This is my birthday, December 11, 1890. I am eighty years old today. I was born at Kings Iron Works in Sullivan County, Tennessee,
December the 11, 1810. I grew into manhood fishing in Beaver Creek and roaming through the forest hunting the deer and the wild
boar and the timber wolf. Often spending weeks at a time in the solitary wilderness with no companions but my rifle, hunting knife,
and a small hatchet that I carried in my belt in all of my wilderness wanderings. On these long hunting trips I met and became
acquainted with many of the Cherokee Indians,…
The removal of Cherokee Indians from their life long homes in the year of 1838 found me a young man in the prime of life and a
Private soldier in the American Army. Being acquainted with many of the Indians and able to fluently speak their language, I was sent
as interpreter into the Smoky Mountain Country in May, 1838, and witnessed the execution of the most brutal order in the History of
American Warfare. I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven at the bayonet point into the
stockades. And in the chill of a drizzling rain on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle or sheep into six hundred and forty-
five wagons and started toward the west.
One can never forget the sadness… of that morning. Chief John Ross led in prayer and when the bugle sounded and the wagons
started rolling many of the children rose to their feet and waved their little hands goodbye to their mountain homes, knowing they
were leaving them forever. Many of these helpless people did not have blankets and many of them had been driven from home
barefooted.
On the morning of November the 17th we encountered a terrific sleet and snowstorm with freezing temperatures and from that day
until we reached the end of the fateful journey on March the 26th, 1839, the sufferings of the Cherokees were awful. The trail…was a
trail of death. They had to sleep in the wagons and on the ground without fire. And I have known as many as twenty-two of them to
die in one night of pneumonia due to ill treatment, cold, and exposure. Among this number was the beautiful Christian wife of Chief
John Ross [Quatie Ross]. This noble hearted woman died … giving her only blanket for the protection of a sick child. She rode
…through a blinding sleet and snow storm, developed pneumonia and died in the still hours of a bleak winter night, with her head
resting on Lieutenant Greggs saddle blanket.
I made the long journey to the west with the Cherokees and did all that a Private soldier could do to alleviate their sufferings. When on
guard duty at night I have many times walked my beat in my blouse in order that some sick child might have the warmth of my
overcoat. I was on guard duty the night Mrs. Ross died.. and at daylight was detailed by Captain McClellan to assist in the burial like
the other unfortunates who died on the way. Her unconfined body was buried in a shallow grave by the roadside far from her native
home, and the sorrowing Cavalcade moved on…
The long painful journey to the west ended March 26th, 1839, with 4,000 silent graves reaching from the foothills of the Smoky
Mountains to what is known as Indian territory in the West (Oklahoma). And covetousness (greed) on the part of the white race was
the cause of all that the Cherokees had to suffer.
In the year 1828, a little Indian boy living on Ward creek had sold a gold nugget to a white trader, and that nugget sealed the doom of
the Cherokees. In a short time the country was overrun with armed brigands (bandits) claiming to be government agents, who paid no
attention to the rights of the Indians who were the legal possessors of the country. Crimes were committed that were a disgrace to
civilization. Men were shot in cold blood, lands were confiscated. Homes were burned and the inhabitants driven out by the gold-
hungry brigands.
