Undying Gratitude

By Marilyn Redding

Undying Gratitude is a book about true facts out lining most Indians. Journey in life through the hands of the government. It touches their walk along The Trail of Tears the hardship and survival to move forward and come out winners after such abuse. All nationalities have had their own struggle but the Indians were the first. Most White Americans often feared and resented the Native Americans because of their ignorance. Along the long journey on the Trail of Tears many died and the ones who survived went on to rebuild their worlds. Yet in an instance the White men once again up root their homes and start killing family members. From there the book takes a total turn from the reality of their peaceful existence and turns into a nightmare of disbelief. Indians are very spiritual people and I do hope after reading Undying Gratitude your spirit is renewed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644921197

Book preview

Chapter I

Trails of Tears

To actually begin this journey, I must go way back in history. History, has a way of repeating itself and for some reason, the same mistakes seem to emerge. God’s well for the people on this earth is to have unconditional love for each other, but somehow, most seem to fall short. Most don’t even know what the definition is for love. If you read the Bible it tells you what love is!

Love is patient; love is kind and envies no one. Love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude; never selfish, not quick to take offence. Love keeps no score of wrongs; does not gloat over another’s sins, but delights in the truth. There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance. In a word, there are three things that last forever: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of them all is love.

1 Corinthians 13

In the early 1800 began the removal of many tribes of Indians, forcefully they were removed from their native land. The US government created an Indian Territory in Oklahoma and sent all the eastern Native American tribes to live there. Removing the Choctaw and Cherokee Indiana’s from their home land where they had survived many generations. The Indians called this removal The Trail of Tears. They were peaceful people with divine spirits, who loved and cared for their own, living off of the land and natural resources God had giving them. Some tribes willingly agreed to this plan, but others did not want to go, so the Americans forced them. The army was brought in to help with the removal of the tribes who would not go and used guns.

In 1838, Gen. Winfield Scott arrived in Georgia and began rounding up those Cherokees who would not leave willingly. Some sixteen thousand members of the tribe were herded into makeshift prisons. Scott’s men seized women and children first to guarantee that the men would come out of hiding to protect them.

The Cherokees were then forced into wagons, often at bayonet point. As they left their ancestral land, some saw Georgians digging up family graves, looking for silver jewelry. For five months, they were jolted along the route from Georgia to Oklahoma that became known as the Trail of Tears. Northern missionaries who shared the ordeal testified to families wrested from their homes so suddenly that they had nothing to protect them against the freezing winter rains. Pneumonia and exhaustion carried off the old and the very young. Although estimates vary about how many did not survive, wagon trains stopped every day for rough burials along the roadside.

The Choctaws were one of the southeastern tribes forced to move to a new location in Oklahoma. Most of them traveled by foot, and thousands died of exhaustion, diseases and starvation. It was a horrible time in history.

Removal

The Choctaws without wanting to leave their native land were the first Indians to be forcefully removed as a nation by the US government. Our government placed the US Army in charge of the 1832 and 1833 removals, they cut costs by severely reducing both rations and blankets. When the Choctaws ran out of food and attempted to purchase supplies, the citizens of Arkansas reacted by raising the price of corn. By 1834, 11,500 Choctaws had been removed to the west. Around 2,500 Choctaws died, many from exposure and starvation. There were babies born, which also died do to the same issue. But no one seemed to care, most did not even have a clue what OUR government was doing to the Indians, and if they did know, they just looked the other way. Many unmarked graves paved the road travel on their brutal winter migrations and if you listen you can hear their cries.

In 1820 (modified by the treaty of 1824) the Choctaws purchased from the United States what amounted to the southern half of the present day state of Oklahoma, an area that included at its western edge the very heartland of the Comanche nation. Upon their arrival in the West in 1834, the Choctaws immediately adopted a written constitution. The constitution was modified in 1837 when the Chickasaws once again became a part of the Choctaw nation, having been removed from their homeland and allowed to choose homes among the Choctaws. They were given a quarter of the votes in the Choctaw legislature. In 1855, the Chickasaws became a separate nation again, purchasing from the Choctaws what is today the central section of southern Oklahoma.

In the West the Choctaws soon recovered from the trauma of removal and established a republic that flourished for a generation. During this generation of peace and prosperity, the Choctaw nation built a stable economy, established its own public school system, governed itself under its own laws, and adopted many of the habits of its American neighbors.

As for the Cherokee Indians the deadline for voluntary removal was May, 23, 1838. President Van Buren appointed General Winfield Scott to lead the forcible operation. At this time in history were many innocence Indians died, it became a forcible evacuation at gunpoint, with the help of around seven thousand troops, making the Indians take the walk of death. There were around seventeen thousand Cherokees and two thousand black slaves forced out of their native land, some, with just the clothes on their backs. Women, children men, many died waiting in camps, where there was no food and supplies were limited and disease was rampant. Alone the 2,200-mile journey, road conditions, illness, cold and exhaustion took thousands of lives. (Especially the children) Our federal government officially reported some 424 deaths, but an American doctor traveling with one of the groups estimated that two thousand people died in the camps and another two thousand along the trails. But actual it was estimated around eight thousand Cherokee Indians died along this long journey, which they were forced to take. Why, because our government wanted all Indians removed.

