( Art work by Su)
Brief History of The Trail of Tears
Since first contact with European explorers in the 1500s, the Cherokee Nation has been recognized as one of the most progressive among American Indian tribes. Before contact, Cherokee culture had developed and thrived for almost 1,000 years in the southeastern United States--the lower Appalachian states of Georgia, Tennessee, North and South Carolina, and parts of Kentucky and Alabama. Life of the traditional Cherokee remained unchanged as late as 1710, which is marked as the beginning of Cherokee trade with the whites. White influence came slowly in the Cherokee Country, but the changes were swift and dramatic. The period of frontier contact from 1540-1786, was marked by white expansion and the cession of Cherokee lands to the colonies in exchange for trade goods. After contact, the Cherokees acquired many aspects of the white neighbors with whom many had intermarried. Soon they had shaped a government and a society that matched the most "civilized" of the time.
Migration from the original Cherokee Nation began in the early 1800s as Cherokees wary of white encroachment moved west and settled in other areas of the country's vast frontier. White resentment of the Cherokees had been building as other needs were seen for the Cherokee homelands. One of those needs was the desire for gold that had been discovered in Georgia. Besieged with gold fever and with a thirst for expansion, the white communities turned on their Indian neighbors and the U.S. Government decided it was time for the Cherokees to leave behind their farms, their land and their homes.
A group known as the Old Settlers had moved in 1817 to lands given to them in Arkansas, where again they established a government and a peaceful way of life. Later they, too, were forced into Indian Territory.
Once an ally of the Cherokees, President Andrew Jackson authorized the Indian Removal Act of 1830, following the recommendation of President James Monroe in his final address to Congress in 1825. Jackson sanctioned an attitude that had persisted for many years among many white immigrants. Even Thomas Jefferson, who often cited the Great Law of Peace of the Iroquois Confederacy as the model for the U.S. Constitution, supported Indian Removal as early as 1802.
The displacement of native people was not wanting for eloquent opposition. Senators Daniel Webster and Henry Clay spoke out against removal. Reverend Samuel Worcester, missionary to the Cherokees, challenged Georgia's attempt to extinguish Indian title to land in the state, winning the case before the Supreme Court.
Worcester vs. Georgia, 1832, and Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia, 1831, are considered the two most influential decisions in Indian law. In effect, the opinions challenged the constitutionality of the Removal Act and the US. Government precedent for unapplied Indian-federal law was established by Jackson's defiant enforcement of the removal.
The U.S. Government used the Treaty of New Echota in 1835 to justify the removal. The treaty, signed by about 100 Cherokees and known as the Treaty Party, relinquished all lands east of the Mississippi River in exchange for land in Indian Territory and the promise of money, livestock, and various provisions and tools.
When the pro-removal Cherokee leaders signed that treaty, they also signed their own death warrants. The Cherokee National Council earlier had passed a law that called for the death penalty for anyone who agreed to give up tribal land. The signing and the removal led to bitter factionalism and the deaths of most of the Treaty Party leaders in Indian Territory.
Opposition to the removal was led by Chief John Ross, a mixed-blood of Scottish and one-eighth Cherokee descent. The Ross party and most Cherokees opposed the New Echota Treaty, but Georgia and the U.S. Government prevailed and used it as justification to force almost all of the 17,000 Cherokees from the southeastern homelands.
Under orders from President Jackson, the U.S. Army began enforcement of the Removal Act. Around 3,000 Cherokees were rounded up in the summer of 1838 and loaded onto boats that traveled the Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi, and Arkansas Rivers into Indian Territory. Many were held in prison camps awaiting their fate. In the winter of 1838-39, 14,000 were marched 1,200 miles through Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas into rugged Indian Territory.
An estimated 4,000 died from hunger, exposure and disease. The journey became an eternal memory as the "trail where they cried" for the Cherokees and other removed tribes. Today it is remembered as the Trail of Tears.
Those who were able to hide in the mountains of North Carolina or who had agreed to exchange Cherokee citizenship for U.S. citizenship later emerged as the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians of Cherokee, N.C. The descendants of the survivors of the Trail of Tears comprise today's Cherokee Nation with membership of more than 165,000
"Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking."
"The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us."
Black Elk - Oglala Sioux
The growing and dying of the moon reminds us of our ignorance which comes and goes- but when the moon is full it is as if the Great Spirit were upon the whole world.
