THE TRAIL OF TEARS

*photo courtesy of National Park Service

I walked a bit of the Trail of Tears

I can’t for on moment

Imagine the hardship, the fears

I can’t imagine the sorrow

Leaving one’s house and land

To be forced with heavy hand

Onto God forsaken barren land

I walked the Trail of Tears

What fool, what criminal

What outright immoral soul

Would force march death upon a whole

Bunch of Sovereign people

Like animals treated,

Death took its toll

Forced by a God drunken fool

Of a president of my country

I am ashamed for such a fool

To treat my friends that way

I’m sure the bastard rots in hell

Men, women, children brothers, sisters, aunts, families one another

A peaceful bunch

We had taken their land, murdered

And tortured the peaceful band

Forced to walk, on which many died sickly

I can’t imagine such

Autrocity

Pray God forgive us for our criminal act

Andy Jackson forced them to carry on their backs

The total of their belongings

God grant them peace

And grant Jackson his criminal fate.

Bless the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creeks

Bless them home

No longer do they have to roam

Deserty dusty land

For not the Cherokee

Have made their vengeful stand

Taking rightful money

From the gambling man

Revenge is sweet.

I walked a bit of the Trail of Tears

Today, ‘bout where it crosses into Tenessee

I could heard American souls mumbling in prayer

As their lot fell along that tearful trail

The band went out to the dust bowl of OK

Now returned where their rightful land be

To prosper and live in Sovereignty

In a fretful reversal on the white man

I walked along the Trail of Tears

And picked up stones for every tear

Till the weight I could no longer bear

The ghostly ghastly tears of my fellow man

I dropped my stones my burden bear

Looked to the heavens in wailing prayer

Why? How? Who?

Would dare treat a fellow man there

Like that on the Trail of Tears

My home is on a hill

Where the Cherokee once roamed

It’s up on Dry Ridge

Where’s’ they made their home

At night on the porch

I can hear spirits around a fire

Chatting and singing in prayer

Oblivious to an awful fate

To befall them by government lairs

It was not my government

Not at all

It was a government, inc. of sorrow

A government of fears

It was a government that someday would

Re-walk itself along its own

Dreadful Trail of Tears.

Author’s Note: I am a true friend of the American Indian. I have been asked to document my research on Sovereignty. I will do what I can to assist the Native Nations Foundation in its mission to preserve the sovereignty of the American Indian.

Addendum: Ed Flynn noted me that it was actually President Andy Jackson and his successor Martin Van Buren who acted on the Removal Act of 1830. Lots of politicians were co-conspirators in the total relocation of all American Indians from the Southeastern United States to make way for economic development. The implementation of the Trail of Tears resulted in 30% deaths to Indian men women and children. Who has blood on their hands? Actually the removal sentiment began around 1800, which additionally implicates over a dozen Presidents and legislators. President Grant was more involved with the Indian Wars following the Civil War, so I’ll just let the above poem stand as a memorial to the unwarranted cruelty to a sovereign nation of peoples. What intrigues me most is the criminality of nations’ manifest destiny then and now in the world. Peace.

Roaming Wolf

A Carl Sandburg Writer