The Cherokee Indians were one of the largest of five Native American tribes who settled in the American Southeast portion of the country. The tribe came from Iroquoian descent. They had originally been from the Great Lakes region of the country, but eventually settled closer to the east coast.

In 1828, gold was discovered on the Cherokee’s land. This prompted the overtaking of their homes, and they were forced out. They had been settled in Georgia for many years, but were now being made to leave and find a new place to settle. This is the origin for the historically popular Trail of Tears, where men, women, and children had to pack up their belongings and find new homes, marching a span of thousands of miles.

White resentment of the Cherokee had been building and reached a pinnacle following the discovery of gold in northern Georgia. This discovery was made just after the creation and passage of the original Cherokee Nation constitution and establishment of a Cherokee Supreme Court. Possessed by gold fever and a thirst for expansion, many white communities turned on their Cherokee neighbors. The US government ultimately decided it was time for the Cherokees to be removed; leaving behind their farms, their land and their homes.

Long time we travel on way to new land. People feel bad when they leave old nation. Women cry and make sad wails. Children cry and many men cry, and all look sad like when friends die, but they say nothing and just put heads down and keep on go towards West. Many days pass and people die very much. We bury close by Trail.

—Survivor of the Trail of Tears

An estimated eight thousand died from hunger, exposure and disease. The food and clothing of the people were severely inadequate and transportation needs were not properly met. The journey became a cultural memory as the trail where they cried for the Cherokees and other removed tribes. Today it is widely remembered by the general public as the Trail of Tears. The Oklahoma chapter of the Trail of Tears Association has begun the task of marking the graves of Trail survivors with bronze memorials.

There were around one thousand Cherokee Indians who escaped to the North Carolina Mountains. Others who lived on individually owned land were not subject to removal. Those who were lucky enough to have not been evacuated formed tribal groups based in North Carolina that continues to exist today.

By 1840, tens of thousands of Native Americans had been driven off of their land in the southeastern states and forced to move across the Mississippi to Indian Territory. The federal government promised that their new land would remain unmolested forever, but as the line of white settlement pushed westward, Indian country shrank and shrank. In 1907, Oklahoma became a state and Indian Territory was gone for good.

But their land, located in parts of Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, Florida and Tennessee, was valuable, and it grew to be more coveted as white settlers flooded the region. Many of these whites yearned to make their fortunes by growing cotton, and they did not care how civilized their native neighbors were: They wanted that land and they would do almost anything to get it. They stole livestock; burned and looted houses and towns; and squatted on land that did not belong to them.

State governments joined in this effort to drive Native Americans out of the South. Several states passed laws limiting Native American sovereignty and rights and encroaching on their territory. In a few cases, such as Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) and Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the US Supreme Court objected to these practices and affirmed that native nations were sovereign nations in which the laws of Georgia [and other states] can have no force. Even so the maltreatment continued. As President Andrew Jackson noted in 1832, if no one intended to enforce the Supreme Court’s rulings (which he certainly did not), then the decisions would [fall]…still born. Southern states were determined to take ownership of Indian lands and would go to great lengths to secure this territory.

Indian removal took place in the Northern states as well. In Illinois and Wisconsin, for example, the bloody Black Hawk War in 1832 opened to white settlement millions of acres of land that had belonged to the Sauk, Fox and other native nations.

White Americans, particularly those who lived on the western frontier, often feared and resented the Native Americans they encountered: To them, American Indians seemed to be an unfamiliar, alien people who occupied land that white settlers wanted (and believed they deserved). Some officials in the early years of the American republic, such as President George Washington, believed that the best way to solve this Indian problem was simply to civilize the Native Americans. The goal of this civilization campaign was to make Native Americans as much like white Americans as possible by encouraging them convert to Christianity, learn to speak and read English, and adopt European-style economic practices such as the individual ownership of land and other property (including, in some instances in the South, African slaves). In the southeastern United States, many Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Creek and Cherokee people embraced these customs and became known as the Five Civilized Tribes.

Today, the Cherokee Indians have a strong sense of pride in their heritage. The Cherokee rose is now the state flower of Georgia. Today, the largest population of Cherokee Indians live in the state of Oklahoma, where there are three federally recognized Cherokee communities with thousands of residents.

With everything the Indians endured they still are very spiritual people with a strong sense of pride in who they are. They taught the American people, how to grow many vegetables and many are vegetarians. Indians are very ancient people, but by their own account, they were the last of earth’s inhabits.

It is ironic that Indians are strongly associated with hunting and fishing when, in fact, nearly half of all the plant foods grown in the world today were first cultivated by the American Indians, and were unknown elsewhere until the discovery of the Americas.

