In Memoriam

On this day 188 years ago, May 28, 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, which led to the deaths of over 1/4 of the total Cherokee population and thousands more from Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole, Delaware, Shawnee, and Osage nations. The Cherokee fought this act in Congress and in the courts, all the way to the Supreme Court, in fact, where the Court ruled against Jackson and found the Cherokee a "sovereign nation." Jackson famously taunted the Court with their inability to enforce that decision and sent the Army in to round up the Cherokee, imprison them in internment camps, and forcibly drive them across the country to Indian Territory.

In memory of my ancestors, here is a poem to mark this dark day in American history.

INDIAN REMOVAL CARTOGRAPHY

“I fought through the War Between the States and have seen many men shot, but the Cherokee Removal was the cruelest work I ever knew.”
— Georgia soldier who participated in the removal

It’s an old map,

looks hand-drawn.

Starting in Georgia,

North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama,

a broad swath of territory

belonging to the Cherokee,

yet shrunken so

from where the first Europeans found them,

that kidney-shaped province

splayed across the states

contracts

down to these thin lines

marking the paths they were forced to travel.

This old-looking map

has been modified for the modern scholar

with gray-banded place names highlighted.

When you hover a computer mouse

over one of these shaded names,

pertinent facts appear.

From New Echota, capital of the Cherokee Nation

in 1838, now a state park,

to Fort Butler, one of five North Carolina stockades

where Cherokee were held under foul conditions,

to Fort Payne, yet another

removal fort and internment camp in Alabama,

to Ross’s Landing where more than 2,000 were held prisoner

and departed in three large groups

to travel to Indian Territory by water.

The Unicoi Turnpike, an ancient war and trading path,

took other groups onto the Trail of Tears,

is now designated a Millennium Trail.

Charleston, Tennessee, where 13,000 were held

for months, waiting to begin their unwilling trek

across five states in winter.

Hopkinsville, Kentucky,

Chief Whitepath died and was buried here,

remarkable for being one of the few

whose graves are known.

Hover long enough over Hopkinsville

and the screen will tell you

“Most of the thousands of Cherokees who died on the Trail lie in unmarked graves.”

Published in Dark Sister (Mammoth Publications, 2018)