I honestly don’t know whether people could understand it without living my life. Hearing the stories my grandmother told me that her grandmother told her. Seeing my father being disrespected when he was an honorable man. Reading the poems and letters from our ancestors who witnessed events over time. Like this one, from an unidentified Cherokee woman in 1818:
Beloved Children, We have called a meeting among ourselves to consult on the different points now before the council, relating to our national affairs. We have heard with painful feelings that the bounds of the land we now possess are to be drawn into very narrow limits. The land was given to us by the Great Spirit above as our common right, to raise our children upon, and to make support for our rising generations. We therefore humbly petition our beloved children, the head men and warriors, to hold out to the last in support of our common rights, as the Cherokee nation have been the first settlers of this land; we therefore claim the right of the soil.
Sometimes I feel like I should walk the Trail. I’m too old to do so now, but old people were forced to do it then. Many people have done so in recent times, including Sarah Vowell, who expresses some of what I feel when she composed this passage while on the Trail:
Most Americans have had this experience. Most of us can name things our country has done that we find shameful, from the travesties that everyone agrees were wrong, the Japanese internment camps or the late date of slavery’s abolition, to murkier partisan arguments.
World history has been a bloody business from the get go, but the nausea we’re suffering standing on the broken promises [to the Cherokee] at Ross’ Landing [in Chattanooga, TN] is peculiar to a democracy. Because in a democracy, we’re all responsible for everything our government does.
Meanwhile there are little kids literally walking over these words, playing on them, making noise, having fun. I sort of hate them for a second. We ask a teacher who’s with a group of fourth graders why she isn’t talking to them about Cherokee history and she says normally she would but it’s the end of the school year and this trip is their reward for being good. Sounds reasonable. I ask Amy if she thinks these kids should share our sadness. “Well, I think it’s a sad story. It’s … sort of like the Holocaust. You don’t have to be Jewish to think that’s a sad part of history and I think the trail of Tears is … America’s version of genocide … it started right over there.”
Still … I envy those children … I want to join them. I’m an IMAX person … I feel really haunted by this … I feel very weighed down by the pain. … The more I learn [about the Trail of Tears/Cherokee History] the worse I feel and the more hatred I feel toward this country that I still love. Therefore the more conflicted.
In the trail of Tears Saga, if there’s one person you’re allowed to hate, it’s Andrew Jackson, the architect of the Indian removal policy. … The person I most empathize with in this history is John Ross, the principal chief during the Trail of Tears, because he was caught between the two nations. He believed in the possibilities of the American constitution enough to make sure the Cherokee had one too. He believed in the liberties the Declaration of Independence promises and the civil rights the Constitution ensures.
And when the U.S. betrayed not only the Cherokee, but its own creed, I would guess John Ross was not only angry, not only outraged, not only confused, I would guess John Ross was a little broken hearted. Cause that’s how I feel. I’ve been experiencing the Trail of Tears not as a Cherokee but as an American.
“Trail of Tears,” This American Life, July 3, 1998
I wish I could do or say more to impart to you the experience of seeing bigotry as an unheralded people with practically no political clout or sympathy, scrounging for whatever crumbs of redemption might fall from the table of those who dole out civil rights. My passion is born of this experience, and until you’ve experienced it yourself, I can only paint you dim pictures with weak words. I can’t reach into your chest and squeeze your heart until you cry.