The month of September is American Indian Heritage Month. A commemorative Trail Of Tears Walk will take place tonight at the gazebo on Waters Street
next to the Cannon County Courthouse the walk will end at the Woodbury
First United Methodist Church. The event starts at 6:30. A memorial
will be held at the Church at 7:00. The memorial will include guest
speakers from the Muscogee “Creek” Nation of Oklahoma. They will share a
word of reconciliation in the hope of better understanding between
American Indian people and non-Indian people. There will also be tribal
singing by the Muscogee Singers from Oklahoma.
The walk is also collecting shoes and outer wear in the Soles 4 Souls
project. these shoes will be sent to tribal areas in need. Girl Scout
Service Unit 158 will be helping with the collection and are encouraged to
bring old shoes that will be cleaned and sent to Indian Reservation.
Participants may bring any outer wear hats, scarves gloves and coats along
with the shoes.
The Trail of Tears came through 39 counties in Tennessee alone. One of the routes passed right down the middle of woodbury on waters Street.
The Commemorative Trail of Tears Walk and Memorial recognizes the hardships suffered by the Five Civilized Tribes of the southeast (the Cherokee, the Muscogee “Creek”, the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, and the Seminole) who walked their own “Trail of Tears” to Oklahoma Indian Territory.
The Five Civilized Tribes were removed by force after the Indian Removal Act of 1830 enacted by President Andrew Jackson. The removal of all tribes east of the Mississippi River to the lands west of the Mississippi River is one of the most hurtful images in the history of the United State. Over 46,000 people were forced off their lands and taken under armed guard or forced onto ships, many of them in chains.
They were taken to land promised to them in Oklahoma Indian Territory. Broken treaties and land grabs were common in lands wracked with war and forced removals. Lands in the states of Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee were all cleansed of the “Indian problem” and the lands taken and sold in lotteries.
The last resistance in the southeast was the with the Creek Wars of 1836 when Secretary of War Lewis Cass dispatched General Winfield Scott to end the violence by forcibly removing all the Creeks to Indian Territory in the lands known as Oklahoma.
