Map_Illustrating_the_Plan_of_the_Defenses_of_the_Western_and_Southwestern_Frontier_-_NARA_-_77452208

Cessions Southeastern Tribes- Andrew Jackson

The steamboat ''Monmouth'' disaster of October 31, 1837, killed approximately 311 Muscogee people who were being forcibly removed from their ancestral homeland in the southern United States to the Indian Territory, in present-day

Oklahoma Oklahoma (; Choctaw language, Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the nor ...

. The deaths were the result of a nighttime boat collision on the Mississippi River just north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The U.S. Army ("the Alabama Emigrating Co. through the agency of Col. W. A. Campbell") hired three steamboats at New Orleans, the ''Yazoo'', the ''John Newton'', and the ''Monmouth'', to move the "Upper Creeks" band of Muscogee to the

Great Plains The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, an ...

. Some 700 passengers were put on board the ''Monmouth''. En route from New Orleans to the Arkansas River, near Prophet Island (now Profit Island, ), in drizzly dark conditions, the negligently crewed ''Monmouth'' collided with a steamer called ''Warren'' that was towing a ship called ''Trenton'' or ''Tremont''. The steamboat was apparently violating traditional navigation rules of the river and veered unexpectedly into the path of the ''Warren''. According to a contemporary report "the hull sank and the cabin floated downstream in two parts." The destruction of the ''Monmouth'' resulted in the drowning deaths of the ship's fireman, the ship's bar-keeper, and an estimated 311 Native American passengers. The owners of the steamboat said there were 693 passengers aboard and the loss of life was only 230 with "many of the survivors badly injured." The survivors were picked up by the ''Yazoo'', the ''John Newton'', and the ''Warren''. The bodies of the Muscogee dead were buried in mass graves near Port Allen. The ''Monmouth'' was reportedly a little over a year old, meaning she was launched sometime in 1836. The death toll from the ''Monmouth'' would stand as the Mississippi River's worst transportation disaster until the American Civil War. The loss of life in the ''Monmouth'' disaster contributed to the overall death toll of the Trail of Tears. Dave Barnett, a Muscogee who gave one of the oral histories from the WPA Indian-Pioneer History project recorded in the 1930s, retold their experience of the disaster:

References

{{reflist 1837 disasters in the United States Maritime incidents in October 1837 Muscogee Shipwrecks of the Mississippi River Transportation disasters in Louisiana Trail of Tears 1837 in Louisiana

See also

References