Appalachian History Series – The 1838 Cherokee Removal Through Tuscumbia Landing
When people today search for the Cherokee removal through Colbert County, they often run into a problem of names. In 1838, Colbert County did not yet exist. The county was created in 1867, and the places involved in this story were then part of Franklin County. That is why the strongest period and route records usually point researchers not to “Colbert County,” but to Tuscumbia, Tuscumbia Landing, Decatur, and the Tuscumbia, Courtland and Decatur Railroad. To understand the removal through this part of north Alabama, those are the names that matter most.
Why Tuscumbia Landing Mattered
Tuscumbia Landing became important because the Tennessee River was not easily navigable through the Muscle Shoals. Islands, rock shoals, rapids, and low water made that stretch dangerous and often impassable for much of the year. Local merchants responded by creating a landing at the confluence of Spring Creek and the Tennessee River and then linking that landing to Tuscumbia by rail. In 1832 Alabama chartered the expanded Tuscumbia, Courtland and Decatur Railroad, and by the end of 1834 the line between Decatur and Tuscumbia was in operation. The route was built through the labor of enslaved African Americans and was designed to move freight and passengers around the shoals. During Cherokee removal, that same transportation system became a tool of forced migration. National Park Service material identifies this line as the only railroad used in the Cherokee removal.
Before the Great Roundup of 1838
The railroad’s connection to Indian removal did not begin only after the mass roundup of 1838. National Park Service research notes that approximately 2,000 Cherokee, along with some Creek people, traveled in three detachments on the railroad during 1837 and 1838. One of the earliest documented movements came in March 1837, when a Cherokee detachment of roughly 466 people arrived in Decatur and began boarding trains for Tuscumbia. That earlier passage helps show that the line through present day Colbert County was already serving removal logistics before the worst and most famous phase of the Trail of Tears unfolded in 1838.
The Deas Detachment and the Passage to Tuscumbia Landing
The best documented summer 1838 movement through what is now Colbert County came with the detachment led by Lieutenant Edward Deas. This group left the camps above Ross’s Landing on June 6, 1838, with 489 people. Traveling by steamboat, the detachment came down the Tennessee River to Decatur, arriving on June 9. From there, the Cherokee were placed on train cars and carried west to Tuscumbia Landing. At the landing, most of the party boarded the steamboat Smelter and continued downstream toward Waterloo. Some late arrivals had to remain behind overnight and were taken the next morning by keelboats and a small steamboat so the group could reunite. The detachment then continued down the Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi, White, and Arkansas river system, reaching Fort Coffee on June 19. For a brief but crucial moment, Tuscumbia Landing in present day Sheffield became one of the last places where these Cherokee stepped off one mode of transport and onto another before continuing west.
The Human Reality Behind the Route
Official route summaries can make the trip seem mechanical, but primary voices show how harsh the journey could be even before the detachments reached north Alabama. Missionary Daniel S. Butrick wrote in June 1838 of overloaded flatboats at Ross’s Landing, saying the timbers began to crack under the weight of the people crowded aboard. Lieutenant Deas, writing of the early stage of the same water movement, described the danger of passing through rapids such as the Suck, where a steamboat and attached flats struck the bank with enough force to smash one of the boats. By the time detachments reached Decatur and Tuscumbia Landing, they had already endured crowding, fear, and hazardous river travel. The rail transfer around the shoals did not remove that suffering. It simply shifted it onto another part of the route.
Whiteley’s Detachment and the Waiting at the Landing
A second major summer passage through Tuscumbia Landing came with the detachment led by Lieutenant Robert H. K. Whiteley. This group of about 1,000 Cherokee followed much of the same path as Deas’s party. After coming downriver to Decatur, the detachment boarded the railroad for the short trip west to Tuscumbia Landing. The evidence shows that the journey there was not smooth. Separate transportation research notes that Cherokee were crowded into rail cars and that one Cherokee man named Chicken was killed after jumping from a car to retrieve his hat. Once Whiteley’s people reached Tuscumbia Landing, they were forced to wait there or nearby from June 22 to June 26 while boats were gathered to carry them onward. On June 27 they finally left the landing in flatboats, floated to Colbert’s Shoals and then to Waterloo, where the Smelter took them farther west. Low water later stranded the party in Arkansas, and the detachment had to finish part of its journey overland before disbanding in August. Tuscumbia Landing was therefore not just a transfer point. It was also a waiting ground where uncertainty and delay deepened the ordeal.
Tuscumbia Landing in the Wider Alabama Story
The story of Tuscumbia Landing fits into a larger Alabama geography of removal. The Encyclopedia of Alabama notes that several removal routes followed the Tennessee River through Alabama, passing Bellefont, Huntsville, Gunter’s Landing, Tuscumbia, and Waterloo. National Park Service interpretation similarly emphasizes that three Cherokee detachments totaling about 2,800 people traveled by river in 1838, while other detachments used mixed overland and water routes because drought and low water kept changing the practical options. The best documented link for present day Colbert County is still Tuscumbia Landing and the railroad transfer around the Muscle Shoals, especially for the Deas and Whiteley detachments. John Drew’s later water detachment used a canal near the shoals, and Captain G. S. Drane’s party went overland to Waterloo because river conditions had worsened. That makes Tuscumbia Landing one of several north Alabama removal nodes, but one of the most distinctive because of its rail connection.
