On display 4 Oct 2024 – 28 Feb 2025
In the late 1830s, thousands of Cherokee and Muscogee citizens were rounded up in the area that is now Chattanooga to prepare for the difficult and often deadly journey known as the Trail of Tears. The removal of indigenous people to the West was enforced and carried out by the United States military and government agencies. Records from this time are scarce and scattered; some of the best information we have about these events comes from documents kept by federal agents.
This exhibition provides public access to original log books detailing the weekly food and supply rations issued to individual Cherokee and Muscogee families at Ross’s Landing and nearby internment camps between 1836 and 1838, where they were held before the march to unfamiliar land in present-day Oklahoma.
The ration books document not only the grimly administrative process of removal, they tell part of the story of those who endured it, and provide a glimpse into what indigenous families experienced during the final days in their ancestral homeland.
