Trail of Tears expanded

By Pam Sohn
Chattanooga Times Free Press, Tenn.

Shirley Lawrence can't wait for President Barack Obama to sign the Trail of Tears Documentation Act.

''We think this is going to make the picture complete," she said of the bill that for the first time acknowledges the routes of the Cherokee forced removal through Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and North Carolina.

Mr. Obama is expected to sign the bill into law on Monday.

''We've waited a long time," said Ms. Lawrence, a descendant of a Cherokee family and a determined and driving force in the construction of a Trail of Tears Memorial Park at Blythe Ferry near Birchwood.

The Trail of Tears Documentation Act was approved by Congress last week as part of the Public Lands bill. It adds to the Trail of Tears Study Act, which was signed into law in December 2006 to recognize the Trail.

The 2006 bill designated trails only in Arkansas and Oklahoma. Now, according to U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., author of the new act, previously omitted threads of the trail in this region will be included.

''This was a labor of love from the very start," said Rep. Wamp, "And it's key to Moccasin Bend Park because a part of the Moccasin Bend story is the Trail of Tears."

Becky Gregory, also of American Indian descent, praised the bill.

''I think it should have been done years ago," she said.

Specifically, the new act adds two primary westward trails -- the Benge and Bell routes -- as well as water routes on the Tennessee and Arkansas rivers.

Also included are the so-called "round up routes" from Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia and Alabama on which the Cherokee were gathered and marched to holding camps before the journey west.

While the Trail of Tears Documentation Act does not call for additional funding, it could lead to new money, according to Wamp spokeswoman Laura Condeluci.

Shelly Andrews, executive director of the Friends of Moccasin Bend Park, said the new act opens up fuller opportunities for the park.

''What this means is the trail's recognition has been expanded," she said. "The stories of all those trails out of Alabama and North Carolina and Georgia to here -- I call them tributary trails -- that is one of the stories we're going to be telling, one of the stories of Moccasin Bend."

In 1987, when the original Trail of Tears was designated, the historical documentation available for the routes was sparse and ambiguous, Rep. Wamp told members of Congress as he made his first appeal for the bill last September. Since then, he told his colleagues, research on the additions has been documented by National Park Service historians through military journals, newspaper accounts and vouchers.

''While the Cherokee removal is only one tribe's story of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, it is the most visible in American history," Rep. Wamp said.

Also passing Congress with the Public Lands legislation was the Green McAdoo National History Study Act, which directs the secretary of the interior to study the feasibility of designating the Green McAdoo School in Clinton, Tenn., as a unit of the National Park Service.

The school near Oak Ridge, Tenn., successfully integrated without federal intervention one year before Little Rock Central in Arkansas.

Upon receiving the designation, the site would become part of the 391-unit National Park System and receive federal funding for operational costs. It also would earn national recognition as part of the Park System's mission to preserve and protect the natural and cultural history of America.