Ryan Spring

They were efficient.

At the cost of our lives, they were very efficient at moving people quickly and without remorse.

Right.

And so in 1832, we see a cholera epidemic happening.

hit the United States for the first time.

And so it comes up through New Orleans, it hits Vicksburg, it hits Memphis, and it continues to St.

Louis.

And Choctaw people are right in the middle of this epidemic.

So now they're loaded into cramped spaces and camps on steamboats, and they're contracting cholera and they're dying.

The first thing they came to was that they were promised through the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek

supplies and everything that was needed to reset up our communities.

However, because of the horrible winters that were happening, there was a lot of rainfall and floods were killing crops in Oklahoma.

So the first two years, 1831 and 1832, were miserable for Choctaw people.

And there was a lot of starvation after coming off the trail.

Government rations were not supplied as they were supposed to be because the government was trying to save money from all

the funds they had spent on the removal.

And so there's one instance where there's a removal party that gets off the trail and they are given spoiled pork.

And so those people starving ate that spoiled meat and they died from it.

And then you have disease that's also going through the communities.

You still have cholera.