American Indian Removal – Object #7

“The Indians will vanish” has been the talk of the older Indians ever since the white people first came to mingle among them. They seemed to prophecy that the coming of the white man would not be for their good and when the step towards their removal to a country to the west was just beginning, it was the older Indians that remarked and talked about themselves by saying, “Now, the Indian is now on the road to disappearance.” This had reference to their leaving of their ways, their familiar surroundings where their customs were performed, their medicine, their hunting grounds and their friends.

When they had reached their new homes in the Indian Territory, their conversations were about their old homes and they said, “We have started on the road that leads to our disappearance and we are facing the evening of our existence and are nearly at the end of the trail that we trod when we were forced to leave our homes in Alabama and Georgia. In time, perhaps our own language will not be used but that will be after our days.”