The Trail of Tears, Cherokee Removal 1838

John Bell had signed the Treaty of New Echota in 1835, the agreement under which a minority of Cherokees gave up the homeland, while the majority under John Ross refused to accept it. By 1838 that refusal was met with force: seven thousand soldiers under Winfield Scott rounded Cherokee families into camps. Bell's party of about 660 is the one this marker follows through McNairy County. Across the whole removal, more than four thousand of an estimated fourteen thousand Cherokee, or Tsalagi, people are believed to have died.

What the plaque says

The Trail of Tears, Cherokee Removal 1838 A group of approximately 660 Cherokees traveled through McNairy County in late fall of 1838. Also called Bell's Treaty Party, it was the only detachment to be accompanied by the military. Escorted by U.S. Army Lt. Edward Deas and Cherokee leader John Bell, the party followed the Old State Road to Purdy, where Deas purchased supplies on November 14, 1838. From Purdy to Bethel Springs to Rose Creek, the route closely followed present-day Highway 64. Their 89-day journey ended on January 7, 1839, just inside the Cherokee Nation's border, west of Evansville, Arkansas.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Big Hill Pond State Park — 12 mi
  A 4,000-acre bottomland park in McNairy County built around a pond that railroad crews dug in 1853, with a 70-foot tower over Dismal Swamp and Civil War earthworks.
• Shiloh Indian Mounds — 17 mi
  A National Historic Landmark on the Tennessee River bluff: the remains of a palisaded Mississippian-era town with seven mounds and the visible rings of its house sites, inside Shiloh National Military Park.
• Shiloh National Military Park — 17 mi
  The April 6-7, 1862 battlefield above Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River, with the Hornets' Nest, Bloody Pond, a national cemetery and no entrance fee.
• Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center — 18 mi
  A Park Service center at Battery Robinett telling why two railroads made Corinth a prize, from the siege of 1862 to the battle of October, and what happened to the people who sought freedom there.

More markers nearby

• The Hurst Nation — 3.1 mi
• Buford Hayse Pusser — 8.8 mi
• Battle of Davis Bridge — 15 mi
• Freed-Hardeman College — 17 mi