What Remains at the Site
Today the site is identified by the National Park Service at the confluence of the Tennessee River and Spring Creek near the foot of Blackwell Road west of downtown Sheffield. Research tied to the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail notes that limestone foundations from the old landing, stone foundation walls from the depot, a section of old wagon road, and an abandoned railroad bed still survive there. The landing’s modern setting can make it easy to miss how important it once was, but the physical remnants matter because they tie the broad history of Cherokee removal to a specific place on the ground in present day Colbert County.
Why This History Matters
Tuscumbia Landing matters because it shows how removal depended not only on federal orders and military force but also on local infrastructure. Warehouses, landings, depots, tracks, locomotives, pilots, and boats all became part of the machinery that pushed Cherokee families out of their homeland. In what is now Colbert County, the Trail of Tears was not an abstract national event. It passed through a river landing, a railroad depot, and a transport corridor built to serve commerce and then turned toward removal. Remembering that history in this place restores some of the local reality that broad summaries often flatten. The landing near Sheffield was a gateway west, but for the Cherokee it was also a place of coercion, delay, fear, and irreversible loss.
Sources & Further Reading
National Archives and Records Administration. “Records Pertaining to Cherokee Removal, 1836–1839.” December 1, 2022. https://www.archives.gov/research/native-americans/cherokee-removal
National Archives and Records Administration. “The Cherokee Removal (‘Trail of Tears’), 1836–1839.” Reference Report no. 1000. https://www.archives.gov/files/research/native-americans/reference-reports/cherokee-removal-1836-39.pdf
National Archives and Records Administration. “Record Group 75: Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.” September 13, 2024. https://www.archives.gov/research/native-americans/bia
National Park Service. “Tuscumbia Landing.” https://www.nps.gov/places/tuscumbia-landing.htm
National Park Service. “The Tuscumbia, Courtland & Decatur Railroad: Transportation During the Cherokee Removal 1837–1839.” December 21, 2021. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-tuscumbia-courtland-decatur-railroad-transportation-during-the-cherokee-removal-1837-1839.htm
National Park Service. “Flatboats: Transportation During the Cherokee Removal 1837–1839.” https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/flatboats-transportation-during-the-cherokee-removal-1837-1839.htm
National Park Service. Transportation During the Cherokee Removal, 1837–1839. PDF. https://www.nps.gov/trte/learn/historyculture/upload/TRTE-Transportation-Booklet-FINAL-Section-508-small-2.pdf
National Park Service. Alabama Collections, Camps, Forts, Depots and Routes. PDF. https://www.nps.gov/trte/learn/historyculture/upload/Alabama-Collections-Camps-Forts-Depots-and-Routes-508.pdf
National Park Service. Historic and Historical Archaeological Resources of the Cherokee Trail of Tears. National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation Form. https://www.nps.gov/trte/learn/historyculture/upload/National-Register-of-Historic-Places-Multiple-Properties-508.pdf
Hill, Sarah H. “Cherokee Indian Removal.” Encyclopedia of Alabama. https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/cherokee-indian-removal/
“Colbert County.” Encyclopedia of Alabama. https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/colbert-county/
“Franklin County.” Encyclopedia of Alabama. https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/franklin-county/
“Tuscumbia.” Encyclopedia of Alabama. https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/tuscumbia/
United States. Office of Indian Affairs. Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. 1838. https://books.google.com/books/about/Annual_Report_of_the_Commissioner_of_Ind.html?id=ftcRAAAAYAAJ
United States. Office of Indian Affairs. Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. 1839. https://books.google.com/books/about/Annual_Report_of_the_Commissioner_of_Ind.html?id=ndcRAAAAYAAJ
Ross, John. The Papers of Chief John Ross: 1807–1839. Edited by Gary E. Moulton. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985. https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Papers_of_Chief_John_Ross_1807_1839.html?id=jZL6QgAACAAJ
Foreman, Grant. Indian Removal: The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1953. https://archive.org/details/indianremovalemi00fore
Perdue, Theda, and Michael D. Green. The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears. New York: Penguin Books, 2008. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/296364/the-cherokee-nation-and-the-trail-of-tears-by-theda-perdue-and-michael-d-green/
Rozema, Vicki, ed. Voices From the Trail of Tears. Winston-Salem, NC: Blair, 2003. https://blairpub.com/shop/p/voices-from-the-trail-of-tears
King, Duane H. The Cherokee Trail of Tears. Portland, OR: Graphic Arts Books, 2008. https://shop.visitcherokeenation.com/products/the-cherokee-trail-of-tears
Author Note: This story stood out to me because Tuscumbia Landing is often buried under broader Trail of Tears summaries even though it was a crucial transfer point in north Alabama. I wanted to keep the focus on the actual route records so the local ground of this history does not disappear beneath the larger national narrative.