Native Trail of Tears I

¶ … Native Trail of Tears

I am a Cherokee woman; you may call me "Many Tears." I walked 850 miles during the Cherokee Removal in 1838, after white soldiers forced me from my home. It seems our ancestral lands in what the white men call Georgia were in the way of the white man's progress, and so our people were uprooted at gunpoint and led on foot to new homes in "Indian Territory" (what is now called Oklahoma). We suffered many hardships and indignities on this journey. I myself lost my husband and two children during the journey.

We were forced to leave our homes in late fall. Soldiers came and forced us to leave. I left all of my possessions behind, including my baskets, cooking pots, and blankets. Many of my people on the trail were barefoot, and many had left their blankets behind. The soldiers guarded us as if we were prisoners; there was no hope of escape. We slept on the ground without fires for warmth. My youngest son was the first to die. He had the white man's disease pneumonia, and one night he went to sleep under a wagon and did not awaken. We huddled together for warmth, but it was not enough. Disease and starvation plagued the journey, and snow and ice followed us until we arrived at our destination in March of 1839. My oldest son died of dysentery after we had been marching for six weeks, and my husband died a month before we reached our destination. Disease ran through our people like wildfire, while others were simply to young or old to make the journey and gave up, to die alone by the side of the road. Some of the soldiers were kind to us, but others brutalized us and tormented the young women. My young daughter survived the trip, and together, we are trying to build a new life in the Indian Country. I will never forget the forced march in the coldest part of winter, when so many of my people died. The rest of you should not forget, as well.