The Big Idea

About a year after I purchased my home in Cumming Georgia I became interested in the history of the forced removal of the Cherokee Indians from Georgia.

I think what initially sparked my interest was that you can live here in northern Georgia and be oblivious to the fact that the Cherokee people were ever here. In fact, you can know about something called the Trail of Tears and not realize that it may have started in your back yard.

There are very, very few markers.

There's a beautiful park near my house with a stream running through it. The stream flows swiftly over and around an incredible rocky shoal area where swimmers and sun bathers can lounge on large gray water smoothed boulders. Over the stream spans an old woodened covered bridge that the people of the area are rightly proud of.

The bridge is the centerpiece of the park. Most people who live here believe it is the bridge that makes the park significant. Most people either do not read the historical marker in the park or chose not to understand the significance of what it says.

The marker says that the park, called Pooles Mill Park, was once the site of a mill owned by Cherokee Chief George Welch. It goes on to say the mill passed to Jacob Scudder when Chief Welch was divested of the property when the Cherokee were removed from North Georgia and sent on the Trail of Tears.

I remember when I first read that plaque it took a few minutes for me to reconcile in my mind that Indians owned mills; let alone the fact that a mill could be taken away from someone simply because he was part Indian (Welch is hardly a Cherokee name). Weren't Indians savages that lived in tents sewn from buffalo hides.

Now, I had heard of the Trail of Tears before I had moved to Georgia, but I had always assumed it was out west somewhere. All I knew about Indians I had learned from movies - Suffice to say I knew nothing. I was shocked to read this plaque in what is basically my back yard and realize how much history had occurred around my new home, and I was struck by how little evidence remained of this history.

It seemed to me it was like living in Gettysburg and never knowing there was a battle fought there. Of course, that's absurd. Everyone knows what happened at Gettysburg, and if you do not you surely would know after driving through the town. There are markers, monuments, signs, shops, and tourists everywhere to commemorate what happened there, but there's almost nothing in my back yard that tells anyone what happened here.

Now, as far as numbers go. It is true, that what happened to the Cherokee seems less tragic than what has happened to many other cultures throughout history. For example, the tragedy of black slavery impacted far, far more people than the Cherokee removal. At the time of their removal, the Cherokee numbered fewer than 18,000 in Georgia. Some sources place the number closer to 14,000. And at their height in the 15th century, before they met Destoto and lost half their numbers to small pox, they probably numbered not much more than 35,000.

No matter how you rank the removal of the Cherokee Indians in the list of sad and cruel things man has done to his fellow man, you'd have to agree that it is somewhat odd that you can live on the very land where U.S. soldiers forcibly drove over 13,000 men, women, and children from their homes, herded them into stockades, starved and beat them, then marched them 1000 miles north west on a brutal trek where over a third of them died, and not know it may have happened on the very ground where your house now stands.

I can not get this thought out of my head. Even now, nearly 8 years after I moved into the area, I still bore co-workers with my rants about the amazing forgotten story of the Indian removal. In my obsession with the subject, I've developed the idea for a novel that has as it's back drop the story of the Cherokee removal. Before I can write the story, however, I need to understand a little more about where the Cherokee went and what their life is like now.

I need to go to Oklahoma.

I've decided I will go alone, and I will get there, and back, on my little Triumph Bonneville motorcycle. Also, as a form commemoration and to satisfy my curiosity, I plan on following the northern land route of the Trail of Tears out. I'll take a more direct route home.

My plan is to depart Cumming Georgia on Sunday October 7th and return the following Saturday.

I will use this blog to chronicle the trip from preparation and departure to return.