James Carselowey interviewed Eliza Whitmire, a former slave, in Estella, Oklahoma, on February 14, 1936. She was past age one hundred at the time. Whitmire talked about slavery in Georgia, her experiences during the removal, and the establishment of the Cherokee capital at Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

My name is Eliza Whitmire. I live on a farm near Estella where I settled shortly after the Civil War and where I have lived ever since. I was born in slavery in the state of Georgia, my parents having belonged to a Cherokee Indian of the name of George Sanders who owned a large plantation in the old Cherokee Nation in Georgia. He also owned a large number of slaves but I was too young to remember how many he owned.

I do not know the exact date of my birth, although my mother told me I was about five years old when President Andrew Jackson ordered General [Winfield] Scott to proceed to the Cherokee country in Georgia with two thousand troops and remove the Cherokees by force to the Indian Territory. This bunch of Indians were called the Eastern Emigrants. The Old Settler Cherokees had moved themselves in 1835 when the order was first given to the Cherokees to move out.

The weeks that followed General Scott’s order to remove the Cherokees were filled with horror and suffering for the unfortunate Cherokees and their slaves. The women and children were driven from their homes, sometimes with blows, and close on the heels of the retreating Indians came greedy whites to pillage the Indians’ homes, drive off their cattle, horses and hogs, and they even rifled the graves for any jewelry or other ornaments that might have been buried with the dead.

The Cherokees, after being driven from their homes, were divided into detachments of nearly equal size and late in October, 1838, the first detachment started, the others following one by one. The aged, sick and the young children rode in the wagons which carried the provisions and bedding, while others went on foot. The trip was made in the dead of winter and many died from exposure from sleet and snow and all who lived to make this trip, or had parents who made it, will long remember it as a bitter memory.

When we arrived here from Georgia my parents settled with their master, George Sanders, near Tahlequah, or near the place where Tahlequah now is located, for at that time the capital had not been established. I well remember the time when a commission of three men was selected from the Illinois Camp Ground to look out [scout] the location for a capital and when the date was set to meet at a big spring, where the present town of Tahlequah now stands, there were only two of the commissioners present. They waited and waited for the third man to come, but finally gave him up and selected the site on account of the number of springs surrounding the town. I remember too, the great Inter-Tribal Council which was held in Tahlequah during the year of 1843 under the leadership of Chief John Ross. My mother assisted with the cooking at that gathering, while my duty was to carry water to those at the meeting from the near-by springs. About ten years after we arrived in the Indian Territory, I witnessed the erection of four little log cabins to house the officers of the Cherokee Government. I have seen a dashing young slave boy acting as coachman for Chief John Ross, drive him in from his home near Park Hill and let him out at the Capitol Square, where he would spend the day at the little log cabins, then the seat of government of the Cherokee tribe. The old square was first surrounded by a rail fence at that time and many horses could be seen tied there while their owners spent the day in the new capital. I remember a few years after we arrived here, that Major General Ethan Allen Hitchcock came here from Washington to hold a conference with Chief John Ross and the Cherokee people with reference to a new treaty, seeking to pay the Cherokees for their loss and wrongs during their removal from Georgia. This meeting was held under a big shed erected in the center of the square and was attended by a large number of people. Chief John Ross addressed the audience in English and Chief Justice Bushyhead interpreted it in Cherokee. The government agreed to indemnify the Indians for their losses but I am told that they now have claims filed in the court of claims for some of this very money.¹

Endnotes

¹ Eliza Whitmire, Interview 12963, vol. 97, Estella, Okla., Feb. 14, 1936, 398–401, Indian Pioneer Papers, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Okla.