soldiers to
loot and pillage. So keen were these outlaws on the scent that in
some instances they were driving off the cattle and other stock of the
Indians almost before the soldiers had fairly started their owners in
the other direction. Systematic hunts were made by the same men
for Indian graves, to rob them of the silver pendants and other valu-
ables deposited with the dead. A Georgia volunteer, afterward a
colonel in the Confederate service, said: " I fought through the civil
war and have seen men shot to pieces and slaughtered by thousands,
but the Cherokee removal was the cruelest work I ever knew."
To prevent escape the soldiers had been ordered to approach and
surround each house, so far as possible, so as to come upon the occu-
pants without warning. One old patriarch, whenthus surprised,
calmly called his children and grandchildren around him, and. kneel-
ing down, bid them pray with him in their own language, while the
astonished soldiers looked on in silence. Then rising he led the way into
1 Royce, Cherokee Nation, op. cit., p. 291. = Ibid, p. 291.
hoonby] OONCENTEATION INTO STOCKADES — 1838 18]
exile. A woman, on finding the house surrounded, went to the door
and <al l>'i I up the chickens to be fed for the last time, after which,
taking her infant on her back and her two other children by the hand,
she followed her husband with tin' soldiers.
All were not thus submissive. One old man named Tsall, "( lharley,"
was seized with his wife, his brother, his three sons ami their families.
Exasperated at the brutality accorded his wife, who, being