CHAPTER 20

The price of that exile, in human lives, is told in the stark figures: Nearly seventeen thousand were rounded up for removal, and fewer than thirteen thousand reached the western Cherokee country. Four thousand victims, one out of every four! Nearly 3,500 of the 4,000 died in the concentration camps and during removal under army supervision. Had a buyer and shipper of beasts shown such a percentage of loss he would have been branded a monster of stupid cruelty. One in four, a stiff charge for the attainment of Lumpkin’s fabled land flowing with milk and honey! And, tragically, the