THE CHEROKEE DROWNING PLACE

There were two main "Trail Of Tears" routes which passed through Arkansas. The southern route ran from Memphis to near Little Rock where it joined with the Arkansas River and ended at Fort Gibson, while the northern route of the Arkansas portion of the Trail of Tears, commonly known as the "Old Military Road," passed through Baxter and Marion Counties in northern Arkansas.

Three thousand Cherokee and Creek men, women and children, victims of the Federal Indian Removal Policy, walked the northern path. Each one had a story to tell if anyone had cared to listen. Most of the stories that were passed down have long been forgotten. I'm going to tell you about an almost forgotten incident so that you will remember and honor the Spirits of the People who died at the Cherokee Drowning Place.

Somewhere below the Jacob Wolff House just south of the town of the small town of Norfork, Arkansas, a group of Cherokee People gathered near the White Raven Stomp Grounds where the Sacred Fire of the Cherokees burned until 1902. There they waited for the flooded Norfork River to receed so they could cross on the ferry and continue their journey to Indian Territory.

The river was a main thoroughfare for the logging industry and the heavy rains had caused a log jam to form. For some reason, maybe due to alcohol or just plain meanness, a group of white settlers decided they didn't want the Indians camped there. Threats and taunting soon turned into violence as the rowdies fired their guns over the heads of the weary travelers. Afraid for their lives, Cherokee men, women and children tried to run across the log jam to safety. That proved to be a tragic mistake. As the logs began to roll and move down stream, one by one, the people fell into the Norfork River. Many of them drowned.

If their names had ever been recorded, they are long forgotten. No one knows how many perished or where their bodies lie. The Norfork River has since been dammed and a beautiful lake draws tourists and retirees - all looking for the "Good Life." But I want them to know, and I want you to know that some of us will remember the People who perished so the white man could live his "good life." . And justice will ultimately prevail".
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
 One can never forget the sadness and solemnity 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 good-by 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. The long painful journey to the west ended March 26th, 1839, with four-thousand silent graves reaching from the foothills of the Smoky Mountains to what is known as Indian territory in the West.

And covetousness on the part of the white race was the cause of all that the Cherokees had to suffer. The doom of the Cherokee was sealed. Washington, D.C., had decreed that they must be driven West and their lands given to the white man, and in May 1838, an army of 4000 regulars, and 3000 volunteer soldiers under command of General Winfield Scott, marched into the Indian country and wrote the blackest chapter on the pages of American history. Murder is murder, and somebody must answer. Somebody must explain the streams of blood that flowed in the Indian country in the summer of 1838. Somebody must explain the 4000 silent graves that mark the trail of the Cherokees to their exile. I wish I could forget it all, but the picture of 645 wagons lumbering over the frozen ground with their cargo of suffering humanity still lingers in my memory. Let the historian of a future day tell the sad story with its sighs, its tears and dying groans. Let the great Judge of all the earth weigh our actions and reward us according to our work."

------Quoted From "The Birthday Story of Private John G. Burnett, Captain Abraham McClellan's Company, 2nd Regiment, 2nd Brigade, Mounted Infantry, Cherokee Indian Removal, 1838-39."