Government soldiers rode before them, on each side
of them, & behind them. The Cherokee man 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, 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 taken away, but the Cherokee would not let the wagons steal is soul. As they passed the village of the white man, people lined the trail to watch him pass. At first they laughed at how foolish was the Cherokee to walk with 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 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 the dead every three days for the soldiers wished to hurry and be finished with the Cherokees.
The soldiers said the wagons would 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 the in his arms the next morning and carried her. The husband carried his dead wife. The son carried his dead mother and 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 look at the people who lined 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, the death stiffened baby in his mothers arms staring at the jolting sky with eyes that will not close while his mother walks. You cannot sing songs of fathers laying down the burden of his wife's corpse to lie by it through the night and to rise and carry it again the next 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 Trail of Tears. |
