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Fallen Phoenix: Testament to the Lost Cherokee Nation
By Helga Ross
Last
edited: Wednesday, April 16, 2003
Posted: Monday, February 25, 2002
Writer, spiritual traveler, Jerry Ellis touched me with his story "Walking the Trail: One Man's Journey on the Trail of Tears". Where his odyssey ends, mine begins....
Jerry Ellis, you brought me to this place, hundreds of miles from my home. The power of words to move one....
Helga's Heartlines: A Journal
Saturday February 17, 2001
Newmarket, Ontario
On a summer day, several years ago, I, lover of the printed word, chanced upon a publication that has proved to be serendipitous in my life. I was making my way toward the American Civil War section of my regional public library when I saw it. The book, with an appealing yellow jacket and provocative title, caught my attention and lured me off to Travel in the Southern United States. Sidetracked and intrigued, I grabbed it, spontaneously.
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....
Post Script: As I write this, an unforseen incredible connection - coincidence - has occurred for me - one I did not realize, before. I discover that this author has traveled and written another volume - of all things - on my favorite subject, the American Civil War, Marching Through Georgia; My Walk With Sherman. I must get my hands on it.
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