Fallen Phoenix: Testament to the Lost Cherokee Nation
By Helga Ross
Last edited: Wednesday, April 16, 2003
Posted: Monday, February 25, 2002
Walking the Trail:
One Man's Journey Along the Cherokee Trail of Tears (1991), by Jerry
Ellis, is something a little different. It's a moving spiritual and
historical exploration, a personal reflection, and a travelogue,
about one of the sorriest sagas in America's treatment of its Native
Americans. Jerry's odyssey, and his sharing of it, gave impetus to my
own deep - until then unidentified - desires. To travel and write. To
conduct my own physical and intellectual odyssey of this great
Continent, to explore and communicate what I learn - and have
learned.
I look back today with a sense of accomplishment. Already, I have
made some strides in fulfilling my ambition, my dreams. October 2000
found me in Georgia, fulfilling twin objectives - visiting
Chickamauga Battlefield and the historic site that was The Cherokee
Nation. Where Jerry's odyssey ended, mine began....
I walked the silent streets of New Echota, the now empty capital, and
imagined the staccato laughter of children playing there, as, once,
they had. I imagined the hustle and bustle of what once had been
their prosperous, peaceful, English-style community.
At New Echota rested the Civilized Tribe's hopes to maintain a
sovereign Nation. Here the Christianized Cherokee established a
capital in 1825 and fought to stay, not with guns, but with the white
men's printed page, laws and courts. The US Supreme Court twice
upheld their rights in appeals against the State of Georgia, but the
Federal government refused to uphold the Court's decision. [Chief
Justice] John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce
it," was President Andrew Jackson's response re: Worcester v.
Georgia. Thus began the forced removal of the Cherokee from their
last Eastern homeland.
I read the following painful account of events, for the first time -
abbreviated for you, here - in the Site's Museum, prior to venturing
through the well-maintained grounds and faithfully reconstructed
official buildings and private dwellings:
"Birthday Story of Private John G. Burnett, Captain Abraham
McClellan's Company, 2nd Regiment, 2nd Brigade, Mounted Infantry,
Cherokee Indian Removal, 1838-39.
Children:
This is my birthday, December 11, 1890, I am eighty years old
today....
The removal of Cherokee Indians from their life long homes in the
year of 1838 found me a young man in the prime of life and a Private
soldier in the American Army...in May, 1838, (I) witnessed the
execution of the most brutal order in the History of American
Warfare. I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their
homes, and driven at the bayonet point into the stockades. And in the
chill of a drizzling rain on an October morning I saw them loaded
like cattle or sheep into six hundred and forty-five wagons and
started toward the west.
One can never forget the sadness and solemnity of that morning. Chief
John Ross led in prayer and when the bugle sounded and the wagons
started rolling many of the children rose to their feet and waved
their little hands good-by to their mountain homes, knowing they were
leaving them forever. Many of these helpless people did not have
blankets and many of them had been driven from home barefooted.
On the morning of November the 17th we encountered a terrific sleet
and snow storm with freezing temperatures and from that day until we
reached the end of the fateful journey on March the 26th, 1839, the
sufferings of the Cherokees were awful. The trail of the exiles was a
trail of death. They had to sleep in the wagons and on the ground
without fire. And I have known as many as twenty-two of them to die
in one night of pneumonia due to ill treatment, cold, and exposure.
... The long painful journey to the west ended March 26th, 1839, with
four-thousand silent graves reaching from the foothills of the Smoky
Mountains to what is known as Indian territory in the West. And
covetousness on the part of the white race was the cause of all that
the Cherokees had to suffer.
Men working in the fields were arrested and driven to the stockades.
Women were dragged from their homes by soldiers whose language they
could not understand. Children were often separated from their
parents and driven into the stockades with the sky for a blanket and
the earth for a pillow.
...Murder is murder, and somebody must answer. Somebody must explain
the streams of blood that flowed in the Indian country in the summer
of 1838. Somebody must explain the 4000 silent graves that mark the
trail of the Cherokees to their exile. I wish I could forget it all,
but the picture of 645 wagons lumbering over the frozen ground with
their cargo of suffering humanity still lingers in my memory.
Let the historian of a future day tell the sad story with its sighs,
its tears and dying groans. Let the great Judge of all the earth
weigh our actions and reward us according to our work."
My rational mind submits to the awful truth yet will never truly
comprehend, accept such callousness. I feel for the hapless victims
and for this troubled fellow and his tortured testament - a human
being and man with a conscience - one who did what he could to help
and give comfort, in his capacity. And who was haunted by his
recollections.
New Echota is picturesque, and hauntingly peaceful. A pleasant place
to be. According to the advertising, New Echota State Park now houses
one of the finest collections of original homes in the nation from
the time period. Across the road from the reclaimed, official, State
Historic Site, I noted the golf course which is apparently comprised
of more of the former Indian property - that of it's most prosperous
citizens. I visited most of the reconstructed historic structures:
the Supreme Courthouse, where Cherokee hopes were upheld, but
betrayed; the Council House; a common Cherokee cabin; and got my
picture taken on the porch of the famous print shop, Cherokee
Phoenix, where the world's first Indian language newspaper was
published weekly from 1828-1834. I strolled along the main
thoroughfare and the pathway to woods and fields.
Jerry Ellis, you brought me to this place, hundreds of miles from my
home. The power of words to move one.... Here are a few of his,
which, remembering my own brief walk upon these special grounds, I
want to share:
"...I see myself in flashes along the Trail. Birds, trees, and
graves. Rivers and strangers, kind as songs themselves. My tent in
moonlight. Smokerising to the stars.... I seek a vision. But it never
comes... I am only a man. Not a myth and not a hero. Only a man on a
hill in the night. But as the truth seeps in, I find perhaps a
greater power through it than through a vision. I am only a man, but
what a fantastic creature. He seeks the supernatural while the
extraordinary is all around him. I walked nine hundred miles and
entered into an odyssey that will feed me for the rest of my life.
My
faith in God and man has stepped to the next plane and I made it home
save and sound. I literally watched a dream come true...And yet..I'm
concerned that what I did to unite me with others will, in a way,
separate me from them. How can anyone really know what I experienced
on the Trail, if he hasn't done it himself?"
Jerry, fear not, for you have reached many of your readers, including
me. We have been touched by your journey and your soul-search. Some
of us have begun our own....
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