The Trail of Tears: a poem

The Trail of Tears
By Brian Childers ©1998

I look to the long road behind
My heart is heavy with my people’s sorrow
Tears of grief I weep - for all that we have lost
As we march ever farther from the land of our birth
On the Trail of Tears

Mile after mile and day after day
Our people are fewer with each rising sun
Disease and starvation they take their terrible toll
And though we suffer still we march on…
On the Trail of Tears

I watch my beloved weaken and fall
Upon the road like so many before…
With tears in my eyes I hold my wife to my breast
And in my arms she breathes her last…
On the Trail of Tears

Mile after mile and day after day
We march to a land promised us for all time
But I know that I can no longer go on
I know that is a land that I shall never see…
On the Trail of Tears

As my body - it falls to embrace the earth
My spirit - it soars to greet the sky
With my dying breath am I finally set free
To begin the very long journey towards home
On the Trail of Tears

CheyFire

3 Hawks

I smudged and clensed my home today. There seemed to be many things recently that had "attacked." Illness, things breaking down and causing unwanted repair costs.

Then I took the dogs and cats outside to play in the sunshine and watched something I have only seen once before. There were 3 hawks soaring and circling overhead higher and higher until they broke off in different directions one at a time.

I am not yet sure all that it means for me. I know the red tailed hawk signifies illumination and brings a message and the number three denotes past, present, and future.

It will be very fasinating to see what unfolds for me the next few weeks.

CheyFire

Cherokee Trail of Tears

The Cherokee's rapid acquisition of white culture did not protect them against the land hunger of the settlers. When gold was discovered on Cherokee land in Georgia, agitation for the removal of the Indians increased. In December 1835 the Treaty of New Echota, signed by a small minority of the Cherokee, ceded to the U.S. all their land east of the Mississippi River for $5,000,000.

The overwhelming majority of Cherokees repudiated the treaty and took their case to the Supreme Court of the United States. The court rendered a decision favourable to the Indians, declaring that Georgia had no jurisdiction over the Cherokees and no claim to their lands.

Georgia officials ignored the court's decision, and Pres. Andrew Jackson refused to enforce it. As a result, the Cherokees were evicted under the Indian Removal Act of 1830 by 7,000 troops commanded by Gen. Winfield Scott.

Some 15,000 Cherokees were first gathered into camps while their homes were plundered and burned by local residents. Then the Indians were sent west in groups of about 1,000, most on foot.

The eviction and forced march, which came to be known as the Trail of Tears, took place during the fall and winter of 1838-39 and was badly mismanaged. Inadequate food supplies led to terrible suffering, especially after frigid weather arrived. About 4,000 Cherokees died on the 116-day journey, many because the escorting troops refused to slow or stop so that the ill and exhausted could recover.

The photo above was taken along the trail of tears. I plan to do a later section more indepth on the Native holocost and murder that occurred as men became greedy for gold and power hungry for the land. All  Native life, man, woman, old, or newborn, was seen as worthless and not even permitted the right to live or even to be used as slaves.

CheyFire

Cherokee Part 3

After 1800 the Cherokee were remarkable for their assimilation of white culture. The Cherokee formed a government modelled on that of the U.S. Under Chief Junaluska they aided Andrew Jackson against the Creek (see Creek War), particularly in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. They adopted white methods of farming, weaving, and home building.

Perhaps most remarkable of all was the syllabary of the Cherokee language, developed in 1821 by Sequoyah, a half-blooded Cherokee who had served with the U.S. Army in the Creek War. The syllabary--a system of writing in which each symbol represents a syllable--was so successful that almost the entire tribe became literate within a short time.

A written constitution was adopted, and religious literature flourished, including translations from the Christian scriptures. An Indian newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, the first of its kind, began publication in February 1828.

But the Cherokee's rapid acquisition of white culture did not protect them against the land hunger of the settlers. When gold was discovered on Cherokee land in Georgia, agitation for the removal of the Indians increased. In December 1835 the Treaty of New Echota, signed by a small minority of the Cherokee, ceded to the U.S. all their land east of the Mississippi River for $5,000,000. The overwhelming majority of Cherokees repudiated the treaty and took their case to the Supreme Court of the United States. The court rendered a decision favourable to the Indians, declaring that Georgia had no jurisdiction over the Cherokees and no claim to their lands.

Georgia officials ignored the court's decision, and Pres. Andrew Jackson refused to enforce it. As a result, the Cherokees were evicted under the Indian Removal Act of 1830 by 7,000 troops commanded by Gen. Winfield Scott. Some 15,000 Cherokees were first gathered into camps while their homes were plundered and burned by local residents.

CheyFire

Cherokee Part 2

Cherokee life and culture greatly resembled that of the Creek and other Indians of the Southeast.  When first encountered by Europeans in the mid-16th century, the Cherokee possessed a variety of stone implements including knives, axes, and chisels.

They wove baskets, made pottery, and cultivated corn (maize), beans, and squash. Deer, bear, and elk furnished meat and clothing. Cherokee dwellings were windowless log cabins roofed with bark, with one door and a smokehole in the roof. A typical Cherokee town had between 30 and 60 such houses and a council house where general meetings were held and the sacred fire burned. An important religious ceremony was the Busk, or Green Corn, festival, a first-fruits and new-fires rite.

The Cherokee wars and treaties, a series of battles and agreements around the period of the U.S. War of Independence, effectively reduced Cherokee power and landholdings in Georgia, eastern Tennessee, and western North and South Carolina, freeing this territory for speculation and settlement by the white man. Numbering about 22,000 tribesmen in 200 villages throughout the area, the Cherokee had since the beginning of the 18th century remained friendly to the British in both trading and military affairs.

CheyFire

The Cherokee Nation Part 1

The Cherokee Nation - largest of the Five Civilized Tribes of the Southeast - is a people of Iroquoian lineage.

The Cherokee, who called themselves 'Ani'-Yun' wiya' - 'Principal People' - the 'Keetoowah' - 'people of Kituhwa' - or Tsalagi from their own name for the Cherokee Nation - migrated to the Southeast from the Great Lakes Region. They commanded more than 40,000 square miles in the southern Appalachians by 1650 with a population estimated at 22,500.

The Cherokee Native Americans were a large tribe who lived in the Smokey Mountain region including Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama. Their language came from the Iroquois. The Cherokee were divided into seven clans. People in a clan had to marry outside of his or her clan. Then, the male lived with his wife's family. Before the Europeans came over, they lived together in square houses made of bark, wood, earth, and clay. Later, they lived in log cabins.

Their economy consisted of the cultivation of corn, beans, and squash. Also, hunting and slash-and-burn agriculture was a large part of their economy. Their only domesticated animal was the dog, until the Europeans brought horses over.

The Cherokees held many ceremonies. One of their ceremonies marked the changing of rulers between the Red and White Orginizartion. Another ceremony consisted of nightlong dancing before going to war. After war, they had rituals of purification before they returned to their daily routine.

For leisure, the Cherokees played a game with rackets and a ball. Ritual fasting and bleeding was associated with the game. Along with this they had ceremonies called harvest feast and an observance of the new year.

CheyFire