During the first half of the 19th century, as many as 100,000 Native
Americans were relocated west of the Mississippi River from their
homelands in the East. The best known of these forced emigrations was
the Cherokee Removal of 1838. Christened
Nu-No-Du-Na-Tlo-Hi-Lu--literally "the Trail Where They Cried"--by the
Cherokees, it is remembered today as the Trail of Tears. In Voices from
the Trail of Tears, editor Vicki Rozema re-creates this tragic period
in American history by letting eyewitnesses speak for themselves. Using
newspaper articles and editorials, journal excerpts, correspondence, and
official documents, she presents a comprehensive overview of the Trail
of Tears--the events leading to the Indian Removal Act, the Cherokees'
conflicting attitudes toward removal, life in the emigrant camps, the
routes westward by land and water, the rampant deaths in camp and along
the trail, the experiences of the United States military and of the
missionaries and physicians attending the Cherokees, and the
difficulties faced by the tribe in the West. "O what a year it has
been!" wrote one witness accompanying a detachment westward in December
1838. "O what a sweeping wind has gone over, and carried its thousands
into the grave." This book will lead readers to both rethink American
history and celebrate the spirit of those who survived.
Vicki Rozema is the author of Cherokee Voices: Early Accounts of
Cherokee Life in the East and Voices from the Trail of Tears. Also an
acclaimed photographer, she is a history professor at the University of
Tennessee. The first edition of Footsteps of the Cherokees received an
Award of Merit from the Tennessee Historical Commission in 1996. Her
honors include the 2014 McClung Award for an article that appeared in
the 2013 Journal of East Tennessee History and the Native American Eagle
Award for her writings on the Cherokee.
"This work, like Cherokee Voices, is a compilation of letters, newspaper
editorials, journal excerpts, church records, and military documents,
written by a diverse group of Cherokees and Euroamericans. As the title
suggests, Voices from the Trail of Tears is a moving account of the
forced removal of thousands of Cherokees in the 1830s; Rozema does a
remarkable job of 're-creating this tragic period in American history by
letting eyewitnesses speak for themselves.'" - Ginny Carney Studies in
American Indian Literature
