By Ruth Margaret
Muskrat
In
the night they shriek and moan,
In
the dark the tall pines moan
As
they guard the dismal trail.
The
Cherokees say it is the groan,
Every
shriek and echoed groan
Of
their forefathers that fell
With
broken hopes and bitter fears
On
that weary trail of tears.[1]
Broken
hopes and broken hearts,
A
quivering mass of broken hearts
Were
driven over the trail.
Stifling
back the groan that starts
Smothering
back the moan that
Full
four thousand fell;[2]
But
still the Great Spirit his people
As
they travel the trail of tears.
From
the homes their fathers made
From
the graves the tall trees shade
For
the sake of greed and gold,
The
Cherokees were forced to go
To
a land they did not know;
And
Father Time or wisdom old
Cannot
erase, through endless years
The
memory of the trail of tears.
[1]
In 1838 and 1839, as part
of Andrew Jackson's Indian removal policy (Indian Removal Act of 1830), the
Cherokee nation was forced to give up its lands east of the Mississippi River
and to migrate to an area in present-day
[2] Recent research by Cherokee scholars estimates that around 1,100 Cherokees died during removal.