RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: TRUE HISTORY
A Long Hard Road Part I
This is a story about how things go together
Told in the language of the common folk
A language meant for talking
For telling stories in a crowded barroom
For speaking out loud in a circle of friends
It’s the language of Faulkner, McCarthy,
Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie
(but that’s another story)
This story begins in the green valleys,
endless forests, rugged mountains and
winding rivers of rural Tennessee
It may be the story rightly begins long
before Tennessee was even a name on a map
when the seven tribes of the Natchez Trace
lived and prospered on the mother of all rivers
before the great white invasion
But this story begins with the Cherokee
Known by the whites as the civilized tribe
(Tecumseh and Crazy Horse might disagree
but that too is another story)
The Cherokee invented their own syllabary
so they could write and read in their own language
They wrote their own constitution
They formed their own democracy
They elected their own representatives
The Supreme Court of the United States of
America (an audacious name but there it is)
recognized their lawful sovereignty but at that
time a man from Tennessee who grew up with
the Cherokee and led many of them into the Battle
of New Orleans was elected president of the
white man’s nation
His name was Andrew Jackson and he didn’t
think much of the Supreme Court’s decision
In fact he tossed it out with the daily trash
He ordered the Cherokee, Choctaw, the Creek
and Chickasaw herded up like cattle and
moved a thousand miles away to a desolate
land no white man wanted (until they did
but that is another story)
It came to be known as the Trail of Tears
but it was not just Indian tears on the path
to the setting sun where all things go to die
The poor white folk and black folk and other
folk lined up along the trail to watch a proud
people humbled by hardship and pushed to
the edge of their limits
They watched and their tears became a river
flowing, a path of sorrow, and a tribute to
the human spirit
Thousands of folks native to the land packed
what belongings they could and marched the
long hard road to Indian Territory
Some died, some escaped and many endured
It would come to be called Oklahoma
(but that is another story)