An incomplete list of other Indian foods given to the world includes bell peppers, red peppers, peanuts, cashews, sweet potatoes, avocados, passion fruit, zucchini, green beans, kidney beans, maple syrup, lima beans, cranberries, pecans, okra, chocolate, vanilla, sunflower seeds, pumpkin, cassava, walnuts, forty-seven varieties of berries, pineapple, and of course, corn and popcorn.

Many history textbooks tell the story of Squanto, a Pawtuxent Indian who lived in the early 1600s. Squanto is famous for having saved the Pilgrims from starvation. He showed them how to gather wilderness foods and how to plant corn.

There have been thousands of Squantos since, even though their names are not so well-known. In fact modern day agriculture owes its heart and soul to Indian-taught methods of seed development, hybridization, planting, growing, irrigating, storing, utilizing and cooking. And the spirit of Squanto survives to this day. One example is a Peruvian government research station tucked away in a remote Amazon Indian village called Genaro Herrera. University trained botanists, agronomists and foresters work there, scientifically studying all the ways the local Indians grow and prepare food. They are also learning how to utilize forests without destroying them, and how to combat pests without chemicals.

What would this country be like today if the ancient ways were still observed? I believe it is fair to say that the Indian respect for non-human life forms would have had a greater impact on American society. Corn, not turkey meat, might be the celebrated Thanksgiving Day dish. Fewer species would have become extinct, the environment would be healthier, and Indian and non-Indian Americans alike would be living longer and healthier lives. There might also be less sexism and racism, for many people believe that, as you treat your animals (the most defenseless), so you will treat your children, your women, and your minorities.

Without realizing it, the Indian warriors and hunters of ages past played right into the hands of the white men who coveted their lands and their buffalo. When the lands were taken from them, and the buffalo herds decimated, there was nothing to fall back on. But the Indians who chose the peaceful path and relied on diversity and the abundance of plants for their survival were able to save their lifestyles. Even after being moved to new lands they could hang on, replant, and go forward.

Now we, their descendants, must recapture the spirit of the ancient traditions for the benefit of all people. We must move away from the European influences that did away with a healthier style of living. We must again embrace our brothers and sisters, the animals, and return to the corn once and for all.

Painted by John Guthrie

Morning Tears

During the harsh winter of 1838–1839 thousands of Cherokee were forced to leave their mountain homes and marched overland to Indian Territory. During the forced march across the snow covered land, over four thousand of the Cherokees died. The hardships suffered by the Cherokee people as they were forced to walk what later would be named The Trail of Tears, to a new home in Indian Territory, would be forever remembered. Like the people who took advantage of the Cherokee Removal the Ravens in the foreground of this painting tear apart a scarf that has Cherokee Nation written in embroidery.

Cherokee by Blood

This painting on an eagle feather, deals with the Cherokee tragedy now called the Trail of Tears. During the winter of 1838 and 1839 sixteen thousand Cherokees were forced on to what would become known as the Trail of Tears, overland to Indian Territory. On the Trail of Tears over four thousand Cherokees died. We still remember.

This article on the CNN website from November 2010, provides a narrative of the US treatment of Native Americans.

In 1838, Gen. Winfield Scott arrived in Georgia and began rounding up those Cherokees who would not leave willingly. Some sixteen thousand members of the tribe were herded into makeshift prisons. Scott’s men seized women and children first to guarantee that the men would come out of hiding to protect them.

The Cherokees were then forced into wagons, often at bayonet point. As they left their ancestral land, some saw Georgians digging up family graves, looking for silver jewelry. For five months, they were jolted along the route from Georgia to Oklahoma that became known as the Trail of Tears.

Northern missionaries who shared the ordeal testified to families wrested from their homes so suddenly that they had nothing to protect them against the freezing winter rains. Pneumonia and exhaustion carried off the old and the very young. Although estimates vary about how many did not survive, wagon trains stopped every day for rough burials along the roadside.

Cherokee Mother

We still remember the sixteen thousand people, we still remember those that perished. The strength of the Cherokee People is our women as shown in this mothers eyes. Keeping the spirit of an eagle as she faced each day of that terrible relocation to Indian Territory, what is now Oklahoma.

Indians walking the TRAIL of TEARS The Oklahoma chapter of the Trail of Tears Association has begun the task of marking the graves of Trail survivors with bronze memorials.

(Rita Laws is Choctaw and Cherokee. She lives and writes in Oklahoma. Her Choctaw name, Hina Hanta, means Bright Path of Peace, which is what she considers vegetarianism to be. She has been vegetarian for over fourteen years.)

A few years after this long, sad march, the Choctaws learned of people starving to death in Ireland. Only sixteen years had passed since the Choctaws themselves had faced hunger and death on the first Trail of Tears, and a great empathy was felt when they heard such a similar story coming from across the ocean. Individuals made donations totaling