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NC Man Heads Out on Trail of Tears Water Route

549 views · Published 21 June 2012 · 2:15 · Indexed 29 September 2026

Channel: WTVC NewsChannel 9 · 2012 · News & Politics

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by Lindsay JacksonA North Carolina man started a serious journey Monday in Chattanooga.  Dale Stewart is an explorer and Monday his expedition began on the Tennessee River. Dale Stewart is on the Trail of Tears, not the more familiar land route but the water route taken by the Cherokee Indians in 1838.Stewart will spend the next 65 to 75 days on the water in this custom built canack. That's a boat that's part canoe, part kayak. Why?"History always needs to be brought to the forefront every once in a while," Stewart said. What he's trying to do is remind folks that the Trail of Tears wasn't just on land. "The water route started here and ended in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma in the Indian territory. But there were so many deaths on the river and so much trouble on the river that they decided not to do the river routes," he said. The 1,300 mile water route will take Stewart along the Tennessee River, to the Ohio River, then on to the Mississippi. Finally, he'll make it to the Arkansas River and take that over to Oklahoma. "This is the first big expedition I've done in the United States and when I started looking around, I found out about the water route and I thought it was a good one to do. So I went over and talked to the elders of the Cherokee, and sat down with Chief Hicks and he said, 'Yeah!'," said Stewart.It's a trip Ron Cooper was planning to make one day as well. He's a member of the Comanche Tribe, and heard about Stewart's journey on Facebook. "I was in the middle of planning to do this myself. I'm not an experienced kayaker, barely even a beginning kayaker and so it's kinda neat that an experienced kayaker is going to do this and let me know how it is," Cooper said. Cooper actually walked the Trail of Tears last January. It took him three months to complete the 835 mile journey.  And while,  like Stewart, he's not Cherokee,  he feels that preserving that part of history, is important. "So I thought as a member of a totally different tribe than the Cherokees, to walk the Trail of Tears  sort of brings about tribal unity to show that this trail may have been traversed by the Cherokees and some Creeks, but it's also my trail too," Cooper said.You can follow Stewart's expedition by going to his website: http://expeditionunbound.com/ .

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