Denver Public Library, Western History Collection [P-2134]

Horace Swartley Poley

Between 1830 and 1870, nearly seventy thousand Native Americans were relocated to Oklahoma from their homes in Georgia and other Southern states. Many had adopted a lifestyle similar to that of their white neighbors. For some, that included enslaving black people. At least ten thousand African Americans walked on the Trail of Tears, and 175 died on the way to an unfamiliar life on the American plains.