Trail of Tears

Two Cherokee chiefs, Fly Smith and Whitepath, died in Hopkinsville, Kentucky and are buried in what a Cherokee guide told me was a family cemetery after the town refused to permit them to be buried in the town cemetery. In a 2017 story by Stacy Boston published in Cherokee Phoenix (6/24/2017) Alice Murphree, the Kentucky Chapter President of the Trail of Tears Assoc., was quoted,

“After 1834 a man by the name of Mr. Hileman took out a land patent and brought his family here. Sometime in the winter of 1837-38 he had two small preschool-aged children who passed away and he buried them, as family oral history says,” she said. “Then when the Cherokee came through…they had made arrangements for them to camp on this site. As they were stopped here due to the ice flows on the Mississippi River, naturally some of them passed away. So story says that Mr. Hileman had them buried out in the field by his little boys. So that was the basis for getting this site certified as a National Trail of Tears site with the National Park Service.” (i)

I have always felt a tremendous guilt for the way Americans have treated the indigenous people, for slavery and for the way we, as a bunch of immigrants, treated every new immigrant who came here. I won't let myself get started on other violations of human dignity and civil rights. Nor will I get off on how people like to deny the corporate "we" when it means having to accept that the nation we call "our" nation is responsible for uncountable travesties.

It wasn't long ago that I learned that my maternal family is a cousin to Miko (chief) George Harkins, who led the Choctaw to Oklahoma during the Trail of Tears. This certainly doesn't make me Choctaw, but it gave me a strange and unexplained sense of connection and pride. Like the indigenous people of North America, the Irish were subjected to the tyranny of the English from 1169 until 1921. They were severely punished, if not killed, for practicing their religion, speaking their native language or practicing their own culture. Does that sound familiar? Of course, that's what the white invaders did here even though our popular history books like to say we came to be free from such tyranny. In 1847, the Choctaw sent financial aid to the Irish people suffering from famine which would be worth over $5,000 today. I don't know how much cousin George had to do with that. His father was an Irish immigrant, our connecting point, but George always said he was first and foremost a Choctaw. In 1847, George Harkins would have been the judge of the Red River District. If he wasn't influential in the decision, I'll bet anything he contributed.

This was unbelievable compassion by a people who had not yet recovered from the cruel Trail of Tears perpetrated by a white man of Irish descent - Pres. Andrew Jackson. Ireland has since created a scholarship for Choctaw youth, saying "your act of kindness has never been, and never will be, forgotten in Ireland," and built the monument shown here. It is called Kindred Spirits and is in County Cork, Ireland.

Cousin George; and I must admit calling him that with the greatest respect as well as pride; knew that he needed to be able to deal with the white government, so he earned a law degree from Cumberland University. In 1831 he wrote a magnificently composed, yet scathing, letter called "Farewell letter to the American people." (ii)

In that letter he said, "Painful in the extreme is the mandate of our expulsion. We regret that it should proceed from the mouth of our professed friend, for whom our blood was co-mingled with that of his bravest warriors, on the field of danger and death." This refers to the fact that President Andrew Jackson had used eastern indigenous nations to help him win his wars from 1812-1821. Many indigenous people had died fighting for Andrew Jackson. He had promised them a place to live in peace and then reneged. This was a tremendous insult. A 2016 article by Dylan Matthews calls Jackson a slaver, ethic cleanser and tyrant. This can not be denied.

Also in his letter, George wrote, "Amid the gloom and horrors of the present separation, we are cheered with a hope that ere long we shall reach our destined land, and that nothing short of the basest acts of treachery will ever be able to wrest it from us, and that we may live free." Sadly that basest act of treachery happened by 1889, the year before George died. Precisely at noon on Monday, April 22nd., 1889 thousands of would-be white settlers made a mad dash to claim cheap land on a 1.9 million acre tract of Indian Territory. Benjamin Harrison had just been inaugurated. The plans and decisions were made under the leadership of Grover Cleveland, but Harrison did nothing to stop the travesty. It would bring votes, which meant power.

It is with this knowledge that I look at the statues of Chief Fly Smith and Chief Whitepath. I don't know that the artist designated which statue was which chief. It doesn't matter. The artist created the statues using Cherokee men as his models. No one knows what Fly Smith or Whitepath looked like. We can only count it fortunate that the white invaders permitted their presence to be remembered. Right or wrong the victor gets to write the history. It often doesn't resemble fact.

One chief seems to be in a position of supplication. Was he pleading with the Great Spirit, Unetlanvhi, for help for his people? Or was he cursing the white man for breaking all the laws of civility and compassion. While indigenous people are no more saintly than any other humans, it was discovered that the tales white people were told about the barbaric behavior of the "indians" were actually tales of things the white invaders had done. Jackson, for one, purposely switched the roles to make naïve people angry and justify his barbaric behavior. Except that his face is turned upward, I would also wonder if the chief might not be pleading with the visitor looking at him to not forget the Trail of Tear and not to allow such atrocities to be perpetrated every again.

Sadly, we know that atrocities against indigenous peoples have been repeated again and again and are taking place as you read this essay. Even poor cousin George lived to see yet another promise broken, another treaty violated, and his people driven off their land. That's where we look at the statue of the second chief. He could be resting or he could be contemplating the heavy burden his people were attempting to bear with dignity. While the one chief's face appears to be that of supplication, the second chief's face tells a story of pain and sorrow. They had done everything possible to live in peace with the white people. They had confined their lives to specific areas. They had given up their spirituality. They had started dressing like the white man. It is as if the first, the supplicating chief was asking the white man "what do you want of us?" while the second chief, the sorrowful chief, had heard the answer, "we want you to die."

The fight is not over. We must stand strong against tyranny and injustice everywhere. Edward Abbey once said, "A patriot must always be ready to defend his country from his government." (iv) We must stand with our indigenous brothers and sisters, with people of color, with women, with LGBT and all people who suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Shakespeare's famous question confronts us. “To be or not to be? Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them…” And by opposing end them! (v)

FOOTNOTES:

(i) https://www.cherokeephoenix.org/Article/index/11362

(ii) https://www.ushistory.org/documents/harkins.htm

to read the entire letter.

(iii) https://www.vox.com/.../114.../andrew-jackson-indian-removal

(iv) Edward Abbey, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis en Deserto) : Notes from a Secret Journal (1990)

(v) Shakespeare's play "Hamlet". Act 3, Scene 1.