowledge of what was going on, but after I saw the crematorium there was no doubt in my mind that the people had to know what was taking place. For this reason, General Dwight D. Eisenhower had photos taken of the camps to document the horrible crimes that took place, and he wanted people to never forget or deny what had happened. Even today, people try to deny that the Holocaust never happened. The Trail of Tears is another story that reminds us the cruel deeds that had taken place, and we should never forget and we should learn from these stories so that they are never allowed again.
The more I reflect on the Trail of Tears I wonder if we’re using the right language; if somehow, we are doing an injustice to the enormity of the event. I suspect many, perhaps even most Americans, have heard of the Trail of Tears and understand that it involved the forced relocation of the Cherokee people. But, does this mean only that it was an “unhappy” event, that sometime long ago people were unjustly dispossessed of their lands and made to go where they didn’t want to go? Does it have about the same resonance with most of us as, let’s say, the Babylonian captivity? More than 4,000 people died on the Trail of Tears, a quarter to a third of all those involved by some estimates. Although it’s distasteful to compare tragedies that occurred in different historical contexts, it is interesting and, perhaps, instructive to note that of the 78,000 or so American and Filipino POW’s involved in the Bataan Death March during World War II, about 11,000 died. By my calculations, roughly twice as many people died on the Trail of Tears as died in the Bataan Death March, the name of which unmistakably speaks to the nature of the tragedy. I’m not suggesting that the Trail of Tears is a euphemism, but maybe it would be more accurate to call it what it was, a death march.
I too think that it would be more accurate to refer to the forced relocation to the Native Americans, the Trail of Tears, as a death march. I know that in many works about the holocaust the walks that the Jews in the camps are forced to take are referred to as death marches. I do think that the one difference is that in the holocaust the goal of the marches was to kill many of the prisioners during the march, and in the march of the Native Americans the goal was to move them to another location that was “out of the way” of the white Americans. However I also think that the government did not seem to really care if the Native Americans died while being relocated so long as they were no longer on the land that the white Amerians were interested in using.
Because so many of these “death marches” have taken place around the world I do not think that we are learning from our history. I think that humans are not learning to treat other people as humans instead of property. While there has been some progress in America about events like these, there has also not been the education that is needed to prevent something like this from happening again. Most of the time in school the information of the the Trail of Tears is glossed over in the classroom. It is not given adequate attention. If the students are not being taught about this horrific act then they are not being given the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of previous generations so that they do not repeat the error.
The first marches/relocations that came to mind when I was reading the question was the holocaust. However, I am sure there are other instances of this occurring which I cannot bring to mind. I feel as if the holocaust is taught more often in schools than most other relocations/marches since it is on a greater scale. During the holocaust, Jewish people were forced to relocate to concentration camps against their will. While I am no expert on this part of history, I find it incredibly interesting how something of this magnitude can occur. As Dr. Phelps mentioned, education is vital to human existence because we must learn from our past. However, in most cases, people do not correlate what is happening now with what has happened in the past. If we take a step out of present-day and compare what is happening now with immigration, we will be suprised to see that it is not far from what has happened in the past. We need to educate ourselves on the past but also need to educate ourselves on what is happening today.
@ Elizabeth Goode: You said, “people do not correlate what is happening now with what has happened in the past.” I completely agree with this statement. I have learned of historical events, but feel that I never really related them to my life or present times. I always have the mindset of what happened in the past is in the past. People must be educated on past events then, relate them to what is happening now. By doing this it proves that we have indeed learned from our past. People made mistakes for us, now we need to learn the lessons from their mistakes instead of repeating history.
@Greg Phelps – I agree that education can be powerful in changing the hearts and minds of people. Very well put!
@K. Saroja – Thank you for sharing! That is indeed an interesting part of history. In addition, I agree with your comment – We are all one and we do need each other.
I could not agree with ms. Leitnaker and Mr. Phelps more. In addition to all the relocations and migrations they mentioned I would like to add one more, migration and relocation which took place between India and Pakistan soon after India independence. It was interesting part of the history. Both Muslims and Hindus participated equally in the Independence movement. Soon after, Mr. Jinnah wanted a separate country Pakistan, for Muslims. Gandhi was devastated. He could not understand why Jinnah wanted separation from India. Jinnah said Muslims could not survive in a country where Hindus were a majority. It was a ridiculous argument. Gandhi went on a strike but nevertheless he had to yield to the the political pressure. In the end it costed him his life! At one point he said asking for partition between India and Pakistan is like asking to split our mother in to two halves. The Muslim families living in India were asked to migrate to Pakistan and Hindus living in Pakistan were asked to move to india. The move was tragic. The families were torn apart. Many died in the process in the india- Pakistani boder. Although India had had independence since 1947, the communal clashes, border issues remain very much alive even to day. Of course this is in no comparison to what happened in HoloCost and some others. . Another time in the history I can think of is when Indians who lived for several generations in Uganda and Kenya were asked to leave. Several of the Indian families migrated to US and several to India. I know some of them when they had to leave all their belongings and finances and just walk away. They had to start from scratch in an unknown territory.
Of course we have not learned from our past. I also wonder why haven’t we??? Unfortunately this will continue unless until we realize that ‘We are all one but just look different and we all need each other for continued survival of human race and humanity’
I am at Lindsey Wilson College. We’re joining the discussion late because our Fall semester is just getting under way and some of us haven’t gotten our copies of Trail of Tears yet. Hopefully, you’ll hear more from us in the next few weeks and we’ll be able to make some positive contributions to the blog as we get further along in our reading.
Do other marches/relocations come to mind in history? Yes, and these are a few to consider. Although they were not necessarily forced in the same sense as the Trail of Tears was, and the enormity of consequences doesn’t necessarily match either the Trail of Tears or the Holocaust, in terms of learning from the past, all of them present similar and important lessons. The first one that comes to mind is the “Great Migration” of African Americans during the early twentieth century, which resulted at least in part from the desire to escape from oppressive social conditions in the South, and the hope for better lives in the North. The second and, again, one with different motives and consequences, was the “Dust Bowl” migration during the 1930s. I mention it because even though cultural or ethnic differences weren’t necessarily involved in this case, the so-called “Arkies” and “Okies” and others who migrated west often encountered severe discrimination and prejudice, as depicted in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. They were forced to leave their homes because they were destitute and desperate, and were unwanted where they went because they were poor. The third is the relocation and internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, which of the three cases, may be the one most similar to the Trail of Tears. Japanese-Americans were forced to abandon their homes and businesses, or sell them at losses, and relocate to some of the most desolate and inhospitable places in the country, taking with them little more than the clothes on their backs.
These happen to come to mind. I’m not an expert on any of them, but somehow they seem relevant to the questions insofar as they involved involuntary or unwanted relocation motivated by various combinations and degrees of economic and social injustice.
I agree that we don’t seem to learn from the past. But I wonder. Is it because we are just so obstinate about changing our beliefs and behaviors, in spite of these lessons? Or, is it because we haven’t studied the past enough to know of these lessons? Depending on the individual, I suppose, the answer could be “yes” to both questions. Even so, I’d like to think that education has some value in changing people’s hearts and minds for the better, especially as it relates to how we treat each other as members of the same human family.