The Trail of Tears
refers to the forced relocation in 1838 of the Cherokee Native American tribe
to the Western United States, which resulted in the deaths of an estimated
4,000 Cherokee. In the Cherokee language, the event is called Nu na hi du na
tlo hi lui—"Trail where they Cried." The Cherokee were not the only
Native Americans forced to emigrate during this era, and so the phrase
"Trail of Tears" is sometimes used to refer to similar events endured
by other Indian peoples, especially among the "Five Civilized
Tribes."
The
Education of Little Tree by Forest Carter, 1976
Granma and Granpa
wanted me to know of the past, for “If ye don’t know the past, then ye will not
have a future. If ye don’t know where your people have been, then ye won’t know
where your people are going.” And so they told me most of it.
How the Cherokee had
farmed the rich valleys and held their mating dances in the spring when life
was planted in the ground; when the buck and doe, the cock and peahen exulted
in the creation parts they played.
How their harvest
festivals were held in the villages as frost turned the pumpkins, reddened the
persimmon and hardened the corn. How they prepared for the winter hunts and
pledged themselves to The Way.
How the government
soldiers came, and told them to sign the paper. Told them the paper meant that
the new white settlers would know where they could settle and where they would
not take land of the Cherokee. And after they had signed it, more government
soldiers came with guns and long knives fixed on their guns. The soldiers said
the paper had changed its words. The words now said that the Cherokee must give
up his valleys, his homes and his mountains. He must go far toward the setting
sun, where the government had other land for the Cherokee, land that the white
man did not want.
How the government
soldiers came, and ringed a big valley with their guns, and at night with their
campfires. They put the Cherokees in the ring. They brought Cherokees in from
other mountains and valleys, in bunches like cattle, and put them in the ring.
After a long time of
this, when they had most of the Cherokees, they brought wagons and mules and
told the Cherokees they could ride to the land of the setting sun. The
Cherokees had nothing left. But they would not ride, and so they saved nothing.
You could not see it or wear it or eat if, but they save something; and they
would not ride. They walked.
Government soldiers
rode before them, on each side of them, behind them. The Cherokee men walked
and looked straight ahead and would not look down, nor at the soldiers. Their
women and their children followed in their footsteps and would not look at the
soldiers.
Far behind them, the
empty wagons rattled and rumbled and served no use. The wagons could not steal
the soul of the Cherokee. The land was stolen from him, his home; but the
Cherokee would not let the wagons steal his soul.
As they passed the
villages of the white man, people lined the trail to watch them pass. At first,
they laughed at how foolish was the Cherokee to walk with the empty wagons
rattling behind him. The Cherokee did not turn his head at their laughter, and
soon there was no laughter.
And as the Cherokee
walked farther from his mountains, he began to die. His soul did not die, nor
did it weaken. It was the very young and the very old and the sick.
At first the soldiers
let them stop to bury their dead; but then, more died – by the hundreds – by
the thousands. More than a third of them were to die on the Trail. The soldiers
said they could only bury their dead every three days; for the soldiers wished
to hurry and be finished with the Cherokee. The soldiers said the wagons would
carry the dead, but the Cherokee would not put his dead in the wagons. He
carried them. Walking.
The little boy
carried his dead baby sister, and slept by her at night on the ground. He
lifted her in his arms in the morning, and carried her.
The husband carried
his dead wife. The son carried his dead mother. The mother carried her dead
babe. They carried them in their arms. And walked. And they did not turn their
heads to look at the soldiers, nor to look at the people who lined the sides of
the Trail to watch them pass. Some of the people cried. But the Cherokee did
not cry. Not on the outside, for the Cherokee would not let them see his soul;
as he would not ride in the wagons.
And so they called it
the Trail of Tears. Not because the Cherokee cried; for he did not. They called
it the Trail of Tears for it sounds romantic and speaks of sorrow of those who
stood by the Trail. A death march is not romantic.
You cannot write
poetry about the death-stiffened baby in his mother’s arms, staring at the
jolting sky with eyes that will not close, while his mother walks.
You cannot sing songs
of the father laying down the burden of his wife’s corpse, to lie by it through
the night and to rise and carry it again in the morning – and tell his oldest
son to carry the body of his youngest. And do not look nor speak nor cry nor
remember the mountains.
It would not be a
beautiful song. And so they call it the Trail of Tears.
We always called
Oklahoma “the Nations” for that is what it was supposed to be, until it was
taken from the Indians and made a state.
