Unworthy Republic by Claudio Saunt

Author:Claudio Saunt [Claudio Saunt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780393609851
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2019-08-28T00:00:00+00:00

March 14 to March 31, 1834. The first two weeks of the journey west for Joseph Harris’s detachment of Cherokee refugees.

At first, the deaths mounted gradually from a variety of causes, as Harris reported in his journal:

APRIL 5: “buried here the girl child of Oasconish a Cherokee”

APRIL 6: “Stephen Spaniard’s girl child died this morning of measles”

APRIL 7: “Bear Paw’s boy child died this morning of dysentery”

APRIL 9: “Henson’s child died today of the worms”

APRIL 10: “Richardson’s child died this morning.”38

It was impossible to preserve “a proper police amongst these people,” Harris complained, and the Yeatman had therefore “become impregnated with a foul atmosphere.” On April 11, the detachment reached Cadron Creek, about fifty-five miles above Little Rock, and began setting up camp in preparation for the two-hundred-mile march west to Fort Gibson, in what is now eastern Oklahoma. The next day, Thigh Hare was seized with “violent spasms of cramps & watery discharges,” obvious symptoms of cholera. He died that night.39

The makeshift camp quickly became contaminated with V. cholerae. Five or six people died almost without warning, and children began to succumb daily. The microbe wiped out entire families. In the space of two days, Black Fox lost his wife and three children. Will Tucker lost four sons. Over one three-day period that began on April 17, twenty-three people died. Harris desperately sent for medicine and tried to hire wagons, but his efforts failed since no teamsters dared to approach the diseased camp. A local doctor who risked tending to the sick caught the microbe himself and died after a brief but agonizing sickness. “His was one of the most painful deaths I have witnessed,” wrote Harris.40

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