... On Tuesday evening we fell in with a detachment of the poor Cherokee Indians... about eleven hundred Indians-sixty waggons- six hundred horses, and perhaps forty pairs of oxen. We found them in the forest camped for the night by the road side...under a severe fall of rain accompanied by heavy wind. With their canvas for a shield from the inclemency of the weather, and the cold wet ground for a resting place, after the fatigue of the day, they spent the night...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 struggles of death.

... About ten officers and overseers in each detachment whose business it was to provide supplies for the journey, and attend to the general wants of the company... We met several detachments in the southern part of Kentucky on the 4th, 5th and 6th of December... . The last detachment which we passed on the 7th embraced rising two thousand Indians with horses and mules in proportion. The forward part of the train we found just pitching their tents for the night, and notwithstanding some thirty or forty waggons were already stationed, we found the road literally filled with the procession for about three miles in length. The sick and feeble were carried in waggons-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, and sometimes muddy streets, with no covering for the feet except what nature had given them. We were some hours making our way through the crowd, which brought us in dose contact with the wagons and multitude, so much that we felt fortunate to find ourselves freed from the crowd without leaving any part of our carriage. 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. One fad which to my own mind seemed a lesson indeed to the American nation is, that they will not travel on the sabbath... when the sabbath came, they must stop, and not merely stop-they must worship the Great spirit too, for they had divine service on the sabbath-a camp' meeting in truth. One aged Indian who was commander of the friendly Creeks and Seminoles in a very important engagement in the company with General Jackson, was accosted on arriving in a little village in Kentucky by an aged man residing there, and who was one of Jackson's men in the engagement referred to, and asking him if he (the Indian) recollected him? The aged Chieftain looked him in the face and recognized him, and with a downcast look and heavy sigh, referring to the engagement, he said "Ah! my life and the lives of my people were then at stake for you and your country. I then thought Jackson my best friend. 'But ah! Jackson no serve me right. Your country no do me justice now!"

The Indians as a whole carry in their countenances every thing but the appearance of happiness. Some carry a downcast dejected look bordering upon the appearance of despair; others a wild frantic appearance as if about to burst the chains of nature and pounce like a tiger upon their enemies... . Most of them seemed intelligent and refined. Mr. Bushyhead, son of an aged man of the same name, is a very intelligent and interesting 'Baptist clergyman. Several missionaries were accompanying them to their destination. Some of the Cherokees are wealthy and travel in style. One lady passed on in her hack in company with her husband, apparently with as much refinement and equipage as any of the mothers of New England; and she was a mother too and her youngest child about three years old was sick in her arms, and all she could do was 10 make it comfortable as circumstances would permit... . She could only carry her dying child in her arms a few miles farther, and then she must stop in a stranger-land and consign her much loved babe to the cold ground, and that too without pomp or ceremony, and pass on with the multitude...

... When I past the last detachment of those suffering exiles and thought that my native countrymen had thus expelled them from their native soil and their much loved homes, and that too in this inclement season of the year in all their suffering, I turned from the sight with feelings which language cannot express and "wept like childhood then." I felt that I would not encounter the secret silent prayer of one of these sufferers armed with the energy that faith and hope would give it (if there be a God who avenges the wrongs of the injured) for all the lands of Georgia! ... 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 destination; 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. But I forbear, full well I know that many prayers have gone up to the King of Heaven from Maine in behalf of the poor Cherokees.