Byline: Brittany Harlow/Verified News Network
The following story is a republished story from Verified News Network.
PORT ALLEN, La. – An annual lecture series in Louisiana is shining light on a little-known tragedy that claimed the lives of hundreds of Mvskoke people during the forced removal.
The Ethel Claiborne Dameron Lecture Series is held annually in memory of the founder of the West Baton Rouge Historical Association and West Baton Rouge Museum. This year’s event centered on the dedication of a historical marker honoring the 311 lives lost in the tragic wreck of the steamboat Monmouth, which happened on the Mississippi River near Profit Island on October 31, 1837.
Researchers say the Monmouth, headed upriver, was forcibly transporting 693 Mvskoke people to Oklahoma on what is now known as the Road of Misery when it collided with a steamer.
Saturday’s dedication programming included two speakers, Native author and historian J.D. Colbert (Muscogee Creek, Chickasaw, Cherokee and Citizen Potawatomi) and award-winning Baton Rouge researcher Yvonne Lewis Day.
“This historical marker that commemorates that tragic event in Mvskoke history is a major step forward in honoring and remembering those lost,” Colbert said. “We Mvskokes would say Pum Vcule Vrakkuecetv, To Honor Our Ancestors. We will not forget.”
Day spent two decades studying the Monmouth tragedy. Her research found the Monmouth was over capacity when it collided with another ship during poor weather conditions, and the crew may have also been drunk.
Those lost are still buried in mass graves nearby.
“We can’t sing your names individually,” Day said during the dedication. “But in my heart I sing for them all, as a memory.”
Day’s research is supported by second-hand accounts recorded in the Indian Pioneer Papers, digitized by the University of Oklahoma Western History Collection.
“The officers in charge of the ship became intoxicated and even induced some of the Indians to drink,” Thomas Barnett relayed from David Barnett a hundred years later. “This created an uproar and turmoil.”
“We saw a night ship coming down the stream. We could distinguish these ships as they had lights. Many of those on board our ship tried to tell the officers to give the command to stay to one side so that the night ship could pass on by. It was then that it seemed that the ship was just turned loose because it was taking a zig-zag course in the water until it rammed right into the center of the night boat.”
“Then there was the screaming of the children, men, women, mothers and fathers when the ship began to sink.”
The new Monmouth Marker stands 10 miles from the museum, at the intersection of North River Road and Section Road.
Brian Falcon is the chair of the Historic Preservation Committee for the West Baton Rouge Historical Association, which sponsored the marker.
He said its presence finally sets a physical point where a visitor can place him or herself relative to the disaster and reflect on those events.
“As you well know, the Monmouth passengers were being dishonorably and forcefully relocated,” Falcon said. “To add further injury, they were needlessly endangered resulting in many of their deaths in a place far from their homeland. Even though they weren’t from West Baton Rouge, their dying on our soil made them part of our people. We honor them as part of our historic family as they deserve to be.”
Falcon said he hopes the marker will serve as a stopping point for members of the Muscogee Nation journeying to connect to and from their ancestral homelands.
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