Lorie Davison A Pioneer Tale Kit (With Everything in It)
Font: John Lennon
I would give my eyeteeth to sit down over my birthday dinner with Major Ridge of the Cherokees to hear his side of the controversy that ended with the Cherokees Trail of Tears. I am certain there was much more to it than what is recorded in various histories. The Hollywood version of Indian relations is laughable as are many of the published sources available. I have a theory I would like to prove and publish, but there is so little information available that an interview would be invaluable. Alas, this side of Heaven, I will probably never know.
Certainly, the Trail of Tears was a terrible ordeal for the Cherokee that had not already gone west. Many see it as the twilight, then death of Cherokee Nation as a sovereign people, and the end of Cherokee culture. I view it as a huge triumph for the Cherokee people. Not only did they not go quietly into the night, but once established in the new Cherokee Nation West in the Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, they proceeded to not only survive but to thrive. I have great love and admiration for this wonderful group of loving, happy, resilient people and it saddens me beyond words that the schism that opened with the Treaty of New Echota in 1835 is still alive today.
Major Ridge made the trek west in covered wagons much like American pioneers. He was one of the wealthy, already acculturated Cherokees, and carried with him the supplies to start a new plantation in the west. His son, John Ridge, carried with him the supplies to open a general store and his nephew, Elias Boudinot (Buck Oowatie) brought with him the knowledge to begin a new Cherokee/English newspaper in the west. They emigrated with some of the earliest of the forced removal parties, but separate from them, in 1838 and were considered Old Settlers, not Emigrant Cherokees. Their lives in the IT were short - just long enough to get established and their families settled, when they were executed in 1839. They knowingly forfeited their lives and, in consequence, their families and the Cherokee, as a whole, survived to become todays vibrant Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma.
