There were some 15,000 captives that were still to be removed. There were draught and poor sanitation that made life very miserable. Very many of them died. The National Council of Cherokee and Chief Ross tried to plead with General Scott to permit the remaining Cherokees to wait till the weather was better for them to be moved. They also wanted to oversee their removal. The General agreed, and Ross supervised the move. The natives were thus moved from the removal forts to internment camps till travel was resumed. The 1200 miles journey came with many hardships as heavy rains made the primitive roads treacherous. The Cherokees were forced to drag the wagons out of the muddy roads. Death became a daily occurrence because of the road conditions, winter distress, and illness. The government only provided a single blanket to each Indian as shelter from the cold wind of the winter. The ill-equipped Cherokees were trapped beside the frozen Mississippi River with many of them dying of pneumonia. Starvation and malnutrition made the Cherokees more prone to diseases like cholera, dysentery, and smallpox. After arrival in Oklahoma, the Cherokees tried to acclimatize to their new territory in the process re-establishing their system of government. Currently in the United …show more content…
He hopes that in the future, those who read about the trail of tears of the Cherokees will condemn the act but pardon private soldiers like himself and four Cherokees who were forced to shoot an Indian Chief’s family, because they had to execute orders of their superiors. Burnett insists that he and the other four Cherokees had no choice in the matter. The soldier remembers meeting some Cherokees in uniform twenty-five years after the removal. Most of them were boys during the removal period but surprisingly they recalled him as “the soldier that was kind to