In this way the remainder, enrolled at about 13,000, (including a few negro slaves), started on the long march overland late in the fall. Those who thus emigrated under the management of their own officers, assembled at Rattlesnake Springs, near the present Charleston, Tenn., where a final council was held, in which it was decided to continue their old constitution and laws in their new home. Then, in October, 1838, the long procession of exiles was set in motion. A few went by the river route, but nearly all went overland. Crossing, to the north side of the Hiwassee river, at a ferry above Gunter’s Creek, they proceeded down along the river, the sick, aged and children, together with their belongings, being hauled in wagons, the rest on foot or on horses.
It was like an army, 645 wagons, regiment after regiment, the wagons in the center, the officers along the line, and the horsemen on the flank and at the rear.
Tennessee river was crossed at Tucker’s ferry, a short distance above Jolly’s Island, at the mouth of Hiwassee; thence the route lay south of Pikeville, through McMinnville, and on to Nashville, where the Cumberland was crossed.
They then went on to Hopkinsville, where the noted chief White Path, in charge of a detachment, sickened and died. His people buried him by the roadside, with a box over the grave and poles with streamers around it, that the others coming on behind might note the spot and remember him.
Somewhere along that march of death—for the exiles died by tens and twenties every day of the journey—the devoted wife of the noted chief, John Ross, sank down and died, leaving him to go on with bitter pain of bereavement added to the heartbreak at the ruin and desolation of his nation.
The Ohio was crossed at a ferry near the mouth of the Cumberland, and the army passed on through southern Illinois until the great Mississippi was reached, opposite Cape Girardean, Missouri. It was now the middle of winter, with the river running full of ice, so that several detachments were obliged to wait some time on the eastern bank for the channel to become clear.
Information furnished by old men at Tahlequah after the lapse of fifty years showed that time had not sufficed to wipe out the memory of the miseries of that halt beside the frozen river, with hundreds of sick and dying penned up in wagons or stretched upon the ground, with only a blanket overhead to keep out the January blast.
The crossing was at last made, in two divisions, at Cape Girardean and Green’s ferry, a short distance below, whence the march was continued on through Missouri to Indian Territory, the later detachment making a northerly circuit by Springfield, because those who had gone before had killed off all the game along the direct route.
They had started in October, 1838, and it was now March, 1839, the journey having occupied nearly six months of the hardest part of the year.
It is difficult to state positively as to the mortality and loss by reason of the removal of this once happy nation, but as near as can be ascertained, more than four thousand persons perished along the great highway of death.