The purpose of the template is to provide students a guideline to help answer basic questions regarding primary sources; the importance of the document, the historical backdrop of the document (contex

anonymously)

... On Tuesday evening we fell in with a detachment of the poor Cherokee Indians... That poor

despised people are now on their long and tedious march to their place of destination beyond the

Mississippi River… about eleven hundred Indians… We found them in the forest camped for the

night... under a severe fall of rain accompanied with heavy wind ... and the cold wet ground for

their resting place, after the fatigue of the day, they spent the night with probably as little of the

reality as the appearance of comfort… many of the aged Indians were suffering extremely from

the fatigue of the journey, and the ill health consequent upon it... several were then quite ill, and

one aged man we were informed was then in the last struggle of death...

... we found the road literally filled with the procession for about three miles in length. The sick

and feeble were carried in wagons - about as comfortable for traveling as a New England ox cart

with a covering over it. A great many ride on horseback and multitudes go on foot - even aged

females, apparently nearly ready to drop into the grave, were traveling with heavy burdens

attached to the back ... on the sometimes frozen ground ... with no covering for the feet except

what nature had given them. ...We learned from the inhabitants on the road where the Indians

passed, that they buried fourteen or fifteen at every stopping place, and they make a journey of

ten miles per day only on an average...

When I read in the President's Message that he was happy to inform the Senate that the

Cherokees were peaceably and without reluctance removed - and remember that it was on the

third day of December when not one of the detachments had reached their destinations; and that

a large majority had not made even half their journey when he made that declaration, I thought I

wished the President could have been there that very day in Kentucky with myself, and have

seen the comfort and the willingness with which the Cherokees were making their journey.