TWO ACCOUNTS OF LIFE ON THE TRAIL OF TEARS
Account of John G. Burnett, Cherokee Messenger
http://www.powersource.com/cherokee/burnett.html
...I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven at the bayonet point into the stockades. And in the chill of a drizzling rain on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle or sheep into six hundred and forty-five wagons and started toward the west...
...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...
...On the morning of November the 17th we encountered a terrific sleet and snow storm with freezing temperatures and from that day until we reached the end of the fateful journey on March the 26th, 1839, the sufferings of the Cherokees were awful. The trail of the exiles was a trail of death. They had to sleep in the wagons and on the ground without fire. And I have known as many as twenty-two of them to die in one night of pneumonia due to ill treatment, cold, and exposure. Among this number was the beautiful Christian wife of Chief John Ross. This noble hearted woman died a martyr to childhood, giving her only blanket for the protection of a sick child. She rode thinly clad through a blinding sleet and snow storm, developed pneumonia and died in the still hours of a bleak winter night, with her head resting on Lieutenant Greggs saddle blanket...
Account of a Traveler who signed himself, “A Native of Maine” The New York Observer- January 1839
http://marchand.ucdavis.edu/lessons/HS/CherokeeHS.htm
On Tuesday evening we fell into a detachment of the poor Cherokee Indians, about eleven hundred...We found them in the forrest camped for the night...under a severe fall of rain...many of the aged Indians were suffering extremely from the fatigue of the journey, and ill health...We found the road literally filled with a procession for nearly three miles in length...The sick and feeble were carried in wagons...multitudes go on foot--even aged females apparently nearly ready to drop in the grave, were traveling with heavy burdens...on the sometimes frozen ground...with no covering for feet...They buried 14 or 15 at every stopping place...some carry a downcast dejected look...of despair, others wild frantic appearance as if to pounce like a tiger upon their enemies...