A new book authored by members of the Hickman County Historical Society tells a detailed history of the area’s place along the Trail of Tears, and the experiences of the Native American people who traveled on it, as they passed through the far western Kentucky county.
Tom Bugg, the society’s president, said the book – titled “The Trail of Tears Through Hickman County, KY; Our Native American Ancestors” – documents the story of the nearly 1,100 Cherokee men, women and children who traveled by foot through modern day Columbus-Belmont State Park in 1838 after losing their ancestral lands to the Indian Removal Act.
According to the National Park Service, the 1830 law resulted in the forcible removal of around 100,000 eastern Native Americans from their tribal lands, to designated territories west of the Mississippi River.
Most tribes complied with the relocation order but some, such as the Cherokee Nation, resisted the law on the basis of its legality. In 1831, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Cherokee Nation v. Georgia that the tribe was required to comply with state law and vacate their land. The court later reversed the decision, recognizing the Cherokee as a sovereign nation exempt from the law.
That court decision did not stop President Andrew Jackson from negotiating an signed agreement with a Cherokee chief for the nation's relocation, though he only represented a small faction of the nation. After that, the Cherokee people were forced to relocate west of the Mississippi via multiple land and water routes that crossed through nine states, along what is now known as the Trail of Tears.
The group that passed through Columbus-Belmont State Park were traveling on the “Benge Route,” which was one of the three routes that went through the state of Kentucky.
On this route, Bugg says that the Cherokee people traveled almost entirely on foot from their starting point in northern Alabama, before camping for 10 days in Hickman County as they waited to cross the Mississippi river by ferry in harsh winter conditions.
“They came through here in the dead of winter. Many without adequate clothing. Many were ill at night. They slept in a blanket on frozen ground,” Bugg said.
After crossing the river by rope ferry, the group continued on to finish their nearly 100-day journey in present-day Stillwell, Oklahoma, in January of 1839.
Columbus-Belmont State Park officially became part of the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail in 2021, while the Hickman County Historical Society became home to the Chickasaw-Cherokee History Center of the Jackson Purchase in 2016.
“The Trail of Tears Through Hickman County, KY; Our Native American Ancestors” is currently available at the Historical Society’s office in Clinton, along with a large collection of other historical writings pertaining the county and its past residents.
