If you’re talking about the Cherokee, it was a bad chapter in American history, and no quesiton about it. But they were not largely Catholic. They were, and are, mostly Baptist. Some Cherokee really did go through what you’re describing, which is one of the reasons historical revisionists now condemn Andrew Jackson. Some were wealthy and arrived in carriages or on the rivers, with their black slaves. The Cherokee stood with the Confederacy in the Civil War.
The Cherokee were not native to Missouri, though the Trail of Tears passed through here. Countless of them escaped into the hills and intermarried with the white settlers. Cherokee “blood” is very widespread in the southern Ozarks.
The “native” Indians here when the Louisiana Purchase occurred were the Osage, a northern tribe that established itself in the Missouri Valley and destroyed the former tribes (probably Caddoan) living in the Ozarks so the Osage would have this for their hunting preserve. It’s the only known genocide that actually took place here.
When eastern tribes began moving into the area and wiping out the game, the Osage left on their own and resettled in Oklahoma. Later, they became very wealthy because their “reservation” is in the oil-rich Anadarko Basin.
