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
INDIAN REMOVAL CARTOGRAPHY
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 The Whirlybird Anthology, 2013)
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