-Black Elk, Oglala Sioux
"May you always walk in Beauty."
Ancient Prayer
Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
All of this Creation is Sacred
And so do not forget.Every Dawn as it comes is a holy event and everyday is holy, for the light comes from "WAKAN-TANKA" And Also you Must remeber that the Two-leggeds and All other peoples who Stand upon this Earth are Sacred and Should be Treated as Such
"White Buffalo Woman" Sioux Sacred Woman, quoted by Black Elk , (Oglala Sioux)1947.
The life of an Indian is like the wings of the air. That is why you notice the hawk knows how to get his prey. The Indian is like that. The hawk swoops down on its prey; so does the Indian. In his lament he is like an animal. For instance, the coyote is sly; so is the Indian. The eagle is the same. That is why the Indian is always feathered up: he is a relative to the wings of the air.
- Black Elk, Oglala
I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heapen and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young.And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people dream died there. It was a beautiful dream. . . the nations hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.
-Black Elk, Lakota
You have noticed that everything as Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round..... The Sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nest in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours... Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.
-Black Elk, Oglala
"I cured with the power that came through me. Of course, it was not I who cured, it was the power from the Outer World, the visions and the ceremonies had only made me like a hole through which the power could come to the two-leggeds."
Black Elk, Oglala
"If I thought that I was doing it myself, the hole would close up and no power could come through. Then everything I could do would be foolish."
Black Elk, Oglala
"Our wise men are called Fathers, and they truly sustain that character. Do you call yourselves Christians? Does the religion of Him who you call your Savior inspire your spirit, and guide your practices? Surely not. It is recorded of him that a bruised reed he never broke. Cease then to call yourselves Christians, lest you declare to the world your hypocrisy. Cease too to call other nations savage, when you are tenfold more the children of cruelty than they. No person among us desires any other reward for performing a brave and worthwhile action, but the consciousness of having served his nation. I bow to no man for I am considered a prince among my own people. But I will gladly shake your hand."
Joseph Brant to King George III
Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea), Mohawk - 1742-1807
When I was young I walked all over this country, east and west, and saw no other people than the Apaches. After many summers I walked again and found another race of people had come to take it. How is it? Why is it the Apaches wait to die- that they carry their lives on their fingernails? They roam over the hills and the plains and want the heavens to fall on them. The apaches were once a great nation; they are now but few, because of this they want to die and so carry their nails on their fingernails.
-Cochise, Chiricahua Apache
"You must speak straight so that your words may go as sunlight into our hearts. Speak Americans.. I will not lie to you; do not lie to me."
Cochise, (Hardwood) Chiracahua Apache (1812-1874)
(Tashunka Witco, Tashunca-Uitco, "his horse is crazy").
These are the words of a great Indian hero. Crazy Horse was born in 1844 as an Oglala Sioux. He was the son of an Oglala medicine man of the same name and his Brule wife, the sister of Spotted Tail. His first name was Curly, after his father, but after his first war-deed at a young age gave him the name Crazy Horse. He had light skin and hair with a very quiet manner. He was not half white as some say, nor was he a captured white boy as others say, many Indians of his tribe were just like him. He also had unusual spiritual powers which others called him "Strange One". Crazy Horse's real heroism came in 1876, when he led the Sioux to the Battle of the Rosebud and the Little Big Horn. On June 17, they conquered General Crook and his men. Then eight days later along with 2500 other Sioux and Cheyenne at the Little Big Horn. Some say it lasted only ten minutes as Crazy Horse wiped out General Custer and his men. Crazy Horse finally, voluntarily surrendered in 1877 and was killed by a soldier as he was forced into a jail cell on September 5 of that year.
A gigantic figure if Crazy horse is being sculptured out of mountain in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Destroying a great piece of nature is the way of a Native American. Read what he says below:
"We did not ask you white men to come here. The Great Spirit gave us this country as a home. You had yours. We did not interfere with you. The Great Spirit gave us plenty of land to live on, and buffalo, deer, antelope and other game. But you have come here; you are taking my land from me; you are killing off our game, so it is hard for us to live. Now, you tell us to work for a living, but the Great Spirit did not make us to work, but to live by hunting. You white men can work if you want to. We do not interfere with you, and again you say why do you not become civilized? We do not want your civilization! We would live as our fathers did, and their fathers before them." . . . .
Crazy Horse Tashunca-uitco (1849-1877)(1845?-1877)
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