"The Trail Where They Cried"
("Nunna daul Tsuny")
| In one of the saddest episodes of our brief history, men, women, and children were taken from their land, herded into makeshift forts with minimal facilities and food, then forced to march a thousand miles(Some made part of the trip by boat in equally horrible conditions). Under the generally indifferent army commanders, human losses for the first groups of Cherokee removed were extremely high. John Ross made an urgent appeal to Scott, requesting that the general let his people lead the tribe west. General Scott agreed. Ross organized the Cherokee into smaller groups and let them move separately through the wilderness so they could forage for food. Although the parties under Ross left in early fall and arrived in Oklahoma during the brutal winter of 1838-39, he significantly reduced the loss of life among his people. About 4000 Cherokee died as a result of the removal. |
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 was stolen, but
the Cherokee would not let the wagons steal his soul.
As they passed the village of the whiteman people lined the
trail to watch them pass,At first they laughed at how foolish the
Cherokee was to walk with the empty wagons rattling behind him,
The Cherokee did not turn his head at their laughter, and soon
their was no laughter, And as the Cherokee walked farther from
his mountain home, he begin 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 to die on the Trail.
The soldiers said they could only bury their dead every three days.
For the soldiers wished and to hurry and be finished with the Cherokees.
The soldiers said the wagon could carry the dead but the Cherokees 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, his father.
The mother carried her dead baby.
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 ...
for it sounds romantic and speaks of the
sorrow of those who stood by the Trail.
A death march is not romantic.
You cannot write poetry about a death - stiffened baby in his
mothers arms staring at the jilting 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 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 the 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.