by David Webb

[In western Tennessee], the Trail of Tears came through what is now the Nathan Bedford Forrest State Park. From there the Benge Route passed through Henry County along Reynoldsburg Road, to Market Street, turning west onto Rison Street, and then westward on Jones Bend Road to Palmersville [and then on to cross the Mississippi River at Columbus-Belmont State Park].

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The Trail of Tears was actually four main routes from Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee to Indian Territory (Oklahoma). One of these was a water route that passed Henry County along the Tennessee River and a land route came across the county and through downtown Paris [and then on through Palmersville].

The Benge Route is named for the Cherokee conductor of a 60-wagon train of 1,132 Cherokee and their African-American slaves who departed Fort Payne, Alabama, on September 28, 1838, and who arrived in Indian Territory by January 17, 1839. There were 33 deaths and 3 births along this trail.

Andrew Jackson called for the relocation of all Native Americans east of the Mississippi River in his inaugural address in 1829. His message became federal law with the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830.

After gold was discovered in Dahlonega, Georgia, the governor allowed a minority group of Cherokee led by Major John Ridge and Elias Boudinol to gather at New Echota. On December 29, 1835, the Treaty of New Echota ceded Cherokee territory in Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia to the federal government for $5 million and joint interest in Indian Territory (Oklahoma). The U.S. Senate ratified the Treaty of New Echota on May 23, 1836, by a single vote.

In 1838, the Cherokee and other Native American tribes exhausted all legal challenges to the Indian Removal Act.

Principal Chief John Ross failed to persuade President Martin Van Buren to change the removal policy instigated by Andrew Jackson. Brig. Gen. Winfield Scott was placed in charge of removal of the Cherokee in 1838. Approximately 17,000 Cherokee resisted, and Gen. Scott ordered their forced relocation.

Under Gen. Scott’s command, 7,000 soldiers of the U.S. Army and the state militia spread throughout the Cherokee Nation and drove men, women, and children out of their houses at gunpoint and placed in disease-ridden camps with limited food and supplies. Private John Burnett recalled: “I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven at the bayonet into the stockades.”

Gen. Scott ordered soldiers to build stockade forts to confine Native Americans in preparation for their journey westward. One of these internment camps, Fort Payne, Alabama, was built by Captain John Payne and 22 of his soldiers and completed by April, 1838. By July, there were over 800 Cherokee confined at the fort.

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